Travis Vogan's "LeRoy Neiman"

Travis Vogan is professor of journalism and mass communication and American studies at the University of Iowa. He is the author of numerous books on sports, media, and culture, including The Boxing Film: A Cultural and Transmedia History.

Vogan applied the "Page 99 Test" to his new book, LeRoy Neiman: The Life of America’s Most Beloved and Belittled Artist, and reported the following:

My book passes the Page 99 Test to a certain extent. Page 99 sits in the middle of chapter five, which focuses on LeRoy Neiman’s life in Chicago after he graduated from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago but before he became associated with Hugh Hefner and Playboy magazine, which provided the main launching pad for his career as a working artist. At this time, Neiman was experimenting with different styles and trying to find his voice as an artist. He became taken by Chicago’s night life and urban scene. Neiman noticed how this milieu seemed to illustrate some of the arguments of emerging popular sociological works like The Lonely Crowd (1950) and People of Plenty (1954). He began to depict this decadent world of conspicuous consumption with dark-tinted paintings like Cigarette Girl, which offered subtle critiques of the class dynamics, gender inequities, and booze-soaked superficialities marking these spaces.

These critical commentaries on urban culture contrast the colorful and commercial work that eventually made Neiman rich and famous. But they demonstrate an awareness of power and social class that was important to the working-class artist and never actually left his work—even after he started to paint exclusive golf courses, glitzy celebrities, and tony restaurants.

Learn more about LeRoy Neiman at the University of Chicago Press website.

--Marshal Zeringue