[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJ2t0et8wWc]
“Ladies and gentlemen, you are about to see scenes from the most unusual picture of all time. We urgently recommend if you have a heart condition, or if you are with a young and impressionable child, that you leave this auditorium.” –trailer for Blood Feast
Blood Feast, a 1963 film directed by Herschell Gordon Lewis, is an American exploitation film often considered the first “gore” or splatter film.
After ending a brief survey of medieval erotica, I’ve come upon Renaissance erotica, where I must tell you of Venus and Nini.
Sleeping Venus (c. 1510) Giorgione
Venus of Urbino (1538) by Titian
Venus and Nini are two terms of art to denote the female nude, the first is divine, the second is a mere mortal. They are illustrated here by the Venus (Giorgione) vs. Venus of Urbino (1538) by Titian.
My most astonishing find was the 16th century Testa di cazzi, which reminded me of the 18th century anonymous caricature of the Cardinal Armand de Rohan-Soubise[1].
Testa di cazzi by Francisco Urbini
The works shown are icons of erotic art #49, #50, #51 and #52.
RIP Barry Beckett (1943 – 2009)
[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RHsDa9_HSlA]
Barry Beckett (February 4, 1943 – June 10, 2009) born in Birmingham, Alabama was a keyboardist who worked as a session musician with several notable artists on their studio albums. He was also a record producer.
He was involved in the “Muscle Shoals Sound”, being a member of the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section, and in 1969, one of the founders of the Muscle Shoals Sound Studio.
Lynyrd Skynyrd famously mentions the Muscle Shoals sound in “Sweet Home Alabama“[1]:
“Now Muscle Shoals has got the Swampers;
And they’ve been known to pick a song or two.
Lord they get me off so much.
They pick me up when I’m feeling blue
Now how about you?”
RIP Huey Long
[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvwfLe6sLis]
Huey Long (April 25, 1904 – June 10, 2009) was an African American singer and musician and the last living member of the Ink Spots.
[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_SZHMySBX_A]
The Ink Spots were a popular African American vocal group that helped define the musical genre that led to rhythm & blues and rock and roll, and the subgenre doo-wop. They and the Mills Brothers, another black vocal group of the 1930s and 1940s, gained much acceptance in the white community. They are known for such songs as “If I Didn’t Care“[1] and “Don’t Get Around Much Anymore“[2].
[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5kx6-raGX6U]
[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fi_z7rvASQg]
From Lialeh.
Bernard Purdie turns 70 today. He is best-known in rare groove circles for his “Funky Donkey[1],” collected on Last Night a DJ Saved my Life (1999), played on Gabor Szabo‘s “Jazz Raga” and did the soundtrack for the blaxploitation flick Lialeh[2].
The Origin of the World (1866) by Gustave Courbet
Le Sommeil (1866) by Gustave Courbet
Gustave Courbet (1819 – 1877) was a French painter who led the Realist movement in 19th-century French painting, best-known today paintings The Origin of the World, The Stonebreakers and Burial at Ornans.
He was one of the firsts to criticize Academic art and denounce the use of pretexts for depicting certain subjects when he said that:
“I have studied the art of the masters and the art of the moderns, avoiding any preconceived system and without prejudice. I have no more wanted to imitate the former than to copy the latter; nor have I thought of achieving the idle aim of ‘art for art’s sake.’ No! I have simply wanted to draw from a thorough knowledge of tradition the reasoned and free sense of my own individuality. To know in order to do: such has been my thought. To be able to translate the customs, ideas, and appearance of my time as I see them — in a word, to create a living art — this has been my aim.” Gustave Courbet, preface to World’s Fair catalogue, 1855.
The Origin of the World is IoEA #47 and Le Sommeil IoEA #48.
Hell detail from Giotto‘s Last Judgement
As Peter Webb notes in his excellent The Erotic Arts, eroticism is rare in the art of the Early Christian period and the Middle Ages. Pagan monuments were often overtly sexual, but Christian art shunned the world of physical love. Christianity was a non-sexual religion (Virgin birth of Jesus, Saint Paul advocating clerical celibacy).
Mooning gargoyle, Frieburg, GER, photographed by macg.stiegler on 4/9/2004.
It was an era of sexual repression, but there are exceptions of course. There were elegiac comedies such as Lidia, erotic folklore such as the fabliaux, seductive enchantresses such as the Morgan le Fay, succubi and incubi, sexual church gargoyle ornamentations and Sheela na Gigs and sexual misericords.
The Christian repression of sexuality led to the depiction of erotic horrors in various frescos such as Giotto‘s Last Judgement.
See also medieval, history of erotica, Christianity and sexual morality, Sexuality in Christian demonology and De Daemonialitate et Incubis et Succubis.
The mooning gargoyle of Frieberg is Icon of Erotic Art #46.
Introducing Histoiredeloeil
from that blog
Histoiredeloeil[1] is a Francophone culture blog which takes its name from French erotomaniac Georges Bataille‘s novel Histoire de l’oeil .
As of June 2009 it was connected to A La Piscine, Absinthe, Africa & Omega, Alainfinkielkrautrock, Alex Gross, Andrei Tarkovsky, Anthrolology, Antonin Artaud, Arthur Ignatowski, Arthur Schopenhauer, Asian Drillpop, Au Carrefour Etrange, Aubrey Beardsley, Audrey Kawasaki, Blonde Zombies, Cambodian Rock, Cinemas D’asie Et D’ailleurs, Cult Sirens, Dada, Dan Hillier, Dario Argento, David Lynch, Deadlicious, Debord Cineaste, Demeure Du Chaos, Demoralys, Dengue Fever, Diane Arbus, Dream Anatomy, E-L-I-S-E, Elli + Jacno, Ennio Morricone, Ernst Haeckel, Erwin Olaf, Espira, Felicien Rops, Florent Deloison, Food Curiosa, Francis Bacon, Fumeur, H.R.Giger, Hans Bellmer, Helnwein, Hi Fructose, Impur, Jan Saudek, Jared Joslin, J-J Perrey, Jpop Trash, Junko Mizuno, Kraftwerk, La Soucoupe, Laura Brink, Laurie Lipton, Le 3eme Oeil, Le Palace, Leiji Matsumoto, Les 400 Culs, L’etrange Festival, Mamie Van Doren Show, Margo Guryan, Mark Ryden, Martin Monestier, Martin Parr, Matt Groller, Meiko Kaji, Mondo Bizzarro, Moondog, Oculart, Old Orient Museum, Opium Museum, Our Body, Paco Camino, Patricia Piccinini, Pierre Molinier, Plaid Stallions, Pop Cards, Puppet Mastaz, Ray Caesar, Retro Atelier, Retro Zone, Ron Mueck, Ron Winter, Rotten Clinic, Scans Cinema, S.F.,…, Schwarz-Weiss, Sebastien Tellier, Sexy People, Silent Hill, Sixties Posters, Square America, Stanley Kubrick, Suehiro Maruo, Suzanne G., Telex, Terry Rodgers, Thanatos, The Hot Spot, The Marquis Von Bayros, The Prisoner, Title Screens, Ubu Web, Vania Zouravliov, Wendy Carlos, William Blake and Wrong Side Of The Art.
If you want to check the connected blogs and sites, follow [1]. Website without artandpop profile are encouraged to make one.
Yesterday, Hugh Hopper, British progressive rock and jazz fusion bassist and composer (Soft Machine) died at age 64. He was a prominent member of the Canterbury scene, as a member of Soft Machine and various other related bands. The Soft Machine was a pioneering English psychedelic band from Canterbury, named after the book The Soft Machine by William S. Burroughs.
Hopper’s role with Soft Machine was initially as the group’s road manager, but he already composed for their first album The Soft Machine and played bass on one of its tracks. In 1969 he was recruited to be the group’s bassist for their second album, Volume Two and, with Mike Ratledge and Robert Wyatt, he took part in a recording session for The Madcap Laughs of Syd Barrett. Hopper continued with the Softs, playing bass and contributing numerous compositions, until 1973. During his tenure the group evolved from a psychedelic pop group to an instrumental jazz-rock fusion band. In 1972, shortly before leaving Soft Machine, he recorded the first record under his own name, 1984 (named after George Orwell‘s novel). This was a decidedly non-commercial record featuring lengthy solo pieces using tape loops as well as shorter pieces with a group.
[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJtUwVRFjjM&]
In one of the myriad connections in (un)popular music, New York based No Wave music group Material led by Bill Laswell covered Hopper’s “Memories” on their One Down album. The song was written by Hopper just prior to his joining Soft Machine, but most well known from Daevid Allen‘s Banana Moon album which featured a lead vocal from Robert Wyatt.
[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3CZPNT9GSs]
The vocal here is performed by Whitney Houston in one of her first ever featured lead performances.
“Memories” is World Music Classic #329.
Still from Gradiva (C’est Gradiva qui vous appelle) by Alain Robbe-Grillet
The good people at Mondo Macabro[1] are releasing Gradiva (C’est Gradiva qui vous appelle), the last film by French master-erotomaniac Alain Robbe-Grillet, Robert Monell points out in a recent post [2].
C’est Gradiva qui vous appelle (2006) is a French language film by Alain Robbe-Grillet starring: James Wilby, Arielle Dombasle and Dany Verissimo. It premiered at the 2006 Venice film festival on September 8 and in French cinemas on May 9 of 2007.
The film, Grillet’s last, is a Franco-Belgian production loosely based on Gradiva: A Pompeiian Fancy by Wilhelm Jensen. The setting has been updated to modern times, at least, no earlier than the 1970s, based on vehicles and appliances seen in the film. It begins with an English art historian named John Locke is doing research in Morocco on the paintings and drawings that French artist Eugène Delacroix (1798-1863) produced when he spent time in that country (back then, a French colony) more than a century before. Locke spots a beautiful, mysterious blonde girl (Gradiva, of course) in flowing robes dashing through the back alleys of Marrakech, and becomes consumed with the need to track her down. Like most of Robbe-Grillet’s cinematic output, this film is highly surrealistic and also involves a surprisingly explicit amount of “sex slave” nudity and S&M, although it is a serious film and not just softcore fluff.
A Pompeiian Fancy is a novel by Wilhelm Jensen published by in German as Ein pompejanisches Phantasiestuck (Dresden and Leipzig: Carl Reissner) in 1903.
The story is about an archaeologist named Norbert Hanhold who holds a fascination for a woman depicted in a relief that he sees in the Naples National Archaeological Museum. Hanhold later dreams that he has been transported back in time to meet the girl, whose unusual gait captivates him as he imagines her walking on the stepping stones that cross the roads in Pompeii while the hot ashes subsume the city in 79 AD.
Delusion and Dream in Jensen’s Gradiva (1907) is an essay by Sigmund Freud that analyzes the novel Gradiva by Wilhelm Jensen from a psychoanalytical point of view.
After that, Gravida became a favourite of the Surrealists. Salvador Dalí used the name Gradiva as a nickname for his wife, Gala Dalí. He used the figure of Gradiva in a number of his paintings, including Gradiva encuentra las ruinas de Antropomorphos (Gradiva finds the ruins of Antropomorphos)[3]. The figure Gradiva was used in other Surrealist paintings as well. Gradiva (Metamorphosis of Gradiva)[4], 1939, by André Masson explores the sexual iconography of the character.
In 1937 the Surrealist wirter Andre Breton opened an art gallery on the Left Bank, 31 rue de Seine, christening it with the title: Gradiva. Marcel Duchamp designed it, giving its door the form of a double cast shadow.
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![[4]](http://users.erols.com/ries/images/AM_Gradiva.jpg){kind=link}