Category Archives: eroticism

Gratuitous nudity #4

The Eroticist

Fulci, The Eroticist

The Eroticist (Image sourced here)

The Eroticist is a 1972 Italian film by Lucio Fulci about a government official who suffers from frotteurism. Lucio Fulci (1927 – 1996) was an Italian film director, screenwriter, and actor. He is best known for his directorial work on some of the goriest horror films ever made, although he made films in genres as diverse as erotic films, giallo, western, and comedy. He is also known for his use of enigmatic titles such as Don’t Torture a Duckling.

Previous entries in this series.

Icons of erotic art #6

The work I present today is erotic and sad at the same time. Its eroticism is implied by its transgression, most transgressions are erotic by nature. For its sadness, you only need to look at the facial expressions of Valie, the “toucher” and the bystander.

Valie Export‘s Tapp- und Tast-Kino (“Touch Cinema”) a piece of performance “body art”, was performed in ten European cities in 1968-1971.

Valie Export built a tiny “movie theater” around her naked upper body, so that her body could not be seen but could be touched by anyone reaching through the curtained front of the “theater”. She then went into the street and invited men, women, and children to come and touch her.

The context of “Touch Cinema” was the bra burning feminism professed by New York Radical Women and Germaine Greer’s The Female Eunuch.

Icons of erotic art #5

Today I present the 2006 painting Rotterdam by American artist John Currin.

As I’ve explained before, most works of erotic art aren’t really erotic at all in the strictest sense. The strictest sense being that the works actually sexually arouse you. Today’s work is truly erotic. This also and inevitably means that it borders on the pornographic. It is then not a coincidence that this painting is from a series by John Currin based on late 20th century Scandinavian pornographic photos. A good French language analysis is over at lemateurdart.

Case #1

Unidentified English language edition of Psychopathia Sexualis (1886)
image sourced here.

Psychopathia Sexualis (1886) – Richard Von Krafft-Ebing [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]

Case #1: J. René, always given to indulgence in sensuality and sexual pleasures, but always with regard for decorum, had shown, since his seventy-sixth year, a progressive loss of intelligence and increasing perversion of his moral sense. Previously bright and outwardly moral, he now wasted his property in concourse with prostitutes, frequented brothels only, asked every woman on the street to marry him or allow coitus, and thus became publicly so obnoxious that it was necessary to place him in an asylum. There the sexual excitement increased to a veritable satyriasis, which lasted until he died. He masturbated continuously, even before others; took delight only in obscene ideas; thought the men about him were women, and followed them with indecent proposals (Legrand du Saulle, “La Folie,” p. 533).

Moreover, women previously moral, when affected with senile dementia, may manifest similar conditions of great sexual excitement (nymphomania, furor uterinus).

It may be seen from a reading of Schopenhauer (Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung) that, as a result of senile dementia, the abnormally excited and perverse instinct may be directed exclusively to persons of the same sex. Gratification is obtained by passive pederasty, or, as I ascertained in the following case, by mutual masturbation —Psychopathia Sexualis

 

These unnatural cravings of your unbalanced mind and undisciplined body

well

The Well of Loneliness (1928) Radclyffe Hall

Denounced, banned and applauded — the strange love story of a girl who stood midway between the sexes, complete and unabridged.

Stephen begins to dress in masculine clothes made by a tailor rather than a dress-maker. At twenty-one she falls in love with Angela Crossby, the American wife of a new neighbor. Angela uses Stephen as an “anodyne against boredom“, allowing her “a few rather schoolgirlish kisses”. Then Stephen discovers that Angela is having an affair with a man. Fearing exposure, Angela shows a letter from Stephen to her husband, who sends a copy to Stephen’s mother. Lady Anna denounces Stephen for “presum[ing] to use the word love in connection with… these unnatural cravings of your unbalanced mind and undisciplined body“. Stephen replies, “As my father loved you, I loved…. It was good, good, good — I’d have laid down my life a thousand times over for Angela Crossby.” After the argument, Stephen goes to her father’s study and for the first time opens his locked bookcase. She finds a book by Krafft-Ebing — assumed by critics to be Psychopathia Sexualis, a text about homosexuality and paraphilias — and, reading it, learns that she is an invert. —The Well of Loneliness

Icons of erotic art #4

Pornokrates (1879) – Félicien Rops

Few things are sexier than a blindfolded woman. I was 20 or 21, I was in Brussels with Ilse and her friends. We were — I think — in the Agora galleries. Suddenly I spotted this painting on a poster on a shop door. I was stunned. The blindfold, the stockings, the shoes, the pig, the gloves. As I mentioned in my previous post, few works of erotic art can be used for masturbatory purposes. Neither can this painting, but its theatricality sets a mood, engenders expectations and hints at hidden desires. Painted 128 years ago, this work set standards which few other paintings will transgress.

Rops in a letter to a friend:

“My Pornocratie is complete. This drawing delights me. I would like to show you this beautiful naked girl, clad only in black shoes and gloves in silk, leather and velvet, her hair styled. Wearing a blindfold she walks on a marble stage, guided by a pig with a “golden tail” across a blue sky. Three loves – ancient loves – vanish in tears (…) I did this in four days in a room of blue satin, in an overheated apartment, full of different smells, where the opopanax and cyclamen gave me a slight fever conducive towards production or even towards reproduction”. –Letter from Rops to Henri Liesse, 1879.

Previous entries here, and in a Wiki format here.

Icons of erotic art #3

There are those works of erotica — although very few, otherwise they would be classified as pornography — which are erotic, meaning arousing, and those which are not. Our third entry in this series belongs to the second category. Although not erotic, it does provide a certain a shiver, or frisson, as the French would say. I am talking about The Rape [1] (1934) by Magritte, one of the more Sadean artists of French surrealism. The painting depicts a faceless woman –her face is replaced by her torso. She is mute, her mouth replaced by her pubic hair. The painting [2] was also used for the cover of André Breton‘s pamphlet What is Surrealism?.

Digression #1: Please let me remind you of the fabulous blog lemateurdart.

Digression #2: Speaking of rape, below is a very powerful painting by Degas, titled Interior (The Rape):

Degas The Rape

Previous entries here, and in a Wiki format here.

A tale of two orgasms

The Myth of the Vaginal Orgasm

The Myth of the Vaginal Orgasm

The Myth of the Vaginal Orgasm is a 1968 essay by Anne Koedt. I was very much intrigued by the tale of the two orgasms before I was sexually experienced. In her introduction to the essay, radical feminist Anne Koedt writes:

“Whenever female orgasm and frigidity are discussed, a false distinction is made between the vaginal and the clitoral orgasm. Frigidity has generally been defined by men as the failure of women to have vaginal orgasms. Actually the vagina is not a highly sensitive area and is not constructed to achieve orgasm. It is the clitoris which is the center of sexual sensitivity and which is the female equivalent of the penis.” [1]

Empirical proof of vaginal orgasm came relatively late in my sexual life, and proved to be very liberating.