Poster illustration and design: John Van Hamersveld.

Leonard Koren admits in his book that when he launched Wet in Venice Beach in 1976 he had “no skills in writing, editing, designing, art directing, advertising sales, publishing or business generally.” The first one, printed at Peace Press Graphics, “looked an awful lot like a newsletter.” After a few more issues he met Thomas Ingalls. “Tom had pale white skin, a long, straight nose, and limp blond hair parted rakishly on the side. He was exactly how I imagined a graphic designer might look.”

For the next six months or so, Tom tutored Leonard on layouts and paste-ups and connected him with photographers, illustrators, and designers who contributed to the magazine in exchange for freedom from commercial restraints. “In Wet they were able to express their bolder, brasher weirder visions – unfettered. April Greiman was one of those creators. She and Tom were romantically involved but on the verge of breaking up. In calmer times they had both agreed to assemble Wet issue number six. It was to be the first time someone other than me designed the magazine. When I brought in the text and visuals, April and Tom were screaming at each other. Nervously I sat around waiting, wondering if I had made the right decision.”

As it progressed, each issue became an innovative, off-the-grid visual experience. Graphic sensibilities varied from punk to pre-New Wave to proto-PostMod. Leonard recently told me, “I wouldn’t know where to begin about the various art directors who’ve worked for Wet.”

Leonard Koren signing books last month at L.A.'s La Luz de Jesus Gallery. Photo: M. Dooley.

The magazine lasted 34 issues before it went under in 1981. While afloat it covered the likes of David Hockney, David Byrne, David Lee Roth, David Lynch, Dick Dale, Debbie Harry, Chrissie Hynde, Sissy Spacek, Tim Leary, Merle Haggard, Mick Jagger, Henry Darger, Henry Miller, Helmut Newton, and on and on.

Those features, and a full survey of the magazine’s groundbreaking graphics, will have to wait for their own anthologies. Rather than an immersion, “Making Wet” is mostly a frothy, self-indulgent soak, with snapshots and drawings of men, women, and children in various stages of undress, cavorting and luxuriating in all manner of showers, spas, and tubs. There’s also a ten-page comic strip review of bath soaps by a pre-”Simpsons” Matt Groening, work by Gary Panter and Peter Shire, and some striking covers, including the ones below. So take a dip.

#7. Photo: Raul Vega. Design: April Greiman and Tom Ingalls. Art direction: Leonard Koren.

#9. Photo: Matthew Rolston. Design and art direction: Tom Ingalls.

#12. Illustration: Lynn Robb. Art direction: Leonard Koren.

#13. Photo: Jules Bates. Design and art direction: Elizabeth Freeman, Leonard Koren, and Margaret Wynn.

#14. Photo: Herb Ritts. Design and art direction: Leonard Koren.

#19. Photo: Larry Williams. Design and art direction: Roy Gyongy and Larry Williams.

#28. Photo illustration and design: Taki Ono and Lisa Powers. Art direction: Leonard Koren.

#30. Collage and design: Bob Zoell. Art direction: Leonard Koren.

#33. Illustration and design: Teruhiko Yumura. Art direction: Leonard Koren.

Copyright F+W Media Inc. 2012.

Salon is proud to feature content from Imprint, the fastest-growing design community on the web. Brought to you by Print magazine, America’s oldest and most trusted design voice, Imprint features some of the biggest names in the industry covering visual culture from every angle. Imprint advances and expands the design conversation, providing fresh daily content to the community (and now to salon.com!), sparking conversation, competition, criticism, and passion among its members.

Our conversation picks up with Joan describing her passion for cosmetics ephemera from the 1920s and 1930s.

Joan Renner: About twenty years ago I began to collect vintage face powder compacts. The compacts nicely dovetailed with my interest in classic film, fashion, and the history of women. A few years after purchasing my first compact – a souvenir from the 1939 New York World’s Fair with that exquisite trylon and perisphere design – I was searching an online auction site and a few commercial face powder boxes popped up along with the compacts. I was struck by the beautiful graphics. In subsequent searches I found that there were boxes in a dizzying array of designs. I was hooked. My extensive collection of over 500 pieces includes commercial face powder boxes, hair net packages, bobby pin cards, and print ads circa 1900-1950.

I love all of the eras that I collect, but my favorite designs were created during the Depression. Cosmetics companies were competing for every rare dollar of a woman’s disposable income. The inspired designs of cosmetics packaging in the 1930s demonstrates how fierce the competition was. Cosmetics ephemera from that era, such as the Sta-Rite hair pin card, reflected the continuing interest in Art Deco, and the designs mirror the glamorous images of popular Hollywood actresses from that period.

It’s unfortunate that most of the talented artists who created the graphics for cosmetics ephemera are uncredited. One of the rare instances in which the artist was named was during the 1920s, when Rene Lalique created the elegant powder puff motif which graces Coty face powder boxes to this day.

Another instance in which the artist was identified was during the early 1940s, in an ad campaign for Jergens face powder. The artist was Alberto Vargas, who is best known for his iconic pin-ups for Esquire magazine.

The Jergens face powder box and accompanying ad speak volumes about the concerns of women during wartime. The women wanted to be sexy and desirable without sacrificing their girl-next-door innocence – all of this while supporting the war effort!

In my blog, Vintage Powder Room, I draw inspiration from my collection or from articles that reveal something to me about cosmetics. I combined my twin passions of historic crime and vintage cosmetics after reading a 1947 Los Angeles Times interview with Linda Rohr, one of Elizabeth Short’s former roommates. The interview inspired me to develop a personality profile of Short based upon her choice of makeup.

Rather than following the post-war vogue for a natural looking makeup, Elizabeth Short used a heavy hand to create a dramatic contrast between her complexion and her hair color. If anything, her look leaned more towards Goth girl than glamour girl.

Max Factor photo courtesy LAPL.

Elizabeth Short

Linda Rohr worked in the Rouge Room at Max Factor, so she was well acquainted with makeup application and current trends. Rohr stated in an interview that she was fascinated with the way in which Short applied her makeup, and said this about her former roommate: “She was always going out and she loved to prowl the boulevard. She had pretty blue eyes but sometimes overdid with makeup an inch thick. She dyed her brown hair black, and then red again.”

It occurred to me that Short, who was described by her acquaintances as difficult to know, was creating a mask with her makeup. She may have been subconsciously seeking a way to keep people at arm’s length. When a woman wears makeup it may be to correct flaws she believes she has, or to enhance her best features, but it’s invariably a way for her to become the person she wants to be when she’s out in public. Makeup always says something about the wearer. It’s my contention that Elizabeth Short created the character she would become in death, The Black Dahlia.

I believe that collecting vintage cosmetics ephemera and uncovering crimes in historic Los Angeles are valid undertakings for a social historian. Crimes and cosmetics; each may reveal a fundamental truth about human nature in the context of a place and time.

Michael Dooley: What future criminal activities do you have planned?

Nothing as daring as a daylight bank robbery, that’s for sure! I’m strictly an armchair felon, which means that I’ll continue to research, write, and lecture about historic Los Angeles crime. This year I plan to finish my true crime book, as well as complete a book project with the Los Angeles Police Museum.

The work that I do at the museum is challenging and gratifying. My project, the archiving of Police Daily Bulletins, is phenomenal. I’ll also be involved in future exhibits that are in the queue at the museum.

I’ll give a lecture at the central branch of the Los Angeles Public Library in October. I have several more historic crime themed lectures churning around in my brain; I never tire of introducing Angelenos to the sordid underbelly of their city.

Most weekends you’ll find me riding shotgun – naturally – on the Esotouric crime bus. We have a “Real Black Dahlia” tour coming up on April 14th [tomorrow].

My collection of vintage cosmetics ephemera continues to be the inspiration for my blog, Vintage Powder Room. I also maintain a VPR page on Facebook.

In my free time I’ll scour flea markets, estate sales, and online sources to add to my collection of vintage cosmetics ephemera.

Photos © Joan Renner.

Copyright F+W Media Inc. 2012.

Salon is proud to feature content from Imprint, the fastest-growing design community on the web. Brought to you by Print magazine, America’s oldest and most trusted design voice, Imprint features some of the biggest names in the industry covering visual culture from every angle. Imprint advances and expands the design conversation, providing fresh daily content to the community (and now to salon.com!), sparking conversation, competition, criticism, and passion among its members.

Never mind the Shepard Fairey criminal contempt conviction, here’s Jamie Reid. The designer who branded the Sex Pistols so indelibly by ripping across Her Majesty’s face now has his first solo West Coast exhibition at Shepard’s Subliminal Projects Gallery.

Shepard was still living in San Diego when we first met in 1999 in Silver Lake, which I described in my subsequent Print magazine feature story as “a hip but seedy neighborhood that separates Hollywood from downtown Los Angeles.” That area has since become his studio and gallery’s base of operation.

And “Ragged Kingdom” is a retrospective of Jamie’s work from the 1970s up to now. He’s still politically involved, as evidenced by his graphics. And his paintings reflect a new, spiritual side. His latest print collaborations with Shepard are also on display.

The show closes on April 14.

Never Mind The Bollocks (With Amendments), 1977. Lithographic proof print with overlay and collage, 14 ½ x 26 5/8 inches, image © Jamie Reid and courtesy Isis Gallery.

Pretty Vacant 1977. Proof bromide print (framed), 10 x 7 3/4 inches, image © Jamie Reid and courtesy Isis Gallery.

Viciousburger 1979. Collage with oil paint on photographic print , signed, 11 1/2 x 16 1/8 inches, image © Jamie Reid and courtesy Isis Gallery.

Vicious Burger / Sid Vicious Action Man (Some Product), 1979. Collage, 11 1/2 x 16 3/8 inches, image © Jamie Reid and courtesy Isis Gallery.

Anarchy is the Key, 1979. Color photoprint collage on paper mounted on card, 9 ¼ x 7 ¾ inches, image © Jamie Reid and courtesy Isis Gallery.

Nice Work by Nice Lady, 1977. Found newsprint, 210mm x 310mm, 8 ¼ x 12 ¼ inches, image © Jamie Reid and courtesy Isis Gallery.

Liberty (Red), 2011. Edition 8/10, inkjet base print on 310 gsm Hahnemuhle ‘German Etching’ paper with acrylic screen print additions. 44 x 32 1/2 inches. Out of the Dross (Blue), 2011. Edition 2/10, silkscreen on Somerset radiant white velvet 330gsm with unique over screening. 44 x 28 1/4 inches. Both images signed, numbered, and titled by the artist, © Jamie Reid and courtesy of Paul Stolper Gallery, London.

Nature Still Draws A Crowd, 1975. Lithographic print, 14 x 10 7/8 inches, image © Jamie Reid and courtesy Isis Gallery.

Installation and opening night photos below © and courtesy Alan Shaffer.

Copyright F+W Media Inc. 2012.

Salon is proud to feature content from Imprint, the fastest-growing design community on the web. Brought to you by Print magazine, America’s oldest and most trusted design voice, Imprint features some of the biggest names in the industry covering visual culture from every angle. Imprint advances and expands the design conversation, providing fresh daily content to the community (and now to salon.com!), sparking conversation, competition, criticism, and passion among its members.

And then the lights go out.

After the movie, I do a little gumshoe work on this Renner. She works out of a site she calls the Vintage Powder Room, devoted to “history, women and art.” She lectures around town regularly, and has even been on the small screen, in a film noir segment for the Turner Classic Movies series “Film Fanatics” and in an episode of the ID Discovery Channel’s “Deadly Women” series.

On weekends she’s a tour guide for Estotouric, and her most popular tour is “The Real Black Dahlia.” It covers the story of Elizabeth Short, who was just another babe who hit Tinsel Town with pipe dreams of stardom until her bisected and mutilated body was found on a vacant lot in Leimert Park in 1947. She was only 22. Her murder caused a media frenzy, and reporters gave her the monicker “Black Dahlia.” The coppers never nailed the perp, and books and films – and bus tours – about Short have kept the story alive over the decades.

Photo courtesy of LAPL.

Renner also helped put together an exhibit about the investigation that just opened at the Los Angeles Police Museum over in Highland Park. It’s sponsored by crime fiction’s James Ellroy, who penned “The Black Dahlia” in 1987. The top dirt from large piles of police files are displayed in vitrines: never before seen photos, news clippings, police memorabilia, and various other artifacts. The show is up through June 16th.

So I decide to get Renner on the horn for the full lowdown.

Clara Phillips a.k.a. Tiger Girl, Hammer Murderess. Photo courtesy of LAPL.

Joan Renner: I’m a social historian with an interest in the rich crime history of Los Angeles, circa 1910-1960, so I poke around in libraries and tomb-like government buildings to uncover Los Angeles’ criminal past. L.A.’s felons are as flamboyant and unhinged as the city itself.

For example, in the early 1930s there was the case of a woman who, for years, kept her lover concealed in the attic of the home she shared with her clueless husband. When the husband was murdered, the woman and her “Bat Man” lover were front page news for weeks.

Robert James. Photo courtesy of LAPL.

One of the most diabolical cases I’ve ever presented in a lecture was the 1936 slaying of Mary James by her husband Robert. A homicidal husband isn’t news, but what made this case interesting was Robert’s weapons of choice, two venomous rattlesnakes named Lethal and Lightning. When the snake’s poison didn’t kill Mary quickly enough to suit him, Robert dragged the poor woman into a bathtub and drowned her. He was the last man to be hanged by the state of California.

And I’m currently researching a book on – what else? – true crime in Los Angeles. I’m also involved in a book project with the Police Museum that will use crime scene photos from the 1930s through the 1950s.

LAPD Chief James Edgar "Two Gun" Davis. Photo courtesy of LAPL.

Michael Dooley: What led you to your life of crime history?

I first became interested in crime as a kid in Chicago which, given the city’s reputation, makes sense, right? My parents subscribed to the Chicago Tribune, and I would read the funnies and the crime coverage. When I was eight years old I read about the discovery of the body of a boy, about my age, in a sewer drain. He’d been murdered. That story was scarier to me than any imagined monster hiding under my bed. I followed the story trying to make sense of it, but there’s no way to make sense of child murder. My recollection is that the coverage ended with a report that the boy’s father had died of a broken heart. I imagined a heart literally breaking into pieces, and that made a profound impression on me.

Photo by Lucy Cook.

What’s been your role in “Elizabeth,” the L.A. Police Museum’s Black Dahlia exhibit?

For over two years I’ve been an archivist at the Police Museum. And I’ve been involved in all aspects of the Black Dahlia exhibit from the moment that the museum was given permission by Chief Charlie Beck to access files in the case.

The museum’s executive director and I pored over transcripts of suspect interviews, eliminated suspect reports, photographs, and crank letters. Out of the mass of material loaned to us by LAPD’s Robbery Homicide Division, we sought to create an exhibit that would not dwell on the horror of the crime, but would focus instead on the investigation undertaken by LAPD.

Robert "Red" Manley submitting to a polygraph. Photo courtesy of LAPL.

And what have you uncovered?

I’ve read the contemporaneous newspaper coverage of the case, and all of the books that purport to offer a solution to the murder. The newspaper coverage is illuminating, the books, not so much. I’m absolutely convinced that none of the authors of any of the books have solved the case.

Robert Manley. Photo courtesy of LAPL.

There is a mind-boggling amount of misinformation regarding Elizabeth Short’s case. The most common misconception is that she was last seen at the Biltmore Hotel. It’s true that she had been dropped off there by Robert “Red” Manley, the original suspect in the murder. However, once she’d convinced Manley to leave her, she walked a couple of blocks down Olive Street to a bar, The Crown Grille, and it was from that location that she vanished.

I combed the LAPD’s Black Dahlia case files hoping to find anything that would lead me to the identity of the killer, but skilled police detectives have been reviewing those same files for 65 years without success. I didn’t stand a chance.

I may not have solved Elizabeth Short’s murder, but while searching the files I discovered a celebrity suspect who, to my knowledge, has never before been publicly connected to the case, musician/activist Woody Guthrie! Guthrie had previously been rousted by the Feds for sending obscene material through the U.S. mail, and even though the material was nothing more than a few erotic letters he’d written to a woman he knew, it was enough to make him a suspect. He was quickly eliminated. He is, however, a part of the exhibit.

Elizabeth Short.

I’ve also developed a personality profile of Elizabeth Short based upon her choice of make-up, which was unique for her age and her time.

Max Factor testing make-up. Photo courtesy of LAPL.

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In part two of her story, Joan shares intimate details about her period cosmetics collection.

Unless otherwise noted, all photos of the Los Angeles Police Museum’s “Elizabeth” exhibit, below, are by Lucy Cook.

Photo by M. Dooley.

Photo by M. Dooley.

Copyright F+W Media Inc. 2012.

Salon is proud to feature content from Imprint, the fastest-growing design community on the web. Brought to you by Print magazine, America’s oldest and most trusted design voice, Imprint features some of the biggest names in the industry covering visual culture from every angle. Imprint advances and expands the design conversation, providing fresh daily content to the community (and now to salon.com!), sparking conversation, competition, criticism, and passion among its members.

Chryssa Romanos: Reportage, 1965. Collage on canvas, 65 x 55 cm. © Dimitris Tsoublekas.

The "Pop and Politics" panel: Allison Unruh, Kalliopi Minioudaki, Martin A. Berger, Nadja Rottner, Agata Jakubowska, Tom Williams, Hiroki Ikegami, Anthony E. Grudin. Photo by M. Dooley.

Michael Dooley: How did you select your panelists?

Allison Unruh: Well, we were really lucky to have a lot of great submissions come our way with a range of approaches and artists represented. We ended up deciding to limit the scope of the panel specifically to the 1960s, however. We wanted to engage with the decade that witnessed the historical formulation of pop. We were particularly excited with how the papers turned out, and feel really fortunate to include what we believe are some strong new critical voices in postwar art historical studies.

Kalliopi Minioudaki: We also thought that particular papers indicatively engaged diverse cultural scenes of pop, suggesting paths that still need to be taken. We had Hiroko Ikegami’s unpacking of the cross-cultural exchange that informs Japanese responses to Pop, as well as Jasper Johns’ pop in Japan. There was Agata Jakubowska’s enlightening of the meanings of pop iconography across the iron curtain in light of the work of Alina Szapocznikow and Roman Cieślewicz. And there was my discussion of the political aspects of Francophone Pop. There are, of course, so many more international contexts and practitioners that could be included.

AU: In terms of reevaluating some of the U.S.-based proponents of pop, Tom Williams examined how Claes Oldenburg responded through art to his experience being beaten while part of the protests at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, a really nuanced reading of this anomalous and activist moment in his career. Seth McCormick likewise brought another dimension to the table, taking on the issue of masculinity and mass subjectivity during the McCarthy era through the lens of Johns and Robert Rauschenberg. Meanwhile, Nadja Rottner’s contribution was really important to us in terms of bringing performance into the conversation, examining Oldenburg’s early performances that pointedly critiqued Cold War-era America.

KM: The papers gave us a great opportunity to cast a more inclusive look at pop and avoid its frequent critical understanding as painting – usually inflected by mechanical reproduction – by opening our discussion to other media. We also wanted to test facile understandings of its politics, as with Martin Berger’s questioning of the progressiveness of the politics of Andy Warhol’s “Race Riot” series. Moreover we wished to promote aspects that need further investigation, such as the role of class in Warhol’s embrace of pop culture, as masterfully manifested by Anthony Grudin.

Is 1960s pop art still relevant to our current cultural and political climate?

KM: Whether seen as the last realist language of modern life or as the first metalanguage, the legacy of pop art in contemporary art production is undeniable. It’s also contingent with the continuum of culture which seems to have been achieved in this advanced stage of the mass-media revolution and which Lawrence Alloway, pop’s christener and one of its chief supporters, saw as enabling the democratic potential of pop in postwar society. No matter how its manifestations are defined, and whatever old or new media are being used, contemporary art often engages with reality through its overwhelmingly mediated face in a way that harks back to the mediated semblance of classic pop.

Pop’s pedigrees, which comply with its popular, received definition as apolitical, persist and perhaps remain irrelevant to the contemporary political climate. But if we take into consideration, to suggest an example, the exposure of the complicity of consumerism and war, or third-world destitution, in the work of artists such as James Rosenquist and Chryssa Romanos, as critique of the fallacies of capitalist democracy, then we can unravel commentaries that seem timely under the current international crisis of capitalism and that resonate with contemporary political art.

AU: I would add that Pop’s multifaceted engagement with the issues of consumerism and mass communication makes it really relevant to the present day, where those elements of modern life are only magnified.

And who among today’s artists are creating works that relate to your “Pop and Politics” themes?

KM: I would not like to create new “neo-neo” or post-pop canons. A walk through art fairs, and a look at international contexts, offers a variety of better or lesser known artists who carry such a legacy. What I would like to say, however, is that several women artists today engage in diverse feminist dialogues with popular culture – whether personal or impersonal, humorous or cool, critical or affirmatively empowering and occasionally performative – in order to speak about issues that still matter to us as women. Such issues range from the exposure of the pitfalls of pop culture for women and the sexism of visual culture to the promulgation of female desire, while the strategies used to address them often redeem the pleasures of pop culture’s consumption through its empowering potential for women.

Unbeknownst to themselves – with few exceptions, such as the Polish Paulina Olowska, whose body politics often pay homage to Pauline Boty, with whom she was exceptionally familiar in Poland – most of these artists follow paths that were, in many senses, pioneered by women who intersected with Pop Art in the 1960s, such as Axell, Pauline Boty, Rosalyn Drexler, Jann Haworth, Chryssa Romanos, Marisol, Martha Rosler, Niki de Saint Phalle, Marjorie Strider, etc. Here I’m thinking of artists such as Tracey Emin, Tracey Moffatt, Laurie Simmons, Mariko Mori, Wanda Ewing and numerous others, but also neo-Pop foremothers such as Cindy Sherman, Barbara Kruger and Dara Birnbaum.

The strategic use of pop culture by younger women artists today seems to have been enabled by post-1970s feminist art, with its vocabulary often harking back to classic – men’s – pop due to the repression of women pop artists’ legacy by their marginalization. But it’s important to acknowledge the dialogue that their practices amount to.

AU: I’d just mention one more artist who comes to mind whose work might connect in another way to the intersection of pop and politics: Josephine Meckseper. Her work explores issues of power, consumption, and politics that relates in a way to a legacy of pop combined with other conceptual practices, strategically deploying certain codes of pop to critique capitalist excess.

Copyright F+W Media Inc. 2012.

Salon is proud to feature content from Imprint, the fastest-growing design community on the Web. Brought to you by Print magazine, America’s oldest and most trusted design voice, Imprint features some of the biggest names in the industry, covering visual culture from every angle. Imprint advances and expands the design conversation, providing fresh daily content to the community (and now to salon.com), sparking conversation, competition, criticism and passion among its members.