Why This Art Is In Every Hair Salon

do you recognize these women I'm betting

that you do most likely you've seen them at your local hair

or nail salon Faded by time

and years of sun damage these are the Nago women paintings made by American

artists Patrick Nagel that became icons in

and of the 1980s Nagel women usually have sleek black hair paper white skin

bold red lipstick and a look of mystery power

and cool Detachment their angular faces are captured with black outlines

and minimal detail and a graphic style

that resembles digital Vector Arc before

that was even possible all these images were made by hand a Vietnam vet

Nagel began his career

as a freelance illustrator for companies

and magazines but his break came

when he landed a job with Playboy in 19 1975 monthly Nagel refined his

trademark style and was exposed to a wider audience than he had been previously

then in 1977 he hooked up with Carl Bornstein who just launched a publishing

company called Mirage editions to Champion the often neglected genre of poster art Bornstein

had been in Europe admiring the work of Toulouse La Trek

and Pierre Bernard Parisian poster artists of the late 19th century

and came back to America looking for an artist of his own time

when Nagel walked into his life for Mirage Nagel created several original Works

which were then made into a limited number of serographs

or screen printed copies

and sold the most popular of these were the Nago women

and they quickly got the attention of the art world now meanwhile the manager

of the English New Wave band Duran Duran saw Nagel's work in Playboy

and commissioned a picture for the cover of their 1982 album Rio

which became a Smash Hit in both the UK

and then the us bringing his art into the homes of millions around the

world Duran Duran is the quintessential 80s band Rio the quintessential 80s album

and that helped to cement the Nagel woman

as an emblem of the decade

as Elena Milly writes this woman is sophisticated

and self-confident a professional who is not afraid to be glamorous like Warhol

and Liechtenstein before him Nagel bridged the gap between art

and commerce highbrow and lowbrow like latrek

and Bernard he elevated the popular medium of posters

while retaining their accessibility their immediacy his project was simplification day by day little

by little Nagel removed details until he arrived at the fewest number of lines

that would still capture the spirit of his models this technique paired with his

eye for graphic design makes his work

so engaging it's also I think why Nagel women

or crude imitations of them adorned the walls

and windows of so many salons in his absolutely essential book understanding Comics Scott

McCloud explains why cartoons have the power to involve us

so deeply it has to do with their universality you see the farther you

move along the spectrum of abstraction from photo to simple smiley face the more

people an image describes a photo can only really be one person

but two dots and a line well that's everyone we spend our lives looking

at other faces but aside from pictures

and mirrors we rarely see our own our mental image of ourselves isn't photo

real it's abstract it resembles a cartoon McLeod believes

that this explains our fascination with cartoons

when we see one we fill in its blanks with ourselves Nagel's women

and men for that matter are the perfect combination of abstract

and specific there are cartoons

that don't look cartoony

or goofy they give the impression of real people Chic fashionable independent people

but still leave enough space for you to place yourself in them for salons

Nagel women served as aspirational images

though it has to be said

that these women all being of one complexion it's likely they were only aspirational

for a certain segment of the population this speaks to the Warped priorities of

1980s advertising and the 80s in general

but that's a topic for another video unfortunately for Nagel he only got to

enjoy a few years of success dying suddenly of a heart attack in 1984

age 39. he never became a household name despite his work finding its way

into so many households four decades later his icons still peer out the windows

of hair and nail salons aplenty faded

and ambassadors of cool for a bygone era hey everybody thank you

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