Category Archives: eroticism

Tony Duvert (1945 – 2008)

Tony Duvert, the most infamous French gay writer (similar enfant terrible Pierre Guyotat was hetero) since Jean Genet is dead, says the The Paper Man.

[Amazon.com]
[FR] [DE] [UK]

Tony Duvert (1945 – 2008) was a French writer. He was the winner of the Prix Médicis, author of When Jonathan Died and contributor to French gay journal Gai pied.

In 2007 an English translation by Bruce Benderson Good Sex Illustrated (Le bon sexe illustré) was released by Semiotext(e).

Dennis Cooper described him as “A writer criminally undertranslated and consequently barely known in the primarily English-speaking areas of the world…. Duvert is one of the more significant and idiosyncratic contemporary French fiction writers. He’s also one of the most mysterious.”

Softly from Paris

While completing my pages on Walerian Borowczyk, I came across the Série rose.

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XwHoKL0W_VY]

Trailer for the Série rose, alluding hidden and secret libraries, or, enfers, Giftschränke or remota.

Série rose: Les Chefs d’œuvre de la littérature érotique (literal English: pink series, the masterpieces of erotic literature) is a French television series of 28 episodes of 26 minutes each, produced by Pierre Grimblat and broadcast on French television channel FR3 from November 8 1986 to 1990.

The series consisted of adaptations of libertine fiction from the European literary canon, original authors included Marguerite of Navarre, Comte de Mirabeau, Nicolas Restif de La Bretonne, Anton Chekhov, Chaucer, Guy de Maupassant, Jean de La Fontaine, Théophile Gautier, Daniel Defoe and Aristophanes.

Directors included Belgian director Harry Kumel (Daughters of Darkness), French colleague Michel Boisrond (Cette sacrée gamine) and Polish director Walerian Borowczyk (The Beast). Harry Kumel‘s contributions were separately released as The Secrets Of Love: Three Rakish Tales. Walerian Borowczyk directed four episodes for the series: Almanach des adresses des demoiselles de Paris, Un traitement justifié, Le Lotus d’or, and L’Experte Halima.

Série rose was bought by German and South-American and American television where they were known as Erotisches zur Nacht or Softly from Paris (USA).

Most notable appearance is that of Pedro Almodóvar ensemble cast member Penélope Cruz.

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7dTd2gqijg]

Contact with a beast must not be kept secret at confession

Twenty three years ago, the French film The Beast premiered in France.

Sirpa Lane in
The Beast (La bête) (1975) – Walerian Borowczyk [Amazon.com] [UK]

La Bête (Eng: The Beast) is a 1975 film written and directed by Walerian Borowczyk, starring Sirpa Lane, based on Lokis, a story by Prosper Mérimée. The film (originally conceived in 1972 as a film on its own, but then in 1974 as the fifth story in Contes immoraux) belonged to his later work, which was seen by many as a decline in the director’s career after Dzieje grzechu, except in France, where it was hailed by nobrow critics such as Ado Kyrou.

Here is some shaky Youtube footage:

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RV0xScJuYXc]

The music consists of harpsichord pieces by Domenico Scarlatti.

Music in Borowczyk films usually draws from the high art canon of classical music, for example, he uses Mendelssohn in The Story of Sin, Handel in Goto, Island of Love and Domenico Scarlatti in La Bête.

Incidentally, the term “classical music” did not appear until the early 19th century, in an attempt to “canonize” the period from Johann Sebastian Bach to Beethoven as a golden age. The earliest reference to “classical music” recorded by the Oxford English Dictionary is from about 1836.

With regards to the title quote and the strange vocabulary of eroticism, Tim Lucas [1] gives the top 10 dialog lines from Massimo Dallamano‘s Venus in Furs (starring Laura Antonelli).

At ten is “I must resign myself to being normal.”

Audrey Vernon, gratuitous nudity and French culture

French eroticism and French culture

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KrLge_qkFw8]

Audrey Vernon at Canal plus Décalé strips nude

The work of Audrey Vernon as an announcer at French channel Canal plus Décalé is stupendous. She is the next big thing after Max Headroom. Above is the notorious announcement where she strips nude, sulkingly claiming that “nobody is watching anyway.” Phil Bloom [1] is her predecessor, this Dutch model showed her naked torso on national Dutch television in 1967.

Comparing Audrey Vernon to Max Headroom [3] reminds me of the eighties with kitsch such as the 1985 “Moments in Love“[4], both previous clips produced by Trevor Horn (more on him later). The eighties was also the time of Double Dutch [5] by McLaren (and btw, when was the similarly-styled “Freestyle“[6] by Bambaataa, a play on Kraftwerk‘s “Numbers“, produced?).

But I digress.

Back to French culture.

Le Roman populaire. Recherches en paralittérature (1975) by Marc Angenot

Above[6] is the elegant book cover to Marc Angenot‘s Le Roman populaire. Recherches en paralittérature, a 1975 work on paraliterature and popular fiction.

Excuse this hodgepodge of a post.

P. S. Click the footnoted numbers to watch.

Genre scenes, trompe-l’œils and occasional dashes of eroticism

La Toilette intime by Louis-Léopold Boilly

Passer_payez_detail1 by Louis-Léopold Boilly

Slurping_Oysters_1825 by Louis-Léopold Boilly

L'effet_du_mélodrame by Louis-Léopold Boilly

Via Suzanna of Wurzeltod [1] comes the work of French painter Léopold Boilly, whose work ranges from genre scenes to trompe-l’œils and occasional dashes of eroticism.

Before production of the Sade biopic Quills[2] began, costume designer Jacqueline West gave Kate Winslet a copy of Boilly’s “Woman Ironing”[3] to give her a feel for the character, which Winslet said greatly influenced her performance.

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

YouTube mashup of Quills (set to Nine Inch Nails “Closer“)

The sadly defunct arts blog Lemateurdart has one more Boilly [5] and Jahsonic previously on Quills[6][7].

Quills is WCC #59. Toilette intime[4] is IoEA #33.

Why this curious and debased love?

From Waloli, our reporter in Tokyo

Waloli: Today marks the 50th anniversary of the first American over-the-counter publication of Russian-born author Nabokov‘s Lolita. When Nabokov’s “dirty book” hit the streets of the USA, it sold 100,000 copies in three weeks, an immediate success that would allow the 60-year-old scholar and novelist the freedom to resign from teaching.

Pretty much everything about that book has been said, but I think many of you have not seen this interview conducted by Pierre Berton and Lionel Trilling for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation now at YouTube[1][2].

The interview was filmed on November 26, 1958 at The Rockefeller Center studios in New York City. It was Nabokov’s first television interview. The subject was Lolita, covering some of the questions addressed in Nabokov’s 1958 afterword. Most answers were read from index cards.

Pierre Berton:

“Let´s get out the more specific point: Why did you choose this rather odd, and, something that has never been done before, this curious and debased love?”

Nabokov:

“Well, on the whole, it flooded me all kinds of interesting possibilities I am not so much interested in the philosophy of the book, as I am in weaving the thing in a certain way, in those intergradation and interweavings of certain themes and subthemes, for instance the systematic line of Mr. Quilty, whom Humbert will kill, does kill …”

The Lolita or nymphet trope has since entered popular consciousness and never left it, especially in Japan, where it evolved into the Gothic Lolita. Most recently British art critic James Putnam curated “Viva Lolita” which featured work from Turkish artist Nazif Topçuoğlu [3]. Here[4] are three of Topçuoğlu’s photos at Wurzelstock [5].

The Lolita trope, in all its manifestations, from Balthus to Trevor Brown, is IoEA #32.

Thank you Waloli, back to the studio.

Happy birthday Luigi Colani

The earth is round, all the heavenly bodies are round; they all move on round or elliptical orbits. This same image of circular globe-shaped mini worlds orbiting around each other follows us right down to the microcosmos. We are even aroused by round forms in species propagation related eroticism. Why should I join the straying mass who want to make everything angular? I am going to pursue Galileo Galilei’s philosophy: my world is also round. — Luigi Colani.

[Amazon.com]
[FR] [DE] [UK]

There is one available now at Amazon.de, 69 EUR.

European designer Luigi Colani turns eighty today.

I can’t remember the first time Colani came upon my radar, but it must have been in the various design books I read in my twenties, this was in the 1985-1995 period. He – and his celebration of curvilinearity (one of the faultlines in 20th century art) – remain paramount in my design canon.

Modern and contemporary designers in this tradition include Friedensreich Hundertwasser, Isamu Noguchi, Carlo Mollino and Marc Newson.

Connecting keywords are non-Euclidean geometry, ferrocement, organic design. [I must look into this non-Euclidean geometry thing, some interesting connections are bound to appear]

Also of interest is the survey of Eric Hunting, ‘The Classic Rock Realm of Ferro-Cement’[1].

Around that same period I bought a monograph of Colani’s work, a special issue of Japanaese Car Styling magazine, #23. Personally, I prefer his non-car styling designs and the issue of Car Styling aforementioned features some rare works of eroticism (ceramics, photography, drawings) and sanitary ware by Villeroy and Boch.

The cover of that magazine is noticeable for its Böcklin typeface.

Previously on Jahsonic: Lost and found: biomorphism

Gratuitous nudity #8

Lest I be accused of too much theory, it is time for some gratuitous nudity, number 8 in our series[1].

Source: [Bxzzines]

This picture, taken from an unknown issue of Paris-Tabou, comes our way via Bxzzines [2], the blog on French obscure magazines.

This particular photo depicts a nude female embraced by a robot. The title is “L’amour en l’an 2000”, love in the year 2000. If we consider the robot as dressed, we can categorize this picture as belonging to the nude female/dressed male trope, should this notion to be far-fetched, it can still qualify to shed light on the sex and science fiction trope.

Paris Tabou was a French pin-up magazine published from September 1949 until 1953. Possibly taking its name from the Tabou Club, it published pin-up girls and stories by such authors as Boris Vian, who contributed L’Amour est aveugle, published in its first issue in 1949). Illustrators included the Italian Gino Boccasile.

Do not be surprised if it turns up at the excellent blog PonyXpress [3], the author of which has just favorited it at my Flickr stream[4].

Humid reveries in white smocks

Sadism in the Movies (1965) – George de Coulteray [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]

Belgian-born/New York-based canonical nobrow writer Luc Sante has a blog called Pinakothek [1]. There is a funny post called “Vile Smut”[2], in which he reviews Sadism in the Movies by George de Coulteray, and comments on a chart[3] reproduced in Lo Duca‘s L’Érotisme au cinéma [4] (J.-J. Pauvert, 1957)

“Take this chart, for example, which is worthy of Edward Tufte‘s books:”

The movies are (1) The Blue Angel, (2) Ecstasy, (3) Tabu, (4) The Lady from Shanghai, (5) Notorious, (6) Bitter Rice, (7) Manon, (8) Los Olvidados, (9) Miss Julie, and (10) One Summer of Happiness. No, I’d never heard of that last one, either. Don’t you wish you could nonchalantly illustrate your humid reveries with charts so rigorously white-smocked? I certainly do.”

I’ve mentioned Luc Sante here [5], when I wrote about Guy Bourdin. Luc Sante has compiled a monograph on Bourdin: Exhibit A: Guy Bourdin (2001).

Encore: various book covers from L’Érotisme au cinéma series by Jean-Marie Lo Duca.

Icon of Erotic Art #31

It is time for Icon of erotic art #31

Truck Babies (1999) by Patricia Piccinini

Truck Babies (1999) by Patricia Piccinini presents a pair of infant trucks. It is Icon of Erotic Art #31.

“The Truck Babies are infantile not miniature; they have big cheeks and fat bottoms, little wheels and lovely big eyes. They are what I imagined to be the offspring of the big trucks that I saw on the road. I examined the relationship between babies and fully-grown animals and people and applied these developmental changes backwards to the trucks.” [1]

The eroticism of this work is not obvious, but derives from the fact that most procreation is derived from the sexual act. It is my basic tenet that the sexual act is not necessarily “natural“, my favorite quote in this regard is from Leonardo da Vinci:

“The art of procreation and the members employed therein are so repulsive that if it were not for the beauty of the faces and the adornments of the actors and the pent-up impulse, nature would lose the human species.”

A quote that also comes to mind is one by Susan Sontag:

“Human sexuality is, quite apart from Christian repressions, a highly questionable phenomenon, and belongs, at least potentially, among the extreme rather than the ordinary experiences of humanity. Tamed as it may be, sexuality remains one of the demonic forces in human consciousness – pushing us at intervals close to taboo and dangerous desires, which range from the impulse to commit sudden arbitrary violence upon another person to the voluptuous yearning for the extinction of one’s consciousness, for death itself.” –Susan Sontag in the The Pornographic Imagination

The sexual act requires humans to gain intimacy to body parts which are “naturally” abhorred by humans, body parts which involve excrementation for example.

The sex drive, to which near all human animals fall prey, has often propelled us to engage in the sexual act with non-human animals. I surmise that the depictions of human-animal hybrids featured in bestiaries so popular in the Middle Ages (only second in popularity to the Bible), is derived from the fear that human-animal copulation would result in offspring.

It is within the context of these bestiaries that the work of Piccinini should be viewed. The uncanniness of Truck Babies is derived from a fear of ascribing animal qualities to machines, machines having become the nearest equivalent to domestic animals in the post-industrial age.

Truck Babies also provides me with an opportunity to announce the death of American science fiction writer Thomas M. Disch (1940 – 2008), author of Camp Concentration, The Brave Little Toaster and 334. The oblique link between Truck Babies and Disch is the anthropomorphism evident in Truck Babies and The Brave Little Toaster.