• Los Angeles Times, Friday, April 11, 2008 10 AM

From 1964 to 1974 and then from 1984 to the present, Italian tire company Pirelli has lifted the girlie calendar from its grimy origins on pegboards at the back of a garage to the level where famous models, actresses and other lovelies shot by the world's most famous fashion photographers are sent to a select group of luminaries. At one time or another, Prince Charles and the late John Lennon have been among the recipients.

Every few years, venerable art-book publisher Rizzoli compiles the calendars into ever-bigger volumes. The latest edition, "The Complete Pirelli Calendars," weighs 10.5 pounds and retails for $85. There's a case to be made for the Pirelli calendar as having its own niche among the best fashion and glamour photography of the last five decades.

Italian critic Edmondo Berselli, who contributes an essay to this latest collection of the Pirelli calendar, writes in an email that the calendar can be read as "the behavioral paradigm of our times: liberty, subjectivism, relativism, tolerance."

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