Grand bath at Bursa (1885) by Jean-Léon Gérôme The Turkish Bath (1862) – Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres In the Tepidarium (1881) by Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema I quote from my text on Ingres’s Turkish Bath, but the validity is for all three paintings: When Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, director of the French Académie de peinture […]
Dedicated to the phrase: “his hands were all over me.” My guess is that many of you will be familiar with Hokusai’s print, but far less of you with the very similarly themed work by Rops. Enjoy. The Dream of the Fisherman’s Wife, an erotic woodcut made circa 1820 by Hokusai La Pieuvre/Octopus ()- Félicien […]
Jeff Bark (born 1963) “Untitled (Dusk)” (2004–05), of the Abandon series, provided me with an immediate frisson. It laterally depicts a kneeling woman, her hands stretched out over a sofa, something that appears to be a whip to her side. The colors are very suede-like. “The Belt“, a short story by Italian author Alberto Moravia, […]
As we have learnt from the first nine issues in this series, in the nebulous realm of erotic art, uneroticism runs rampant. Not with the photos I am about to present. NSFW, previously unpublished online, here is Unica Zürn photographed by Hans Bellmer [1]. Previous entries in Icons of Erotic Art here, and in a […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
The work I present today is erotic and sad at the same time. Its eroticism is implied by its transgression, most transgressions are erotic by nature. For its sadness, you only need to look at the facial expressions of Valie, the “toucher” and the bystander. Valie Export‘s Tapp- und Tast-Kino (“Touch Cinema”) a piece of […]
Today I present the 2006 painting Rotterdam by American artist John Currin. As I’ve explained before, most works of erotic art aren’t really erotic at all in the strictest sense. The strictest sense being that the works actually sexually arouse you. Today’s work is truly erotic. This also and inevitably means that it borders on the […]
Pornokrates (1879) – Félicien Rops Few things are sexier than a blindfolded woman. I was 20 or 21, I was in Brussels with Ilse and her friends. We were — I think — in the Agora galleries. Suddenly I spotted this painting on a poster on a shop door. I was stunned. The blindfold, the […]