erotica

20-10-08 - Having recently been to Europe I am pleased to add the following pictures of the Barberini Faun, taken at the Glyptothek, Munich. (See previous post at Satyr 1)

Pierre Albert-Birot, autoportrait, 1916
Dessin de couverture de L’Homme Coupe

Wikipedia: Pierre Albert-Birot (stub)

Short biography (French)

Sound recordings: Pierre Albert-Birot

Website devoted to Albert-Birot (very slow to load)

Les Soliloques Napolitains

Title page

(click here for enlargement of illustration)

Les Soliloques Napolitains, by Pierre Albert-Birot and Jean Lurçat, is a short book of illustrated poems. There are eight illustrations in total by Lurçat including the cover illustration, and sixteen poems by Albert-Birot, which really form one continuing phantasy of a woman as she stimulates herself - at first with her imagination and fingers, and then with her imagination and a dildo. Finally she comes - indicated by lines radiating from her vagina like the beams of light from the sun, or the sparkle of a jewel. The book bears the date 1822, but it makes no attempt to imitate the style of 1822. It was published in or around 1922.

Albert-Birot lived from 1876 to 1967 - hence I am frugal with the illustrations!

For a while there will be a photograph of another drawing from Les Soliloques Napolitains here.

The First Book of Grabinoulor

Dalkey Archive Press - Grabinoulor

There is little I can say about Grabinoulor that is not said in this review.

Here is a section of text from Grabinoulor (trans by Barbara Wright) from Review of Contemporary Fiction Spring 2007, Vol. 27 Issue 1, p93-95. The excerpt, from which this small part was taken, runs to around 1250 words.

On a shut-in November evening Grabinoulor’s feet were sploshing about in the Paris mud and that evening he distressed his shoes no end they were quite astonished at having to plough through such black mud when such white snow was falling for Grabinoulor’s shoes are full of logic even when his feet are inside them nevertheless although he was perfectly conscious–which is something that happens even to people who are not in the least conscientious–of how humiliating this state was for his shoes and indirectly for himself too he couldn’t do anything that evening other than place his feet on the ground as there was so little space between the earth and the sky and that was why even though he was Grabinoulor it took him a long time to reach the theatre which high-flown declamators were supposed to transport with all its listeners to the environs of the infinite but a gentleman with a nose a mouth round cheeks spectacles ears and a fine mirror-like pate simply by speaking brought the ceiling down on to the head of everybody sitting in the theatre and it was Grabinoulor who was the most inconvenienced by this…

ÇA NE SE FAIT PAS - IT ISN’T DONE

By Pierre Albert-Birot

This image is from Manifesto: A Century of Isms by Mary Ann Caws at Google Books. The image is at p144, but I have linked to p143 for another Albert-Birot work.

Figure of Magdalenian man at Ribeira de Piscos

The above figure is discussed in an article by J. Angulo Cuesta and M. García Diez entitled ‘Diversity and meaning of Palaeolithic phallic male representations in Western Europe‘. (See also article ‘Cave paintings show aspects of sex beyond the reproductive‘.) The figure is said to be ejaculating.

In his book The Nature of Paleolithic Art Dale Guthrie discusses rock drawings of this kind (though not necessarily this drawing) as a kind of graffiti. An article at livescience, ‘Ancient Cave Art Full of Teenage Graffiti‘, provides a brief introduction to Guthrie’s book.

The art of ejaculation continues to be celebrated at Garmskiss, and, in an entry at the blog {feuilleton}, John Coulthart has gathered together some great pictures of art, both old and new, that depict ejaculation in all its glory.

In the meantime graffiti has moved on. The new graffiti can be seen at the site Wooster Collective.

On cave art more generally, Matthias Schulz observes in ‘Pornography in Clay‘ at Spiegel Online:

The walls of the La Marche cave in western France are literally blanketed with erotic images, 14,000-year-old drawings reminiscent of the Kamasutra. One image of a head plunging between a woman’s thighs seems to portray oral sex. Another shows a standing couple, their bodies entwined, while the man’s penis penetrates his partner.

Nowadays we are more likely to find such depictions in books, films and on the internet than on the secret walls of our cities - with the notable exception of the backs of toilet doors!

For more prehistoric erotic art fun see also Adonis from Chernitz / Lake Constance. Also see Historia del arte erotico.

Satyr - Barberini Faun

(courtesy manofroma)

20-10-08 - See a rather more elaborate display of this sculpture at Satyr 2.

I am not prone to joining admiration societies. But I will make an exception here. Sexisthenewblog not only has a great collection of sexy stuff, but it is accompanied by brief, witty, and intelligent commentary. Great stuff. Lots of links, lots of fun.

Any site that draws our attention to the fine art of erotic falconry must be good.

The other sexy blogs on my blogroll (<—– over there) are jahsonic, rare erotica and eroticalee. More on these fab sites another day.

Of course, see my erotica links for more sexy web resources.

Some highlights of sex is the new blog:

erotic falconry

doll love

delta of venus

Jupiter and Io, Correggio, 1531

One demure website suggests that in this painting Jupiter, who is depicted as a cloud, is ‘stealing a kiss‘ from Io. If he is, his kiss has landed just beyond that thigh.

In fact, vaporous clouds have a knack of penetrating into every little nook and cranny. A cloud in the right place can be a wonderful vehicle for the imagination, as any of us who have stared up into the sky can attest.

The story depicted in the painting is from Ovid’s Metamorphosis.

Read a plain English version of the story here.

Read a translation of the story here. (Scroll to Book I: 587-600) This version gives you the best idea of what is really going on. As usual, the classical authors are the least abashed about these things…

Read a 19th century version of the fable in Ovid’s Metamorphosis here. Open one of the downloads and go to fable 13. (Trans: Riley, Henry Thomas, 1816-1878)

See a brief rundown of how the various tales in the book hang together here.

See a little about Correggio’s painting here.

Read about Ovid here.

I’m not sure if this presentation at You Tube will last - I’m not sure of their rules. However the video has been there for 8 months or so, so I guess it will remain. [Update 28-2-08: dammit - gone already!] What a great way to present erotica from the 19th century. A really good video from xlaborda. Great choice of music too. Why is it that these days I find all my new music discoveries attached to sexy videos? Music is sex for the ears I guess, and some people have the knack of attaching sexy music to sexy images. [The music was Laurie Anderson, ‘Free Fall’ on 1994 album Bright Red.]

D’Hancarville - Monumens de la vie privée des douze Césars

Go to links page for other D’Hancarville illustrations.

Fronticeplate to XII Caesars.

Thumbnails link to a moderate sized picture, around 500k.

‘High quality‘ links to a higher resolution version of approximately 2mb.

Frontice: High quality here.

Title page

1

2: High quality

3: High quality

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11 High quality

12 High quality

13

14

15 High quality

16 High quality

17

18

19 High quality

20 High quality

21 High quality

22 High quality

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24

25

26

27 High quality

28

29

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31

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36 High quality

37

38

39

40 High quality

41

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44

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46 High quality

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50

Pirate editions

Many pirate editions of d’Hancarville’s works were produced.
The following are a sample from a pirate edition of 24 engravings. The high quality versions run to 6mb in most cases.

Frontice. High quality

8 High quality (see #16 above)

10 High quality (see #21 above)

11 High quality (see #22 above)

12 High quality (see #27 above)

20 High quality (see#40 above)

22 (see #44 above)

Jean Genet’s only film, Un Chant d’Amour, is available at the website of the World Museum of Erotic Art - Amsterdam (AMEA). This is a pretty remarkable piece, particularly for anyone who has already been entranced by Genet’s writing. In fact it is a ‘must see’. The film was made in 1950. There are some comments about the film at the Internet Movie Database (IMDb).

One thing I think fairly central to Genet, which seems to have been overlooked in the comments at IMDb, is that the imaginative worlds of the prisoners are grander than the somewhat petty, uniform-bound, reality of the prison guard. The confines of the cell creates a humanity more intense than the freedom of the world. If I remember correctly, in one of Genet’s books - Our Lady of the Flowers or Miracle of the Rose - a prisoner does see the world in the sparkle of a grain of sand.

Apparently the film was made with no soundtrack. While that may be so, I like the music that has been applied to the film on the version at AMEA. However, if you want the full intention of the film-maker, I suppose you could turn the volume down.

Later: Now here is a factoid of interest: Bowie’s Jean Jeanie = Jean Genet. See here for the explanation.

dancing

One thing which is important in Un Chant d’Amour is dancing. The erotic potential of dancing, while self-evident, seems to me to have been somewhat overlooked in much moving image culture (i.e. movies, videos), though it does feature, often in a somewhat overdrawn manner, in many music videos.

Of course there are some memorable moments, such as the fantastic scene in Pulp Fiction where Uma Thurman and John Travolta hit the boards. This was inspired by the dance sequence in Jean-Luc Godard’s Bande à part.

But at Xtube there are two dance sequences (hernandez99 and milk_boy) that I think have a wonderful eroticism, though somewhat overt, I guess! Note that there appears to be a Spanish element in both… Perhaps the charm of these videos is partly that they are amateur. I’m not sure I would respond the same way to a professional doing the same thing. Is dance so truthful its eroticism can’t be faked? Does any film match these amateur videos? It’s a matter of opinion, I guess - but it is a testament to Tarantino, Travolta and Thurman that their sequence works so well. By the way these videos can be pretty explicit, but it is not the overtly explicit part that I am referring to in this discussion.

If you find all this a bit fishy, see this.

And here is a sexy dance webcam sequence.

The music for milk_boy is Vuluke Khall (Instrumental Version) - DJ Bootsie, on the album Wakka Chikka Wakka Chikka - music for porn! (Thanks to milk_boy for this info.)

The music for hernandez99 is Free Fall on album Bright Red by Laurie Anderson.

Oh, now I have started on this little frolic, here is another fun dance sequence:

Hellphone: it’s not really erotic, but it is fun!

The pictures you see below are early 19C pornography, by Rowlandson. Francis Place wrote a little about how pornography was sold around 1780s, even to children.

Francis Place was born on November 3, 1771, and died January 1, 1854. He became wealthy from his tailoring business and devoted the latter part of his life to politics. Here he writes of the pornography that was available in London in the 1770s and 80s:

Obscene prints were sold at all the principal Print Shops and at most others. At Roach’s – in Russell Court where Play books and school books and stationary were sold, Mrs Roach used to open a portfolio to any boy and to any maid servant, who came to buy a penny or other book or a sheet of paper, the portfolio contained a multitude of obscene prints – some coloured some, not, and asked them if they wanted some pretty pictures, and she encouraged them to look at them. And this was done by many others. This was common to other shops (Add.MS 36625, f. 8)

Page 51 The Autobiography of Francis Place, ed by Mary Thale, Cambridge University Press, 1972.

A book which covers some of this territory is:

City of Laughter: Sex and Satire in Eighteenth-Century London by Vic Gatrell

Miscellaneous pictures at Wikipedia.

Variety of themes at artandpopularculture, particularly history of erotic depictions.

See the essay Romanticism, Materialism, and the Origins of Modern Pornography by Bradford K. Mudge in which the following pictures are used, but note that these are from the early 19C - click on picture for full size version:

Above: Rowlandson illustrations for early 1800s edition of Jean Barrin’s 1683 Venus in the Cloister.

Rowlandson - Family on a Journey Laying the Dust

Rowlandson - The Ride to Rumford

Rowlandson - The Jugglers

Rowlandson - Lonesome Pleasures

Rowlandson - The Harem

Rowlandson - The Pasha

Rowlandson - Cunnyseurs

Rowlandson - Pygmalion

Illustration from Juliette by the Marquis de Sade.