Category Archives: European culture

Blazon of the Ugly Tit

Contreblason du Tetin (1535) (Eng: Blazon of the Ugly Tit) is a poem by Clément Marot on ugly female breasts.  Here in a translation by Helene Marmoux [1]. Clément Marot (1496–1544), was a French poet of the Renaissance period, for his poems on body parts, known as blasons and contreblasons. The  ugly woman is a surprisingly common figure in Renaissance poetry, one that has been frequently appropriated by male poetic imagination to depict moral, aesthetic, social, and racial boundaries. The subject has been treated in dept by Patrizia Bettella in The Ugly Woman: Transgressive Aesthetic Models in Italian Poetry from the Middle Ages to the Baroque ( 2005).

Tit, skinny tit,
flat tit that looks like a flag,
big tit, long tit,
tit, must I call thee bag?
Tit with its ugly black end,
forever moving tit.
Who would boast having touched you?
With their hand fondle you? more…

Tip of the hat to On Ugliness

RIP Alain Payet (1947 – 2007)

Nathalie rescapée de l’enfer / Nathalie, Fugitive from Hell (1978) – Alain Payet

Alain Payet (January 17, 1947 – December 13, 2007) was a French writer-director.

Payet started his career in regular cinema as second assistant director on Philippe Labro‘s L’ Héritier (The Exterminator), which starred Jean-Paul Belmondo.

He directed 1970s Nazi exploitation movies (Nathalie, Fugitive from Hell) and “porno chic” features. He also made “porn versions” of some famous French films such as Astérix, Les Tontons flingueurs, and Les Visiteurs.

He died of cancer in Paris.

RIP Ettore Sottsass (1917 – 2007)

Unidentified photograph of Ettore Sottsass

Carlton Cabinet (1981) – Ettore Sottsass

Invitation to the first Memphis presentation, Sept 18 1981,

graphics by Luciano Paccagnella.
image sourced here

Ettore Sottsass Olivetti Valentine, first released on Valentine’s Day 1969.

Ettore Sottsass (14 September 1917 – 31 December 2007) was an Innsbruck-born Italian architect and designer of the late 20th century. He founded the Memphis Group and was a member briefly flirted with the Situationist International for a (very) short time. He was also connected to the radical design movement. His best-known product is the 1969 Olivetti Valentine typewriter. His 1981 “Carlton Cabinet” was to many people their first de facto exposure to postmodernism.

Sottsass founded the Memphis Group, an influential postmodern Italian design and architecture movement of the 1980s. Memphis explored a visual language outside of the limiting canons of “good taste,” blurring the boundaries between “high culture” and mass-produced “ordinary” consumer goods.

Radical design developed in Italy in the late 1960s and early 1970s. It continued the tradition of using new materials and bold colours that began with Pop Art but also drew on historical styles such as Art Deco, Kitsch, and Surrealism. The main exponents of Radical Design were small groups of architects and designers who questioned Modernism and rejected mass-consumer culture. Key groups and designers of the Radical style include Superstudio, Archizoom Associati, UFO, Gruppo Strum, and Ettore Sottsass.

World cinema classics #30

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=id4593hoT2E]

Lina: I love you!

Le Far West is a 1973 film directed by Jacques Brel. The film was co-written by Paul Andréota and Brel. It has the dubious honor of a 4.0/10 rating on IMDb. As with so many films, it was my father who pointed it out to me when it was shown on television in my early teens. If I remember the plot correctly, a band of drop-outs decides to create a new “far west” in a abandoned mine. Very funny.

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

Icons of erotic art #9

Princess X, used here on the cover of Peter Webb’s The Erotic Arts (1975).

Constantin Brâncuşi‘s Princess X (1916) [1] is a representation of a phallus, although the artist – similar to a ploy used by Magritte in The Treachery Of Images when he said: “Ceci n’est pas une pipe” – himself always contended that it depicted the “eternal feminine”. Brancusi’s contribution to the Paris Salon des Indépendants of 1920, it provoked a quite a furor and had to be withdrawn following the intervention of the police.

Please excuse the uneroticism of this work, it seems the realm of “erotic art” is littered with unerotics. To make it up to you, let me give you some new Yoshifumi Hayashi from the excellent blog Banana Hole (this NSFW post is ambiguously amusing/disturbing), and a previously published one of the same artist by the ever reliable @mateurdart.

Lastly, some eye candy by Hajime Sawatari here from this series by this blog.

Previous entries in Icons of Erotic Art here, and in a Wiki format here.

Carnography #4

No particular narrative …

A.-A. Préault, Tuerie (Slaughter)

Preault_Tuerie

 Antoine-Augustin Préault‘s  La Tuerie (The Killing) (1834) is a relief sculpture first exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1834. Its thematic violence and stylistic daring shocked conventional taste at the Salon, one of whose visitors characterized the work as an “incredible farrago of every horror, wretchedness, misery, extravagance, monstrosity.” Tuerie was supposedly admitted to the Salon of 1834 at the insistence of the academician Jean-Pierre Cortot. Since no particular narrative was associated with the work, it was perceived by contemporaries as gratuitous carnography.

See previous carnographies

Karlheinz Stockhausen (1928 – 2007)

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Sbs6wb2Fnc&]

Clickable version

Superb juxtapoem of image-to-music by Youtuber Zapple 101

Does anyone know which Karlheinz Stockhausen piece is on the audio track?

Update: regarding my previous question, the piece is “Mikrophonie 0.1”, here is more from Mikrophonie. (Studie II, 1954)

Eye candy #3

Moord in het Nudistenkamp

Moord in het Nudistenkamp (Eng: Murder at the Nudist Camp)

Honey West is a fictional character created by Gloria and Forest Fickling under the pseudonym “G.G. Fickling” and appearing in numerous mystery novels by the duo.

The character is notable as being one of the first female private detectives in popular fiction. She first appeared in the 1957 book This Girl for Hire and would appear in 10 novels before being retired in 1971. The character was also the basis for the short-lived TV series Honey West in the 1960s.

More Honey West here, from a fine collection of Dutch translations of detective novels. Probably the paratext (in this case the cover illustration) is better than the text itself.

Previously on Eye Candy.

Icons of erotic art #8

Zygotic Acceleration, Biogenetic, De-Sublimated Libidinal Model (Enlarged x 1000) (1995) [1] is a sculpture by Jake and Dinos Chapman. It depicts lifesize fibreglass mannequins of children with genital organs of both sexes attached to their faces. It was shown at the Sensation exhibition in 1997, along with Great Deeds Against the Dead.

Sexual organs attached to faces is something I have been pondering on for as long as I can remember. What would have been the solution of the human race if this had been the case? How would we have covered the “pubic” area? How would lovemaking have looked like? This work by the Chapmans is remarkable, as is much of their other work. No doubt they are one of the most interesting contemporary artists.

In case you have been wondering why I only link to the pictures in this series, instead of showing the artworks in-line, the answer is that I keep a strict copyright policy after having had a run-in with my local copyright enforcement agency, SABAM, about two years ago. Since then, I only publish artworks by artists who have been dead for more than seventy years. Such is the law in Belgium. Belgian copyright law is even so strict that it prohibits to show photographs of buildings.

I find the use of mannequins in contemporary art very appealing, other works which have used this form are Chair, Table and Hat Stand by Allen Jones and Great Deeds Against the Dead, also by the Chapmans.

Previous entries in Icons of Erotic Art here, and in a Wiki format here.

 

Icons of erotic art #7

Although French artist Francis Picabia’s work from the 1940s such as [1], [2], [3] and Woman with Bulldog [4]; which borrowed generously from soft-core pornography, is a much more likely candidate for the Icons of erotic art series, today I wish to celebrate Picabia’s entirely unerotic 1915 work: Portrait of an American Girl in the Nude[5], a drawing which depicts a spark plug supposedly representing Agnes Meyer. It is a satirical homage to the machine age and the American pin up girl.

Images sourced at Lemateurdart and K-Punk.

Previous entries in Icons of Erotic Art here, and in a Wiki format here.

This entry also counts as the 15th significant artwork of the 20th century.