Category Archives: eroticism

Internet archeology #1

Soledad in Akasava

Der Teufel kam aus Akasava

Before Miranda, there was Soledad Miranda. Soledad was a Spanish actress best known for her films with Jess Franco. She died young in a car accident.

Via my recent purchase of Necronomicon: book three by Andy Black comes the Soledad photograph above, which I had hitherto only seen in its censored version, without showing the torso, from a screen capture or set photograph from Der Teufel kam aus Akasava.

Below are the better known online versions which I listed at Jahsonic.com as photocredit unidentified:

Soledad Miranda, photo unidentifed

photocredit unidentified

Case solved.

Icons of erotic art #2

The Guitar Lesson [1] (French: La Leçon de guitare) is a 1934 painting by Balthus. It depicts a a young girl nude from the waist down and her teacher who has one breast exposed. The work was lovingly re-interpreted by Japanese photographer Naoto Kawahara in 2007 [2]. In the same vein Kawahara does a Mollinesque interpretation of Lucretia [3]. Kawahara (1971, Tokyo) recently exhibited at the Antwerp Zeno X Gallery, see zeno-x.com.

Previous entries here, and in a Wiki format here.

Bob Carlos Clarke and Allen Jones

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=791oBsaXEk4]

Via sensOtheque comes the above vintage style series of risqué photos by Bob Carlos Clarke from a version of the book Delta of Venus, set to “You Do Something To Me” by Marlene Dietrich recorded in 1939.

Bob Carlos Clarke was good friends with the artist Allen Jones. They shared the same interest in rubber fetishism and sexual objectification [1] and Clarke also re-interpreted the table sculpture of Jones’s 1969 Chair, Table and Hat Stand in 1987 with Many Nights and in 2004 with the piece Total Control.

“It was Jones who tried to put Carlos Clarke off using rubber-clad women in his photographs, as they appeared often in his own paintings. Clarke had been introduced to this rubber fetish while at college by a man known simply as the Commander, who published a quarterly magazine for devotees of rubber wear. (The Commander had developed a taste for rubber while serving as a frogman in the Royal Navy, during which time he had become very attached to his diving suit.) [2]”

Also check the Allen Jones category at the excellent blog “lemateurdart”.

To conclude, a 2002 photograph [3] of Allen Jones’s table sculpture.

World cinema classics #23

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Md-LwM0s9fY]

Daisies (1966) – Věra Chytilová

It was against my rules to include films in this series that I had not seen. However, on the basis of this superb excerpt and some very warm recommendations of fellow bloggers, here is Daisies, a 1966 Czech film by director Věra Chytilová. It’s included in Film as a Subversive Art.

If everything’s going bad … so … we’re going … bad … as … well!

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

Viewing ‘wrong’ films for the right reasons

Muralla by Bofill

The image above is Xanadu in Calpe, Alicante (1969-1983), a surreal structure designed by Ricardo Bofill where the action of Jess Franco‘s 1980 Sade appropriation Eugenie, historia de una perversión is set. Robert Monell remarks that “this labyrinthine structure boggles the eye and teases our sense of perspective. This interior can be seen, shot from a radically different angle, in 1973’s The Perverse Countess.” Bofill’s design for the Catalan resort of Xanadu consists of a seven-story block with cubical living spaces arranged around a central utility core. Franco used this structure several times [1], [2].

Of all the “Euro trash” exploitation directors (I’m not counting Alain Robbe-Grillet, that’s artsploitation), Jess Franco had a knack for finding good interiors and exteriors. One of his films is set in Park Guell of Gaudi, but there are undoubtedly countless other examples to be found.

Of related interest is The Wrong House exhibition, on Hitchcock and architecture, currently showing in Antwerp.

Icons of erotic art #1

“La Prière” [1], 1930 is a black and white erotic photograph by French surrealist Man Ray. It shows the buttocks of a woman, through her legs extend her hands with which she shields her sex. Her hands are folded in the manner of a prayer, hence the title.

Google gallery of “La Prière”.

Digression #1: Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep: a macabre prayer/poem for children:

Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray the Lord my soul to keep;
And if I die before I wake,
I pray the Lord my soul to take.

Digression #2:

Maria_Magdalene_praying by Ary Scheffer

Maria Magdalene praying by Ary Scheffer

Guilty pleasures #3

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gO96CaLFRBw]

Cargo de Nuit (1983) Axel Bauer

The clip is directed by French photographer Jean-Baptiste Mondino (1983). It is an homage to the movie Querelle by Fassbinder. To us, in the early eighties, Querelle was the quintessence of the macho/gay sensibility and it was copied by musicians such as Luc Van Acker on the cover of The Ship[1] album. Jean-Paul Gaultier appropriated this seaman’s aesthetic and celebrated it all through the early eighties.

Querelle (1982) – Rainer Werner Fassbinder
[Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]

Fassbinder’s adaptation of Jean Genet’s novel features surreal sets that underscore the dreamlike quality and abstraction of the novel. It was Fassbinder’s final and, by his own words, most important movie.

Digression #1: Axel Bauer is not related to John Bauer:

John Bauer

John Bauer