Fetish art

Fetish art is art that depicts people in fetishistic situations such as bondage, BDSM, transvestism, domination/submission scenarios etc. -- sometimes in combination.

Many of the 'classic' 1940s, 1950s and 1960s era fetish artists such as Eric Stanton and Gene Bilbrew began their careers at Irving Klaw's Movie Star News company (later Nutrix) creating drawings for episodic illustrated bondage stories.

In 1954 fetish artist John Coutts (aka John Willie) founded Bizarre magazine. Bizarre was published in London and widely distributed in the U.S., and was the inspiration for a number of new fetish magazines such as Bizarre Life. In 1957 English engineer John Sutcliffe founded Atomage magazine, which featured images of the rubber clothing he had made. Sutcliffe's work would inspire Dianna Rigg's leather catsuit-wearing character in The Avengers, a TV show that, "opened the floodgates for fetish-SM images".

In the 1970s and 1980s, fetish artists like Robert Bishop were published extensively in bondage magazines. In recent years, the annual SIGNY awards have been awarded to the bondage artists voted the best of that year.