Category Archives: eroticism

Corpo, bellezza, sensualita’

Via Griseldaonline, some high quality scans of erotic art.

Gorgon and the Heroes (1897) – Giulio Aristide Sartorio
Image sourced here.

A Francisco Goya, La maya desnuda, 1789-1805 Madrid Museo del Prado

B Jean Honore Fragonard, I fortunati casi dell’altalena, 1766 Londra Wallace Collection

C Jean Ingres, La grande odalisca, 1814 Parigi Louvre

D Edouard Manet, Olympia, 1863 Parigi Museo d’Orsay

E Pierre Puvis de Chevannes, Ragazze al mare, 1879 Parigi Museo d’Orsay

F Gustav Klimt, I pesci rossi, 1901-1902 Soleure Museo di Belle Arti

G Henri Matisse, Odalisca con le magnolie, 1924 Coll. privata

2 IL CORPO “ALTRO”

A Caravaggio, Testa di Medusa, 1590-1600 Firenze Galleria degli Uffizi

B Jusepe de Ribera, Lo storpio, 1642 Parigi Louvre

C William Blake, Nabucodonosor, 1795 Londra Tate Gallery

D Francisco Goya, Due vecchi che mangiano, 1820-23 Madrid Museo del Prado

E Joseph W. Turner, La morte su di un cavallo pallido, 1830 Londra Tate Gallery

F Odilon Redon, Il ciclope, 1895-1900 Otterlo Rijksmuseum Kroller Muller

G Giulio Aristide Sartorio, La Gorgone e gli eroi, 1897 Roma Galleria Nazionale di Arte Moderna

H Alberto Savinio, L’annunciazione, 1932 Coll.privata

3 IL CORPO MISTICO

A Jan Van Eyck, Madonna del cancelliere Rolin, 1439 Parigi Louvre

B Alessandro Botticelli, Paradiso, Canto VI, 1490-95

C Michelangelo Buonarroti, Crocifissione con Maria e San Giovanni, Parigi Louvre

D Stefano Maderno, Santa Cecilia, 1600

E William Blake, Pietà, 1795 Londra Tate Gallery

F Caspar David Friedrich, Monaco in riva al mare, 1810 Berlino Nationalgalerie

G Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Ecce Ancilla Domini, 1850 Londra Tate Gallery

4 IL CORPO VIOLATO

A Francisco Goya, La fucilazione del 3 maggio 1808, 1814 Madrid Museo del Prado

B Theodore Gericault, La Zattera della medusa, 1819 Parigi Louvre

C Francisco Goya, Saturno, 1820-23 Madrid Museo del Prado

D Amos Nattini, Inferno, Canto III, 1919-30

E Pablo Picasso, Guernica, 1937 Madrid Museo Reina Sofia

5 IL CORPO E L’ANIMA

A Edward Munch, L’urlo, 1893 Oslo Munchmuseet

B Giovanni Segantini, Le cattive madri, 1894 Vienna Kunsthistorisches Museum

C Alberto Martini, La finestra di psiche nella casa del poeta, 1952 Oderzo Pinacoteca Civica Alberto Martini

D Hans Bellmer, Donna dalle braccia articolate, 1965 Roma Studio d’arte

E Paul Delvaux, La nascita del giorno, 1937 Venezia Collezione Peggy Guggenheim

F Rene Magritte, Luce polare, 1927 Roma Collezione Ponti Loren

6 IL CORPO DEGLI ANTICHI

A Diadoumenos, Atene Museo Nazionale

B Alessandro Botticelli, Venere, 1482 circa Galleria Sabauda

C Antonio Canova, Psiche rianimata dal bacio di amore, 1793 Parigi Louvre

D Edward Burne Jones, La ruota della fortuna, 1875-83 Parigi Museo d’Orsay

E Gustave Moreau, Galatea, 1880 Parigi Museo Gustave Moreau

Perhaps in 5 years from now?

Jeanne Goupil in Don’t Deliver Us From Evil

I’ve said this before, the past is a much bigger place than the present, by which I mean that it is easier to find enticing books, films and music of by-gone eras than from the present era. Mike’s Esotika blog, one of the recent film blogs that have caught my eye gives ample attention to the past, and more importantly manages to discover and review films from that same past that are unknown to me (and I’ve done quite some searching over the few years). The latest entry on Mike’s blog is a review of the 1971 French film Don’t Deliver us from Evil. The film is directed by Joël Séria and upon seeing stills such as this, this and this one, I was excited. The first thing I do when a new name pops up is check whether it’s referenced at Jahsonic.com and yes, I was able to find it in the title listing of Amos Vogel’s Film As a Subversive Art. [The plot is revealed in Vogel’s write-up]

What was it that excited me? First of all, the title, any title with the world evil in it attracts me (which reminds me that I still need to document Barbey’s story Le Bonheur dans le crime of his Diaboliques collection). Second, the aforementioned stills and especially this one, in which the girls are reading that classic of transgressive literature Maldoror.

After checking for connections (my motto being: “Wanting connections, we found connections — always, everywhere, and between everything”) on my own site, I go out on the net and try to find more. First Wikipedia and IMDb, the French Wikipedia has this, IMDb this (sorted by ratings) and subsequently on the wild wild web. Where we find this: Joël Séria : Filmographie complète d’un obsédé sexuel with these 1, 2 [nsfw].

In an ideal world I would be able to connect to an online video on demand service provider and view the entire oeuvre of Séria. Perhaps in 5 years from now? At present, not even Youtube features clips of Séria’s films.

A teaser of the film:

Anne and Lore are two barely pubescent teens who attend a Catholic Boarding school. While seeming sweet, well behaved, and innocent from all appearances, the two have actually devoted themselves to Satan. While they are at school, the two intentionally ‘sin’ as often as possible without getting caught. They steal clothing and religious reliquaries in order to use in future Satanic rituals, they confess sins which they haven’t committed, they spy on the nuns, and they read transgressive literature under their covers once everybody else is asleep. Their life at the boarding school is a constant joke to them, and they giggle at everybody else’s misfortunes and the fact they are getting away with so much sin. Once summer break comes, their activities begin to get a little more serious.

And a review by Kinocite:

As a whole, Don’t Deliver Us From Evil / Mais ne nous délivrez pas du mal comes across as something akin to Francois Truffaut’s The 400 Blows as Luis Buñuel or Catherine Breillat might have imagined it – no bad thing, especially to those nay-sayers who would deny that European cult cinema of this sort has anything to actually say.

And all this time I was thinking that the film reminded me of another film. And while I suspected that my perceived connection was maybe too far fetched, DVDmaniacs.net confirms that the film was based on the same events that inspired Peter Jackson’s Heavenly Creatures:

Never before released on home video in the United States and making its world premiere on home video in its uncut form for the first time ever, Don’t Deliver Us From Evil is a very loose adaptation of the notorious story of Pauline Parker and Juliet Hammond, the two murderous maids who also inspired Peter Jackson’s Heavenly Creatures (still arguably his best film…. Hobbits and giant apes be damned). While there are some similarities between the two films, Joël Séria’s take on the story, his feature film debut, is very different in tone, execution, and theme as it manages to bring a far more blasphemous interpretation of the events into play.

Closing remarks: while researching Don’t Deliver I re-stumbled on film producer Antony Balch who was one of the first British entrepreneurs to embrace art, horror and exploitation films with equal enthusiasm, and who appropriately distributed Don’t Deliver in the U. K. .

Unrelated earcandy.

When you fall for a boy

Fat Girl/À ma soeur! (2001) – Catherine Breillat

“When you fall for a boy, you try to pin him down too soon. After three days, he wants to kick his way free and get as far away as he can.”

“Oh, yeah? So let’s see who can pick up a decent boy first. Any boy. Even a fat slob like you.”

“That shows how dumb you are. You’re great physically but once they get to know you, they run a mile. They run before even getting to know you!”

“I’m just too young. They’d be scared to sleep with me.”

“But you reek of loose morals.”

“I don’t sleep around.”

“That’s the only thing you don’t do. You have a weird notion of what ‘not sleeping around’ means.”

“That’s what matters, you know.”

“I don’t think so. If I meet a man I love, I’d want to be broken in. He won’t think my first time counts. The first time should be with nobody. I don’t want a guy bragging he had me first. Guys are all sick.”

[….]

Catherine Breillat’s obsession with the dialectical nature of love and violence could not be better articulated than in the haunting last words echoed by Anaïs:

Police officer: She was in the woods. She says he didn’t rape her.

Anaïs: Don’t believe me if you don’t want to.

[…]

New Breillat film coming up

Twitchfilm reports on An Old Mistress [1], a new film by personal favourite Catherine Breillat:

Asia Argento, controversial filmmaker. Catherine Breillat, controversial filmmaker. Put the two together and it isn’t hard to imagine where they’ll likely end up. Argento is starring in Breillat’s latest, Une Vielle Maitresse, and the production company has recently posted the first batch of stills from the film to give a taste of what this will look like.

Here’s Breillat’s 2004 Rotterdam funding pitch for the film:

A costume drama An Old Mistress (Une Vieille Maitresse) adapted from the novel of the same by Barbey d’Aurevilly [The She-Devils (1874)], a book inspired by and covering much of the same ground as Choderlos De Laclos’ Dangerous Liaisons. “Une Vieille Maitresse is the parable of an affair that seems to be over and whose force is underestimated because it is thought to have blown itself out,” says Breillat. Breillat discussed the role of the manipulative and ugly old lady with Madonna. “I had a meeting with her, but she did not want to do it. It would have been extremely gratifying if she had. But perhaps if she had it would no longer have been my film. So it may be for the better.”

Truth in nakedness

Nuda Veritas (1899) – Gustav Klimt

“Klimt certainly wasn’t the first to paint naked women,” Ruiz says. “But he also showed pubic hair, pregnant bellies, and old men and women with sagging flesh — nuda veritas! –Ruiz via [1]

..“What is interesting about Klimt (played here by John Malkovich) is that in the short space of a lifetime, he evolved from a Raphael to a Van Gogh. In Romania, where he got his first big job — and his first syphilis — he was a painter of the court, like Velazquez. Then he moved on to the painter of the Austrian Empire, paid by the state. Then he broke away and got commissions from Vienna’s Jewish bourgeoisie and became a painter of the wealthy. Toward the end, he just painted for himself. So he became rich, but he was also generous and died without money. Too many children to support!” –Ruiz via [1]

Apparently, what shocked the Viennese bourgeoisie in the 1899 oil painting Nuda Veritas is the depiction of pubic hair. Pubic hair marks the dividing line between a Venus and a Nini (see previous post), and continues to have the power to shock in the present age. I can’t be mournful about that because if there were a world where nothing were shocking, a world where a sense of the forbidden were gone, wouldn’t that be a bore?

Klimt vs. Loos

“All art is erotic”, declared Adolf Loos in “Ornament and Crime“. Long before Expressionism and Surrealism were credited with displaying sexuality openly in art, Klimt made it his creed, and it became the leitmotif of his work. –Gilles Néret, 1993

“”The first ornament that was ever born, the cross, was erotic in origin. The first work of art, the first artistic deed which the first artist smeared on the wall in order to work off his excess. A horizontal line: recumbent woman. A vertical line: man penetrating her … But man of our time, following an inner compulsion to smear the walls with erotic symbols, is criminal or degenerate … Since ornament is no longer a coherent organic part of our culture, it can no longer be an expression of our culture.” Thus wrote Adolf Loos in his article “Ornament and Crime”, which begins with the famous sentence: “All art is erotic”. The intention behind the article was to stigmatise the “erotic insalubrity” of Klimt and the other artists of the Wienner Werkstätten.” –Gilles Néret, 1993

Coolness and reserve mark this lady

Coolness and reserve mark this lady, while not yet a femme fatale, but as one of Freud’s castrating women. –Gilles Néret, 1993

Madame Heymann (c. 1894) – Gustav Klimt

Upon display Medicine was immediately attacked by critics who disagreed with the theme of the powerlessness of medicine in a time when Vienna was leading the world in medical research. The painting was also under the normal attack of pornography which Klimt often faced. A public prosecutor was called in and the issue even reached parliament, the first time that a cultural debate had ever been raised there, but in the end no action was taken. Only the education minister defended him, and when he was elected to be a professor at the academy in 1901 the government refused to ratify it. He was never offered another teaching position. [1]

Medicine (1907) – Gustav Klimt

I’ve been reading Gilles Néret’s 1993 Klimt study for Taschen. Since I am partial towards the human interest factor in art criticism I was a bit disappointed by the lack thereof. Otherwise the study is excellent.

Especially since his work is infused with the tropes of male castration anxiety and the femme fatale, I find it astonishing that little is mentioned on his personal life. Néret’s work reminds me of the shift in an erotic sensibility that Mario Praz describes in Romantic Agony, the shift from female masochism towards male masochism that occurred somewhere in mid-19th century.

In fact searching for Klimt’s personal life only brings up one page:

Though the book touches only lightly on Klimt’s personal life, the scandalous nature of his work, his illegitimate children and the haremlike working conditions of his studio, it provides a detailed portrait of the changes and inconsistencies that defined Vienna at the time, when Secessionist principles of freedom from artistic judgment met simultaneous demands for high standards and the “parallel pursuit of collectivity and individuality.” –quoted from a review of Rainer Metzger’s Gustav Klimt.

Perhaps the 2006 film Klimt starring John Malkovich would provide answers to my questions. This biopic was directed by Raoul Ruiz (Time Regained, 1999) .

Aha! Here is quite a bit on Klimt’s personal life:

He remained a bachelor and was being obviously terrified by the thought of entering into a permanent relationship; his attitude to women was highly ambivalent. For many years, Emilie Flöge (played here by Veronica Ferres), whose sister Helene had married Klimt’s brother Ernst, was his companion and he felt a deep affection for her; nevertheless the relationship is assumed to have been purely platonic. His desire was aroused by the sweet Viennese girls from the suburbs who were neither intelligent nor self-assured, by the many models who were his companions for short periods. The fact that he did not disdain sexual love is evidenced by the great number of his illegitimate children. There are records which establish that he had at least 14 children. It is true that he spent many summers with Emilie Flöge and her family in her house at Kammer on the Attersee, but she remained the woman he always worshipped from afar and only called to his deathbed.

On the Venus vs the Nini:

Néret’s book on the art of Gustav Klimt (1993) differentiates between two types of nudes and calls them Venus and Nini. His argument revolves around artistic pretexts:

In Plato’s “Symposium” one encounters two types of Venus, the celestial and the vulgar. Renoir makes the same distinction: “Naked woman rises either from the sea or from the bed; she is called Venus or Nini, there is no better name for her…” The academic, idealised nude is applauded by society, particularly when a historical message can be discerned, but an everyday naked woman ready for love causes a scandal. Before Klimt, Edouard Manet’s Olympia had aroused hatred and criticism. She likewise was a Nini — like the courtesan on the next street corner — rather than a Venus in the style of Titian’s idealised mistresses, disguised as mythical goddesses. Neither in Manet’s Olympia nor in Klimt’s Vienna was it permissible for such idols to be drawn from life.

That the eleven thousand virgins punish me if I lie

“If I had you in bed with me, twenty times in a row I would prove my passion to you. That the eleven thousand virgins punish me if I lie.”

The Eleven Thousand Rods (1907) – Guillaume Apollinaire
[Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]

The Eleven Thousand Rods (French: Les Onze Milles Verges) is a 1907 erotic novel by Apollinaire. The title is a pun on the legend of Saint Ursula and her eleven thousand handmaidens. The pun works better in French where vierge means virgin and verge means rod. The painting on the cover of the French edition shown above looks like something by Ingres, but is it?

I was very fond of the Ado Kyrou books

Eros in the Cinema (1966) – Raymond Durgnat [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]

In a 1977 interview Durgnat said about Kyrou: “I didn’t read very much film criticism until I started teaching film regularly around 1964! There wasn’t much to read. I was very fond of the Ado Kyrou books.” If Raymond Durgnat can be compared to some of the more exciting French film critics such as Ado Kyrou, his publishing house Calder and Boyars can be compared to that of Eric Losfeld’s. [Jan 2007]

Influences: There are various people whom I read with interest because, whether I agree with them or not, there’s a genuine person speaking from a calibre of experience, not an automatic scanning mechanism. I’m thinking of Pauline Kael, who I rarely agree with; of Robin Wood, who I sometimes agree with; of Manny Farber. And Parker Tyler. At the other extreme, I’m very interested in certain theorists, particularly Jean Mitry and Edgar Morin. –Raymond Durgnat in a 1977 interview.