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

Flake, Weiss, Klossowski, de Noailles

Der Marquis de Sade translated by Pierre Klossowski
from Otto Flake’s 1930 German original.

Der Marquis de Sade is said to have been one of the sources on which Peter Weiss based his play Marat/Sade.

Flake thanks Maurice Heine, Sade connoisseur and Vicomte de Noailles, owner of the original manuscript.

Marie-Laure and Charles

Arthur Anne Marie Charles (26 September 1891- 28 April 1981), better known as Vicomte de Noailles married Marie-Laure Bischoffsheim in 1923. They were famous art patrons and owned Villa Noailles built by Robert Mallet-Stevens between 1923 and 1933 in Hyères in the South of France.

Marie-Laure

 Marie-Laure, Vicomtesse de Noailles (31 October, 1902 – 29 January, 1970), was one of the 20th century‘s most daring and influential patrons of the arts, noted for her associations with Salvador Dalí, Balthus, Jean Cocteau, Man Ray, Luis Bunuel, Francis Poulenc, Jean-Michel Frank and others as well as her tempestuous life and eccentric personality. She and her husband financed Ray’s film Mystery of the Chateau of Dice (1929), Poulenc’s Aubade (1929), Bunuel and Dali’s film L’Age d’Or (1930), and Cocteau’s The Blood of a Poet (1930).

My girls and fashion

Bonnie, Fara, Fee

Today was my introduction to the work of Tim Walker, which is wonderfully theatrical, fantastique and narrative, without seeming far-fetched. The current issue of Stern Fotografie has a special on his work. Here is a preview:

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).

Little Caesar 7

Little Caesar 7

Dennis Cooper says:

“I think most of you know I used to edit a literary/ art/ music zine back in the late 70s and early 80s called Little Caesar. Issue #7 was a kind of unofficial Andy Warhol themed issue. I got Warhol superstar Gerard Malanga to give me a little interview he’d done with Warhol in the 60s and write something about Nico. Lou Reed gave me a long poem he’d written. Taylor Mead gave a long piece of writing. I did a special section on my all time favorite Warhol superstar Eric Emerson, who’d died not long before I put the issue together. The section on him included pix, writings, excerpts from his diary, and a transcript of his amazing scene in ‘Chelsea Girls‘ Below I’ve posted scans of select pages from the issue. This will be the first of a series of posts concentrating on various Little Caesar products.” Dennis Cooper in 30 pages of Little Caesar # 7

Nu Groove

[Youtube=http://youtube.com/watch?v=A67ibaUPWtY]

Via Woebot comes this Nu Groove documentary. Pretty representative for the Nu Groove sound is Bobby Konders: The Poem.

Woebot also points us to this Lee Perry interview. From that interview:

Viceland: What are your thoughts on the war in Iraq?

Lee Perry: The war in Iraq was ordained to be and Iraq was supposed to be Babylon, but Mr Bush don’t want Iraq to have the power to know that Iraq is Babylon. Nothing go wrong, it ordained to be so. Otherwise Saddam Hussein will end up being the destruction and Bush would prefer to be the destruction. Babylon was in Iraq, now Babylon in America.