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| How to Read Erotic Art By Flavio Febbraro and Alexandra Wetzel © Abrams Books, 2011 Click here to purchase from Amazon.com |
From the Venus of Willendorf's voluminous naked body to the ambiguous sexual traits of Louise Bourgeois's sewn soft sculptures, How to Read Erotic Art presents 220 illustrations of beauty, love, lust and sex through the ages. The end of antiquity and rise of Christianity marked a clear dividing line in Western art's depiction of sex. Portrayal of the seemingly uninhibited lustiness of the ancients disappears in the west, while Indian art, on the other hand, more than fills the gap.
Most of the erotic images since the Middle Ages were directed at and interpreted by the male gaze, hence the preponderance of female nudes and male artists. I counted only seven women of the 200+ artists represented, five of whom were from the 20th century.
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| Hans Baldung Grien, Three Witches, 1514. Chiaroscuro print on paper, 30.9 x 20.9 cm., Vienna, Graphische Sammlung Albertina |
A 530 BC frieze from a tomb in the Etruscan city of Tarquinia, The Tomb of the Bulls, shows two men engaged in an act of sodomy while a bull, head lowered, seems about to charge.
A beautiful marble from the second century, Sleeping Hermaphrodite, a Roman copy of an earlier Greek sculpture, shows what appears to be a voluptuous young woman stretched out on a bed. Closer inspection reveals that this figure, besides breasts and female curves, also has male genitalia.
Homo-erotic and lesbian scenes, such as Thomas Eakins's Swimming, showing naked young men in an idyllic landscape and Toulouse-Lautrec's The Kiss, depicting two women on a bed locked in an embrace are included.
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| The Warren Cup, AD 5-15. Silver Skyphos, 11cm (h.). London, British Museum |
Numerous close-up details from the main images reveal a wealth interesting information. An enchanting oil painting from 1470, The Spell of Love, is accompanied by a detail that shows an otherwise naked witch wearing only poulaines, extremely long-toed pointed (and may I say, downright kinky) sandals worn by both men and women of the era. Another detail shows a drawing by Picasso in which a woman's menstrual blood has turned the water in the bidet red. A colored Japanese woodcut print shows a woman using a large dildo attached to her heel.
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| Katsushika Hokusai, Dream of the Fisherman's Wife, 1814, woodcut from Kinoe no komatsu (Young Pines), 31.5 x 147 cm., London, British Library |
The lush illustrations together with the texts depicting androgeny, homo-erotica, lesbian love, heterosexuals, hermaphrodites, prostitutes, witches, rape, seduction, bacchanalia, orgies, sacred and profane love, and more, make How to Read Erotic Art an informative, fun, and sexy addition to any collection.
Click here to buy from Amazon.com
Upcoming at Offramp Gallery
June 24 - August 5, 2012
Lou Beach: Stories & Pictures
Closing Reception, Reading & Book Signing: Sunday, August 5,
2-5pm
In the
Garden
June 24 - August 5, 2012
