Beeke and friends creating the nude alphabet.
Back in 1970 the Dutch graphic designer Anthon Beeke created an all nude alphabet. The letter forms were made up entirely of nubile young women curled and intermingled to create the letterforms.
The project was photographed by Geert Kooiman and the whole thing was turned into a small square format book. If you can get hold of a copy today it will set you back quite a bit of money.
Beeke's 1970 original.
Beecroft's 2011 version.
In 2011 artist Vanessa Beecroft used exactly the same idea for Louis Vuitton. On seeing it Beeke protested, Louis Vuitton said that it was not aware of an infringement. This led to a legal case mounted by Beeke and eventually a settlement was made in his favour.
But as with most design cases, someone in the past has always got there before. This is an erotic nude alphabet from the Soviet Union produced in 1931 by the sculptor and artist Sergei Merkurov.
Back in the 1960’s and 70’s women were overtly objectified as a matter of course. Examples can be found in an earlier post of mine, Naked graphics here.