Category Archives: 1001 things to do before you die

Icons of erotic art #18

Via the newly discovered blog aileron comes the film The Lost Secret of Catherine the Great by Peter Woditsch and Sophie Schoukens.

I had first heard about the erotic furniture of Catherine the Great a couple of years ago and even traced the existence of the documentary by Woditsch, but had never actually seen the pieces of furniture that presumedly belonged to Catherine before the collection was destroyed during WWII. Catherine was a strong and independent woman (it helped that she was an empress) who throughout her long reign, took many lovers, often elevating them to high positions for as long as they held her interest, and then pensioning them off with large estates and gifts of serfs. She also cultivated Voltaire, Diderot and D’Alembert — all French philosophes encyclopedists who later cemented her reputation in their writings.

Note: In the erotic furniture category belong art works such as Chair, Table and Hat Stand by Allen Jones and Les Krims‘s Heavy Feminist with Wedding Cake [1] (1970).

Previous entries in Icons of Erotic Art here, and in a Wiki format here.

Icons of erotic art #17

Sensuality (1891) – Franz von Stuck

Although a mediocre painter at best and deservedly one of the minor figures in European fin de siècle Symbolism, there are two paintings by Franz Von Stuck that I like: Salome, which I “exhibited” here, and Sensuality (pictured above) . In Sensuality, the image of the serpent as phallus is left in little doubt and shows an enormous python-like creature passing between the legs of a nude woman. The serpent’s head rests on the woman’s right shoulder; both the serpent and the woman gaze at the viewer. There are obvious connections to the tentacle eroticism trope.

Previous entries in Icons of Erotic Art here, and in a Wiki format here.

World music classics #23

In 1994 I was crazy about the “Wilmot” track (see clip below) by Andrew Weatherall‘s Sabres of Paradise project. I had since lost the record but the mesmerizing horns kept spooking through my head over the years.

Last week, I am listening with my children to a commercial radio station and I hear a track by Shantel ^Youtube, a Balkan artist in a “techno” remix. I recognize the mesmerizing horns.

Today, I am making my 1980s music page and re-discover the composition by The Sabres of Paradise, find its Youtube clip ^Youtube and discover that the original version of the horns dates back to 1931, is called “Black But Sweet”, and is composed by calypso artist Wilmoth Houdini.

Another case closed in the history of cultural appropriation in western music.

World cinema classics #38 by Nurse Myra

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2XjH6TZkQg]

Rain (2001) – Christine Jeffs

It is my sincerest pleasure to announce the first guest contribution for Jahsonic’s World Cinema Classics category. Could it be any more befitting that today’s classic should be contributed by this blog’s liveliest commentator – a cultural omnivore like myself: Nurse Myra of the Gimcrack Hospital (PG)? Over the past few months, I have discovered her as a lady of seemingly impeccable taste, acute powers of perception and a huge stash of humor. She chose the New Zealand film Rain, directed by director Christine Jeffs released in 2001.

Nurse Myra:

“Rain deals with a very young girl observing problems in adult relationships at the same time as experiencing sexual awareness and the power that brings. The young actors are particularly good and the depiction of a new Zealand bach* holiday is perfect.

*A NZ holiday cabin was/is called a bach (pronounced batch). They were usually quite rudimentary and used to be very cheap to buy. Most of them are near the sea and prices would have skyrocketed by now.”

Previous “World Cinema Classics” and in the Wiki format here.

World music classics #22

Funky Nassau, The Compass Point Story 1980 - 1986

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L762HQ-ha7I&]

“Funky Nassau” (1971) Beginning of the End

“Funky Nassau” was a proto-disco composition released in 1971 by Bahamian group The Beginning of the End.

“Funky Nassau” is now also the title of a music compilation of Compass Point Studios recordings by Talking Heads, Tom Tom Club and Grace Jones, as well as lesser known compositions from the fringes of rock, soul, and dance music. The compilation will be released on March 11, 2008 by Strut Records.

World cinema classics #37

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6WmEoMY2Lo]

The Hitcher (1986) – Robert Harmon

This film introduced me to Jennifer Jason Leigh, it was love at first sight. In one particular scene in The Hitcher Leigh is kidnapped by the villain Rutger Hauer, who ties her between a Mack truck and its trailer, threatening to tear her in half.

In the film, she does not survive, in real life, it is Jennifer’s 46th birthday. Congratulations, you are one of my favorite living actresses and I enjoyed your recent parts in In the Cut and The Machinist.

Previous “World Cinema Classics” and in the Wiki format here.

World cinema classics #36

I agree “to meet Mr Neville in private and to comply with his requests concerning his pleasure with me.”

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KlEo563RJZI]

The Draughtsman’s Contract (1982) – Peter Greenaway

The Draughtsman’s Contract is a 1982 British film written and directed by Peter Greenaway. The score was by Michael Nyman and borrows extensively from Henry Purcell, forming a substantial attraction of the film. It was most recently re-used in Winterbottom’s A Cock and Bull Story.

Previous “World Cinema Classics” and in the Wiki format here.

Icons of erotic art #16

Frontispiece by Fernand Khnopff for Joséphin Péladan’s Istar (1888)

Istar is a novel by Joséphin Péladan first published in 1888 with a frontispiece by Fernand Khnopff, depicting a woman, head thrown back in ecstasy and completely devoid of surrounding except for a phallic tentacled plant that grows toward her pubic area.

Eroticism 4/5, because of its “his hands were all over me” thematics first celebrated in icons #12 and 13.

Previous entries in Icons of Erotic Art here, and in a Wiki format here.

World cinema classics #35

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMI-iQdHJkE&]

Knife in the Water (1962) – Roman Polański

Knife in the Water is a 1962 film directed by Roman Polański. It features only three characters and deals with rivalry and sexual tension. Polanski would return to those themes in the 1966 film Cul-de-sac.

Previous “World Cinema Classics” and in the Wiki format here.

Icons of erotic art #13, 14 and 15

Grand bath at Bursa (1885) by Jean-Léon Gérôme

The Turkish Bath (1862) – Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres

In the Tepidarium (1881) by Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema

I quote from my text on Ingres’s Turkish Bath, but the validity is for all three paintings:

When Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, director of the French Académie de peinture painted a highly-colored vision of a turkish bath, he made his eroticized Orient publicly acceptable by his diffuse generalizing of the female forms, who might all have been of the same model. If his painting had simply been retitled “In a Paris Brothel,” it would have been far less acceptable. Sensuality was seen as acceptable in the exotic Orient.

Most of my renewed interest in these painting has been thinking about books such as the Pre-Victorian British erotic literature epistolary novel The Lustful Turk and reading Turkish author Bedri Baykam’s pamphletish but nonetheless thought provoking history of modern art Monkeys’ Right to Paint , which contends that modern art (he means modernist art) is largely influenced by non-Western arts. Baykam takes the 1984 MoMA exhibition Primitivism in 20th Century Art as a starting point for his rant against the art establishment.