Category Archives: love

Icons of erotic art #18

Via the newly discovered blog aileron comes the film The Lost Secret of Catherine the Great by Peter Woditsch and Sophie Schoukens.

I had first heard about the erotic furniture of Catherine the Great a couple of years ago and even traced the existence of the documentary by Woditsch, but had never actually seen the pieces of furniture that presumedly belonged to Catherine before the collection was destroyed during WWII. Catherine was a strong and independent woman (it helped that she was an empress) who throughout her long reign, took many lovers, often elevating them to high positions for as long as they held her interest, and then pensioning them off with large estates and gifts of serfs. She also cultivated Voltaire, Diderot and D’Alembert — all French philosophes encyclopedists who later cemented her reputation in their writings.

Note: In the erotic furniture category belong art works such as Chair, Table and Hat Stand by Allen Jones and Les Krims‘s Heavy Feminist with Wedding Cake [1] (1970).

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

Icons of erotic art #17

Sensuality (1891) - Franz von Stuck

Sensuality (1891) – Franz von Stuck

Although a mediocre painter at best and deservedly one of the minor figures in European fin de siècle Symbolism, there are two paintings by Franz Von Stuck that I like: Salome, which I “exhibited” here, and Sensuality (pictured above) . In Sensuality, the image of the serpent as phallus is left in little doubt and shows an enormous python-like creature passing between the legs of a nude woman. The serpent’s head rests on the woman’s right shoulder; both the serpent and the woman gaze at the viewer. There are obvious connections to the tentacle eroticism trope.

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

Spinoza and bondage (“He swore he’d never touch her again”)

Of Human Bondage He Swore

“He swore he’d never touch her again and then she whispered his name and he was lost” -film tagline

Of Human Bondage 1964

“When a man is prey to his emotions, he is not his own master, but lies at the mercy of fortune: so much so, that he is often compelled, while seeing that which is better for him, to follow that which is worse. ” —Ethics of Human Bondage or the Strength of the Emotions, Spinoza

I believe my first exposure to radical Dutch enlightenment philosopher Spinoza was via Gilles Deleuze or via the “perishable monuments” of Thomas Hirschhorn which I discovered in Germany at documenta in 2002.

Via Guy de Maupassant and William Somerset Maugham‘s Of Human Bondage I discovered this bit on human bondage.

In the 1660s, the Dutch philosopher Spinoza writes, in his Ethics of Human Bondage or the Strength of the Emotions (a part of his Ethics), that the term “bondage” relates to the human infirmity in moderating and checking the emotions.

Erotic (un)possibilities in an Antioch world

Over the past few days I’ve been mulling over Siri Hustvedt title essay A Plea for Eros which is a rumination on the effability and ineffability of sex in connection with the Antioch Ruling. Since January 1, 2006, the Antioch College in Ohio, United States, requires students to gain consent at each stage of a sexual encounter.

Hustvedt’s essay on the unreliability and ambiguity of language in relation to sexual ethics reminded me of Georges Bataille when he said that “sex begins where speech [or words] ends”, a statement I tend to agree with.

[Youtube=http://youtube.com/watch?v=q7SNOX9W3WY]

Emotionally charged scene in A History of Violence (French version)

Which brings me to Cronenberg penultimate film A History of Violence, the Straw Dogs of the 2000s. It is the story of Tom Stall, his wife Edie and their two children. Tom is a good-hearted impostor with organized crime roots. After his family finds out his true identity they initially reject him. He is finally accepted in a superb silent scene which is a celebration of the nuclear family; but not until after an emotionally charged fight between Tom and Edie followed by rough sex on the stairs. Notice the absence of adherence to the Antioch Ruling.

However, as Hustvedt points out at the beginning of her essay, an Antioch world can be full of erotic possibilities.

Imagine asking a female love interest “May I touch your left breast?”; patiently and eagerly waiting for the answer.

Dutch director Warmerdam’s cult film Little Tony predates Hustdvedt’s sentiments by 8 years. In this tragicomedy the erotic possibilities of explicitness in sexual encounters is illustrated by a key scene in which Brand, the protagonist illiterate farmer asks Lena, the school teacher who has been hired by Brand’s wife, “May I see your left breast?“. After a putative “Why?” by Lena, Brand answers: “So I can remain curious about the right one.”

History of Violence flotsam: Steven Shaviro gives a roundup of cinerati such as k-punk, girish twice, Chuck, Jodi — followed by k-punk’s reply and Jodi’s counter-reply — Jonathan Rosenbaum and his own view here.

My son! My beloved! Are you hurt?

[Youtube= http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZI8j-SjzUxo]

“The Mother’s Heart” by Yaqob Al-Naseem

The Mother’s Heart is a heart-wrenching tale of motherly love. Its theme has cropped up in an eponymous novel by József Kiss and La Glu, a tale by Jean Richepin. It is probably an old Arabian tale.

 

Poem:

Once upon a time a man lured an ignorant boy, with his money to get his desire ..
He said : “bring me your mother’s heart boy, and you shall have jewels and dibs and pearls” ..
So he went and he thrust a dagger in her chest, got the heart out and went back from the way he came ..
But he was in such a rush that caused him to fall down, so the groveled heart trundled on the ground ..
At that point the mother’s heart called for him : “My son! My beloved! Are you hurt?”
This voice despite its tenderness, was the heaven’s torrential anger upon this boy ..
Than he retreated to the heart to wash it, with the water that his eyes poured out ..
Telling the heart : “O heart avenge me, and never forgive me that my crime was unforgivable” ..
Then he took his dagger to stick it in his own chest, and remain an example to those who can see ..
At that point the mother’s heart called for him: “O Son stop! and don’t strike my heart two times in a row ..

Related post Don’t Let Another Man Kiss You

Streetcar through the eyes of Stella

Streetcar

Kim Hunter (Stella) takes Stanley (Marlon Brando) back.

A Streetcar Named Desire is a 1947 play written by Tennessee Williams. It was both a critical and box office success. The story concerns a sexual triangle of Blanche DuBois—a pretentious, fading beauty; macho alpha male Stanley Kowalski, a rising member of the industrial, inner-city immigrant class; and Stella Kowalski, the submissive sister of Blanche.

Stella is a victim of domestic violence and often finds herself taking refuge at her neighbour Eunice’s home, only to return to Stanley when he cries for her to take him back. Blanche, who has arrived for a “visit”, is horrified by her sister’s situation and tries to convince Stella to divorce Stanley, but Stella refuses, bound to Stanley by sexual attraction and her pregnancy with his child.

The night Stella is having their baby, Stanley drunkenly happens upon Blanche and rapes her. This sends Blanche completely over the edge into a nervous breakdown, and Stanley forces Stella to send her off to a mental institution.

In some versions of A Streetcar Named Desire, Stella leaves Stanley after she finds out about the rape.

Woman makes love to cloud, divine jealousy

Io by Correggio

Jupiter and Io (c. 1530) – Correggio

It would appear that the dynamics of the two married protagonists of Greek and Roman mythology Zeus (Jupiter) and Hera (Juno) is one of a jealous wife chasing a promiscuous husband.

In order to conceal his escapades, Zeus constantly makes use of his shapeshifting abilities. Thus, he transforms himself into a cloud (he hid himself within a cloud with Io), a golden shower with Danae, a swan with Leda, a bull with Europa, depending on whether he needed to be charming and beautiful or powerful and frightening in his conquest.

See also: divine jealousy

 

Why women love apes

Waarom vrouwen van apen houden

Why women love apes by Stine Jensen

Dedicated to my friend M______. A belated happy birthday.

Twentieth-century western culture is full of examples of erotic relationships between dark-haired apes and blond women: there is a striking connection between woman and ape not only in movies and novels, but also in scientific practice of primatology. In this fascinating study, literary theorist Stine Jensen shows how the roles of ape, woman and man, too, have changed fundamentally throughout the last century.

For example, the famous film classic King Kong from 1933, was born of the nineteenth-century obsession with the rape-ape, but at the same time it presented the ape as an ambiguous creature – both malicious and gentle. Thereafter, mostly female researchers, such as Jane Goodall, Dian Fossey and Biruté Galdikas, ensured that the image of the primate changed from killer king to gentle giant. In their endeavours to make primates seem milder these women pushed such issues as the killing of younger troop members and other violence within ape society into the background.

See previous posts here and here.

 

Cherchez la femme #1

Colette Peignot

Unidentified photo of Colette Peignot sourced here.

“I believe in our life together . . . I believe in it the way I believe in everything that brought us together: in the most profound depths of your darkness and of mine. I revealed everything about myself to you. Now that it gives you pleasure to laugh at it, to soil it––this leaves me as far away from anger as it is possible to be. Scatter, spoil, destroy, throw to the dogs all that you want: you will never affect me again. I will never be where you think you find me, where you think you’ve finally caught me in a chokehold that makes you come. . . . As for me I am beyond words, I have seen too much, known too much, experienced too much for appearance to take on form. You can do anything you want, I will not be hurt.” Colette Peignot in a letter to Georges Bataille via Laure: The “True Whore” as Muse by Jason DeBoer

Laure [Colette Peignot] began her affair with Bataille in 1934, and it proved to become one of the more tormented love stories of modern letters. Their correspondence reveals a mutually influential sharing of transgressive ideas: she was the woman of action, and he was the man versed in scholarly knowledge. Her uncompromising, anguished lifestyle proved very inspirational to Bataille, especially Laure’s own infatuation with the sacred and communication, two important ideas in Bataille’s later work. —source

Colette was born 104 years ago today.