Category Archives: eroticism

Connect the dots

An article by Hannah Neumann for The Fed on erotic connect the dots. She mentions Benjamin Stout’s lithographs for The Lustful Turk and Les Flagelants Féminins. I was unable to find more info on Stout.

“Connect-the-dots (contemporarily known as ‘cunny constellations’ or ‘points d’amour’) were conceived as a method of bypassing obscenity laws in eighteenth-century Britain. Although they were commercially successful, the belief that their distributors were immune to arrest and seizure by the police was quickly proven false. As William Lazenby, a contemporary publisher of illegal erotica recalled, “We hadn’t reckoned on the coppers’ numeric acumen. T’was not long ‘fore we’d nary a tuppence earn with the rise in confiscations.” By the mid-1880s, erotic connect-the-dots had been abandoned in favor of less cryptic illustrations.” —Hannah Neumann

Femina Ridens

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIIHV3f0B2M]

The Frightened Woman

Femina Ridens (Frightened Woman, 1969) is an Italian film by director Piero Schivazappa, displaying a huge vagina dentata from Niki de Saint Phalle’s “Hon” in his set design by (start at 1’10”). The film was distributed by Radley Metzger‘s Audubon Films. The male character, Dotto (Philippe Leroy), invites a young female employee Mary (Dagmar Lassander) to his modish house for a weekend of S&M. The tables slowly turn to the point where Mary becomes the willing master (similar to the dynamic power shift in Losey’s The Servant, 1963). The film is reviewed in Psychopathia Sexualis in Italian Sinema (1968 – 1972).

Merryland (1740) – Thomas Stretzer

Merryland (1740) – Thomas Stretzer
Edition shown: NY: Robin Hood House (1932)

Her valleys are like Eden, her hills like Lebanon, she is a paradise of pleasure and a garden of delight

This poetic praise by the pseudonymous Thomas Stretzer may sound like any other earth-troping colonization of womanhood similar to John Donne’s well-known characterization of his mistress; Oh “my America, my new-found-land!” Those familiar with Merryland (published in 1740) and indeed, with a whole tradition of what Darby Lewes has dubbed somatopias (texts composed of, or designed for the body), will recognize in these words the embarrassingly facile puns of female landscaping metaphors that treat woman as so much ground to till, as so much earth to exploit. Certainly, Stretzer’s Merryland—both composed of and designed for bodies—offers up a fertile pornocopia for male corporeal pleasures based on exposed, accessible female body parts. —http://www.specmind.com/vixen/geography_of_desire.htm [Sept 2005]

Destruction and delight in the same pair of eyes

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vryyDAj2EbA]

Clive Barker, Roger Corman, Joe Dante and Tim Burton on Barbara Steele in Clive Barker’s A to Z of Horror.

More Steele:

Barbara Steele, photocredit unidentified

Barbara Steele in bed
image sourced here.

Maschera del demonio, La/Black Sunday (1960) – Mario Bava [Amazon.com]
image sourced here.

Maschera del demonio, La/Black Sunday (1960) – Mario Bava [Amazon.com]
image sourced here.

Midi-Minuit Fantastique no. 17 (1967)
“Midi Minuit Fantastique” #17 devoted to Barbara Steele – 145 Pages – Dated of 1967

Barbara Steele in The Horrible Dr. Hichcock (1962) – Riccardo Freda
image sourced here. [Aug 2005]

Barbara Steele

images sourced here, from, Curse of the Crimson Altar (1968);
an adaptation of Lovecraft’s Dreams in the Witch House

Caged Heat (1974) – Jonathan Demme [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]

Der Junge Törless/Young Toerless (1966) – Volker Schlöndorff [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]

Brigitte Courme photographie

 

Brigitte Courme photographie

In 1969 Balthus starts to draw from photographs taken by himself and by Brigitte Courme (1934-1982) . Shown above is a picture by Brigitte Courme.

Balthus was a French artist of Polish origins whose work was figurative at a time when modern art was surrealist and abstract in nature, making him one of the first anti-modernists. His distinctive brand of nymphesque erotica (Thérèse rêvant, 1938) with lesbian overtones (The Guitar Lesson, 1934) has been influential to many present day erotomaniacs. Detractors accuse him of pedophilia and pornography but Balthus insisted that his work was not pornographic, but that it just recognized the discomforting facts of children’s sexuality.

Image sourced here

Tarantino’s take on the grindhouse phenomenon opens tonight

Grindhouse

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6l-InqDHmA]

Grindhouse (2007) – Rodriguez and Tarantino

As I’ve pointed out before here, Greencine is serializing Eddie Muller’s 1996 non-fiction book Grindhouse: The Forbidden World of “Adults Only” Cinema on the grindhouse phenomenon. From Greencine’s latest entry:

“I’m almost surprised that Tarantino and Rodriguez didn’t convince their patrons, Harvey and Bob Weinstein, to coat the floors of the theaters themselves with the very special shoe-sole-sticking gunk that was an unavoidable aspect of the real grindhouse experience,” writes Premiere‘s Glenn Kenny. “Death Proof offers ‘thrills’ that are deeply unpleasant and deeply unwholesome, and it’s here that Grindhouse comes closest to achieving the ‘climate of perdition’ that another surrealist critic, Robert Benayoun termed the hallmark of ‘authentic sadistic cinema.’ A lot of people associate a taste for grindhouse movies with the tiresome condescension of the ‘so-bad-it’s-good’ ethos, but Tarantino understands the aesthetics of aberrance that animated the explorations of so-called trash hounds.” —Greencine

Returning to Glenn Kenny’s review, I am intrigued by his opening lines mentioning Ado Kyrou and by the mention of Benayoun. I quote:

“…[G]o and learn to see the worst films; they are sometimes sublime,” the surrealist filmmaker and critic Ado Kyrou advised in 1963. While neither Robert Rodriguez nor Quentin Tarantino are (to my knowledge) disciples of Kyrou, they carry his ethos in their bones.

…

And it’s here that Death Proof offers “thrills” that are deeply unpleasant and deeply unwholesome, and it’s here that Grindhouse comes closest to achieving the “climate of perdition” that another surrealist critic, Robert Benayoun, termed the hallmark of “authentic sadistic cinema.”

I am especially interested in where Benayoun supposedly talked about the “climate of perdition” and “authentic sadistic cinema.”

Anyone know more?

Trevor Brown’s fantasy land

Following on my previous post on Venetian Snares where I mentioned Trevor Brown, some more about the latter:

Artwork by Trevor Brown

My Alphabet (1999) – Trevor Brown
[Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]

Li’l Miss Sticky Kiss (2004) – Trevor Brown
[Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]

Though presently living in Japan, Trevor Brown is an British artist whose work explores paraphilias, such as pedophilia, BDSM, and other fetish themes, with unusual wit.

Important career motivating friendships include French artist Romain Slocombe (the pioneer of “medical art”) and William Bennett (leader of the notorious electronic-noise band Whitehouse.

Trevor Brown’s art has been featured in Adam Parfrey’s Apocalypse Culture II, and in Jim Goad’s ANSWER Me! zine, as well as a variety of other publications. His work has been featured as cover art for a number of bands, including Deicide, Whitehouse, GG Allin, Kayo Dot, and Venetian Snares.

He is often compared with Mark Ryden in that he is known for child-like characters in various states of distress. However themes in his work extend to car crashes, (reminiscent of J.G. Ballard’s Crash), abattoirs, and Japanese pornography. His art is close in spirit to the Young British Artists such as Damien Hirst or Jake and Dinos Chapman.  —[1]

Trevor Brown illustraded CDs by Merzbow, Venetian Snares and Whitehouse (here, here, here and here).

Related: Google gallery 1 – Google gallery 2 – fetish art – grotesque art – hyperrealism – perversion in art – erotic art – transgressive art – British art

Articles: Trevor Brown interviews Masami Akita – Trevor Brown on Japanese bondage, Kinbiken and Chimou Nureki

Groovy Glamour International

Supplement to Glamour International n. 16, April 1991

Cover illustration probably by Leone Frollo.

 

See a collection of Glamour International covers at the excellent Numagazine vintage erotica site (to which I am not affiliated) and my page on a similar Italian publisher Glittering Images.

Each issue of Italian erotica magazine Glamour is 12×12 inch, has a color wraparound cover, and is mostly in color. The focus is international eroticism, from classic cheesecake and bondage to the latest work by top artists.

Black women and jungle girls for example includes work by filmmaker Federico Fellini, and huge double-page spreads by Scozzari, Cadelo, Steranko, Frollo, Dave Stevens, Saudelli, Frazetta, and a fine cover and illustration by Chichoni. Girls and horror films of the 1950s, and Bill Ward. See all available at Amazon here: Alberto Becattini

Some Google galleries here, here and here.

Also check Numagazine’s review of Psychopathia Sexualis in Italian sinema. Mine is here.

And to conclude I want to let you in on a little secret: the best Italian — and perhaps the best worldwide — erotic photography is by Carlo Mollino. The proof is here.

Erotomaniac and countercultural historian Bouyxou given carte blanche

Unidentified photograph of Bouyxou
Sourced here.

For those of you living in Paris, or visiting Paris, the cinémathèque has given Jean-Pierre Bouyxou carte blanche to run a retrospective of “his kind of cinema“. Bouyxou (born 1946 in Bordeaux) is an erotomaniac and a countercultural historian. Most recently, Mike of Esotika … reviewed his film Satan bouche un coin. I also added some Bouyxou products to my Flickr account here and here as well as a cover of his magazine Sex Star System here. Some other magazines Bouyxou contributed to were Vampirella, Zoom, Métal hurlant, L’Echo des savanes, Penthouse, Lui, Hara-Kiri and Paris Match. He was editor-in-chief of Fascination (thirty issues from 1978 to 1986).

Bouyxou belongs to that European tradition of eroticism which is represented in Italy for example by the people of the Glittering Images publishing house to which Bouyxou is a contributor. For a review of one of the products of this publisher, see this and this blog entry at K. H. Brown’s Giallo Fever.

Thanks to Harry Tuttle of Unspoken Cinema for the notice.

Here is the program:

  100% SEXUEL, 100% EXPERIMENTAL… – 2007 – 110’  
  Vendredi 16 Mars 2007 – 21h30 – SALLE GEORGES FRANJU
En présence de Jean-Pierre Bouyxou, José Bénazéraf, Yves-Marie Mahé		  
  ANDY MILLIGAN, QUELQUE PART… – ANDY MILLIGAN – 2007 – 85’  
  Vendredi 30 Mars 2007 – 19h30 – SALLE GEORGES FRANJU
En présence de Jean-Pierre Bouyxou
  AUTOUR DE W.S. BURROUGHS – 2007  
  Vendredi 25 Mai 2007 – 19h30 – SALLE GEORGES FRANJU
En présence de Jean-Pierre Bouyxou
  AVANT-GARDE JAPONAISE – 2007 – 147’  
  Vendredi 27 Avril 2007 – 21h30 – SALLE GEORGES FRANJU
En présence de Jean-Pierre Bouyxou et Sébastien Bondetti
  ECCE BOUYXOU – 2007 – 116’  
  Vendredi 25 Mai 2007 – 21h30 – SALLE GEORGES FRANJU
En présence de Jean-Pierre Bouyxou
  MARXISME, TENDANCE RAVACHOL – 2007 – 140’  
  Vendredi 13 Avril 2007 – 21h30 – SALLE GEORGES FRANJU
En présence de Jean-Pierre Bouyxou et Tobias Engel
  LE PARAPLUIE ET LA MACHINE A COUDRE – 2007 – 140’  
  Vendredi 13 Avril 2007 – 19h30 – SALLE GEORGES FRANJU
En présence de Jean-Pierre Bouyxou et Jean-Jacques Rousseau
  L’UNDERGROUND EN FRANCE… – 2007 – 95’  
  Vendredi 16 Mars 2007 – 19h30 – SALLE GEORGES FRANJU
En présence de Jean-Pierre Bouyxou, Philipe Bordier, Raphaël Bassan, Gérard Courant, Gérald Lafosse, Marie-France O’Leary		  
  VERTIGES ONIRIQUES – 2007 – 101’  
  Vendredi 30 Mars 2007 – 21h30 – SALLE GEORGES FRANJU
En présence de Jean-Pierre Bouyxou et Stéphane du Mesnildot
  VOYAGES AU BOUT DE LA FOLIE – 2007 – 97’  
  Vendredi 11 Mai 2007 – 21h30 – SALLE GEORGES FRANJU
En présence de Jean-Pierre Bouyxou