Not Since Alberto Vargas has an artist so captured the sensuous in lines so simple as did Patrick Nagel, who died last February at the age of 38. Every piece he created showed the same love of women. Every image had an unmistakable edge that took it out of the arena of minor illustration into the eternal. Nagel influenced a generation of illustrators.
Nagel's illustrations first appeared in Playboy in 1974. His drawings of elegant, erotic women originally graced the pages of Playboy After Hours but soon appeared in The Playboy Advisor, The Playboy Forum and as accompaniments to major pieces of fiction and nonfiction as well. He created a look for the Eighties, one that combined the free-and-easy openness of West Coast design with the classical style of art deco. The images were oddly cropped, as in some Japanese prints. The figures were sophisticated, simple, stark and ultimately seductive.
Public reaction to Nagel's work was immediate. His career was in the ascendant. He was fast becoming a superstar. His work had been exhibited in galleries from coast to coast. Prints hungin The Louvre, the White House and the Smithsonian. He had done work for other magazines (Harper's, Architectural Digest, Palm Springs Life). He had done portraits of such famous women as Joan Collins. Shortly before he died, we asked him to create a special portfolio of erotic-fantasy images. We present them here as a final gift to our readers. Thanks, Pat.
