Erotic Art Friday - 05/23/08: Women on Naked Women
Note: Heads up to regular readers. This is going to be my last Erotic Art Friday for May and June this year, as I'm going to have to take off from art research to focus on an off-line writing project that is seriously horribly overdue. I'll also be blogging a bit more sporadically than usual, in hopes of both completing the writing project, starting on the next one and, of course, getting as much gardening in before the impossibly hot days of summer set in.
Today's show is devoted to female nude portraits by women painters. Most if not all of these painters may be new to you -- some are just starting out, some have begun to make inroads and are emerging as successful painters, and some are now gone but have left a legacy of somewhat obscure yet achieved work that continues to get attention.
I started this research wondering if a focus on female nudes by female artists would show me something different from female nudes by male artists. It did! But I'm not sure exactly what. Still, I noticed that after googling for a couple of hours I could predict, with reasonably good accuracy, which nudes would turn out to be the works of women and which would be done by men. One very obvious difference, of course, is that nudes by men on the whole are more sexually suggestive and tend to draw attention to specific areas of the female body (particularly breasts, with asses and legs close behind). Yet even when it came to simple figure studies where it almost appeared that the male and female artists could have been working off the same models or under the same teacher, there was some difficult-to-pinpoint fundamental difference between the way women perceive female nudity and the way men do.
Am I imagining all this? Look carefully at this grouping of women artists (from the early 20th century through today) who've created lasting impressions of the naked female body and tell me what you think.
Artists arranged alphabetically after the jump.
Angela Abbott
Elise Blumann
Delia Brown
CES
Natalie Yoshino Ellis
Mary Alice Evatt
Sarah Hyde
Marianne Johns
Peggy Kirk
Coco Larrain
Anna Lemnitzer
Erika Meriaux
Charlotte Orford
Ella Malek Orszanski
Catherine Oswald
Debbie Reed
Ora Ruven
Chantal Samson
Helma Schleipfer
Diane Walkey
Category: Sex and Arts
Posted on 5/24/2008 1:09:16 AM by Gloria Brame
Intimations of Naked Immorality
Now, where did I put that Erotic Art Show?
Category: Sex and Arts
Posted on 5/24/2008 1:08:25 AM by Gloria Brame
FOUND: Pulp art bondage
Just stumbled upon, looking for something else.
Highly recommended to those who like pulp art of the bondage kind.
This is Fastner & Larson!.
From their Bed & Bondage series:
Category: Sex and Arts
Posted on 5/23/2008 5:05:45 AM by Gloria Brame
Your right to read porn -- 2
Meanwhile, on our own shores, politicians in Indiana have created a law that will force anyone who sells sexually-explicit material to register with the state as a vendor of adult materials. You read that right. If a store carries books with sexual content, the state will now view that store as a smut merchant.
The law was announced back in March. Here are the salient details.
Sexual content law irks booksellers
A new state law that requires sellers of adult material to register with the state has Hoosier bookstore owners fuming about government censorship and threatening a legal challenge.
“This lumps us in with businesses that sell things that you can’t even mention in a family newspaper,” said Ernie Ford, owner of Fine Print Book Store in Greencastle.
Ford was talking about HEA 1042, which Gov. Mitch Daniels signed into law last week. He was one of 15 independent Indiana booksellers who signed a letter last week urging Daniels to veto the legislation.
The new law that takes effect July 1 requires businesses that sell sexually explicit material to pay a $250 fee and register with the secretary of state, which would then pass the information to municipal or county officials so they can monitor the businesses for potential violations of local ordinances.
The only thing more bizarre than this new law (I'm speechless at its insanity) is how hard it is to find reporting about it. Considering its legal and economic implications for booksellers and buyers throughout Indiana, you'd think there would be lots of hot debate raging in their media. Certainly the new law's draconian attitude towards sexual literature and its not-so-subtle pressure on booksellers and, by extention, publishers, to keep sexually-related material out of books is an act of censorship. Why aren't national media paying attention to this little sex-literature Taliban operating in Indiana?
Think about it. How can this be anything but disastrous? Will the chain store at your local mall have to register if they carry the works of, say, Flaubert, Henry Miller or Ann Rice? Will a mom-and-pop shop now have to identify as an adult vendor because they carry sex advice manuals, romance novels, and pot-boilers? Will bookstore owners have to read every new book they stock to be sure there are no accidental erections? What the flying fuck is going on in Indiana?
One glimmer of hope: the ACLU's fighting back. I found this little update on a legal forum:
dated: May 7, 2008
The American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana and attorneys for several national organizations representing booksellers filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court today seeking an injunction barring enforcement of a new state law which requires businesses that sell sexually explicit material to register with the state....
Ken Falk, legal director for the ACLU of Indiana, said the law is overly broad, too vague as to who must register and violates the First Amendment.
Falk stressed the groups filing the suit do not represent adult bookstores. They include businesses that sell popular books for children and adults, as well as others that deal in arts, including the Indianapolis Museum of Art and the Indianapolis Downtown Artists and Dealers Association.
Anyone with more info on this legislation or better interpretations of how it will impact Indiana booksellers, please comment or email. I'd really like to keep an eye on what happens here.
Category: Sex Laws and Crimes
Posted on 5/23/2008 5:04:49 AM by Gloria Brame
Your right to read porn -- 1
If trends continue, your right to read porn, and the type of porn you are permitted to look at, is going to be so compromised as to turn everyone with kinky interests into a criminal.
Censorship seems to be on the rise both in the US and the UK, with yet more legislation to, once again, try and legislate morality. What a waste of time and tax-payer money, what a hollow gesture and what a nasty way to perpetuate ignorance and prejudice against sexual minorities. We all know censorship does not work. We all know that trying to curtail sex does not stop anything but sends it further underground. We also know that there is nothing wrong with kinky material in the first place, except in the minds of sanctimonious twats who equate sex with sin.
As far as I'm concerned, this is nothing more than politicians pandering to the lowest common denominators -- mass hysteria, public shame, and the need for scapegoats -- to gain popularity. There's no doubt in my mind that some of the people writing and pushing this legislation are themselves consumers of the very stuff they are outlawing. We've seen it happen too many times already in the US to be fooled by the moralists with boy scout faces who say "do as I say, not as I do." Mark Foley. Elliot Spitzer. Inter way too many alia.
I blogged this story a while back, but Mike sent me a link to an update. This legislation is certain to case a big, icy chill upon all publishers of, and audiences for, so-called deviant/perverse sexual materials, both in the UK and perhaps beyond its shores.
When does kinky porn become illegal?
A bill outlawing the possession of "extreme pornography" is set to become law next week. But many fear it has been rushed through and will criminalise innocent people with a harmless taste for unconventional sex.
Under the new rules, criminal responsibility shifts from the producer - who is responsible under the OPA - to the consumer.
But campaigners say the new law risks criminalising thousands of people who use violent pornographic images as part of consensual sexual relationships.
Here's a list of what kind of porn will now be explicitly outlawed by this legislation:
As defined by the new Criminal Justice Bill:
An act which threatens or appears to threaten a person's life
An act which results in or appears to result in serious injury to a person's anus, breasts or genitals
An act which involves or appears to involve sexual interference with a human corpse
A person performing or appearing to perform an act of intercourse or oral sex with an animal
First off -- don't you just love the way people always group SMers with the people who molest corpses and abuse animals? Such an attractive comparison, isn't it, with its underlying implication that if you like it rough or fetishy in bed you are, by nature, a criminal. Are these people really living in the 21st century or did they pass through some time warp on the Victorian Sex Time/Space Continuum? The fact that SM occurs between two consenting adults, while necrophilia and bestiality involve partners who cannot give consent, doesn't even seem to register on their consciences.
Next, notice that nothing has to actually cause harm: they only have to "appear" to do so. Which, I think, makes this bill an utter joke that will tie up the British courts with ludicrous testimony. There are undoubtedly those who would swear by the Bible that a spanking could result in serious injury. Then there are those who are sane. Oh, who, who will win? The hysterics or the voices of reason? Stay tuned for a test case of this stupidly crazy new law.
Category: Sex Laws and Crimes
Posted on 5/23/2008 5:03:52 AM by Gloria Brame
Even the Moche knew how to have fun
Category: Sex and Culture
Posted on 5/23/2008 5:02:56 AM by Gloria Brame
Introducing Mr. Yosuke Nakamura
Love this little story in today's news about an African Grey who escaped from his cage and ended up on a neighbor's roof, where cops captured him. The cops were trying to figure out where he came from when the bird decided to fess all to the staff at the vet hospital where he was being sheltered.
"I'm Mr. Yosuke Nakamura," the bird told the veterinarian. The parrot also provided his full home address, down to the street number, and even entertained the hospital staff by singing songs.