IT’S A WOMAN’S WORLD

In artist Eric Stanton’s world, lesbian supervillians, historic temptresses, Bettie Page-look-a-likes, and tough glamourpuss sex kittens ruled. And what a wonderful world it was! For almost 50 years, Stanton’s drawings of black & white bondage beauties, sexy Technicolor starlets, gangster girls, lace-clad housewives, and caped dominatrix’s were splashed on magazines and periodicals, a fetishistic whirlwind of flying fists, alluring legs flipped over shoulders, and manic fights/flogs always tethering the line between pleasure and pain with comic ease. TASCHEN’S beautiful new book, The Art of Eric Stanton: For the Man Who Knows His Place, curates his work in one place—finally giving this talented artist and drawer his long over-waited due. 

by Sarah Hassan

Eric Stanton was certainly a man who had a “type.” The legendary underground illustrator best known for his tomes of BDSM fantasy with a clever, playful twist never employed a model better than the ones he kept in his imagination—and how generous the illustrator’s mind! Shrinking, waifish violets are nowhere to be found in the hundreds of bondage illustrations Stanton created between 1948 and 1998; instead, wide-hipped, full-lipped and leggy glamazons clad in latex, leather, lace and floor length gowns crowd the pages in a dizzying cast of characters, including disgruntled housewives, vengeful cowgirls, smoldering superheroines, and manipulative dominatrix’s taking their sex-fueled and fantastical violence out on anyone who dared to cross their path.

BETTIE PAGE, FLOGGING & FACE-SITS

It began in the early forties and spilled into the fifties and swinging sixties, when BDSM was wrecking havoc on the innocent minds of America, and Bettie Page—whom Stanton was unabashedly crazy for—was all the rage, commanding the attention of her admirers in thigh-high boots, tightly-laced corsets and many a black and silken underthing as she posed for Irving Klaw’s camera in his now-legendary studio at Movie Star News. Stanton’s leading ladies were the stuff of Bettie-fueled dreams, though these “Betties” were quick with a whip and ready to flog, face-sit, torture and tie up their captors and gentleman callers alike. Meow indeed!

Born in Brooklyn in 1926, Stanton got his start at the mere age of twelve, learning to draw under his own kind of restraint; his sister fell ill with scarlet fever and little Eric, who was put under quarantine, had nothing else to do, thus putting pencil to paper. Always drawn to the aesthetic of comic books, where sexy heroines abound, Stanton went on to create a signature style that had him brazen enough to proclaim to Irving Klaw in 1947 that “he could draw better than anyone else” that Klaw had on staff at Movie Star News.

Employed there from 1948 to 1956, Stanton went on to take his black & white bondage beauties to the pages of Peerless Sales, and then began to work under publishers such as Lenny Burtman, Eddie Mishkin, and Stanley Malcolm where his work took a saturated, decidedly more exotic turn with Technicolor punishments executed by nightclub starlets, gangster girls, lace-clad housewives, and caped dominatrixes. Never satisfied with the “static” figures taken from Klaw’s bondage playbook, Stanton sought to create complex narratives coupled with characters who seemed to fly off the page: fists are thrown, legs flip over shoulders, and fights erupt at a manic pace, always tethering the line between pleasure and pain with comic ease.

SEX CARNIVAL, UNWILLING TO SWAP & FEMALE TYRANT

Nothing was off-limits to the ballsy and bizarre Stanton, and his talents were a measure of a master’s skill with pen and ink—he had studied with Jerry Robinson, creator of Batman, at the Cartoonists and Illustrator’s School in Manhattan for two years during his time with Klaw—taking his erotic fantasies to new heights with titles such as Sex Carnival, Unwilling to Swap, Female Tyrant, His Brother’s Girl and countless, pulpy others. His archives became a treasure-trove of dark, boyish delights and now a mega-volume of his work edited by long-time supporter Eric Kroll, The Art of Eric Stanton: For the Man Who Knows His Place has been reintroduced by Taschen—a publisher who turns books into objects of beauty and experience rather than mere words and pictures—just in time to satisfy any naughty man on ones holiday gift list.

“SHE CAN’T BE SMALL”

The generously paged book divides up Stanton’s work by whomever he was working for and the corresponding years, allowing the reader to see the exciting, full-scale progress of Stanton’s work as his pen turns from black to color. In a male-dominated America—Stanton picked the right years to work during which the counter-culture was in full-swing—women had their place above men on the pages of Stanton’s self-published comics and commissioned book covers. “She can’t be small,” Stanton famously quipped when asked over his own preferences “A woman has to be strong. The bigger the girl the better.” Yet he drew the line at muscle girls, opting for more feminine qualities, such as a strong jaw, big, bright eyes and hair that, once unpinned, unfurled over bare shoulders like waves of ink. His second wife, Britt, was the example of the Stanton ideal—her husband called her “my Bettie”—and on their second date, the strong, tall and leggy Norwegian beauty was straddling her future spouse, waiting to wrestle on camera, as if one of his cartoon dominatrixes had come to life.

That may explain why, after second glance and deeper viewing of his work, Stanton’s sentimental side seeps through, past the glossy brilliance of a vixen’s lips as she hog-ties her helpless husband or spanks a schoolgirl to teach her the true meaning of humiliation. He may have penned some of the most eye-popping BDSM rendezvous to ever hit the backs of newsstands, but Stanton was passionate about his subjects, proving that no matter if they were out for blood or hungry for love, his women—lesbian supervillians, historic temptresses, Bettie Page-look-a-likes, or glamourpuss sex kittens—ruled the world.

Sarah Hassan is a New York City-based writer, editor and cultural critic. She wrote about the life and scandals of Colette for TREATS! issue 3, and regularly contributes to Artwrit and The Herald. She is also an accomplished dancer and performer, and serves on the guest faculty at Sarah Lawrence College.