Every stroke of paint is imbued with desire
Erotic art shows changing tide of sexual mores
The yearning to create is so forceful that it makes perfect sense that many artists equate the act of creation with the libido. Every sweep of charcoal, every stroke of paint and every strike of the chisel is imbued with desire.
The earliest depiction of a human figure ever discovered, the Venus of Hohle Fels (c 40,000 BC), is carved from mammoth i vory and endowed with generous breasts. Nicholas Conard, the American archaeologist who uncovered the object in 2008, declared the buxom figure to be “an extremely powerful depiction of the essence of being female”.
To trace the history of erotic art is to witness the changing tide of sexual mores and admissible lust in all its tragicomic manifestations. At certain repressive periods, the path to arousal is subtle and cloaked by metaphor; at more liberated times, the invitation to lust is wanton. But erotic art is ever part of our culture, even if the embodi- ment of our lust is a saint or mythical figure, inviting us to pretend that our interest lies in the narrative, rather than in the suggestive outline of breasts and buttocks.
Just as time- honoured a part of our culture are fierce discussions about the ethics of provoking desire. The debate over what constitutes pornography and its transcendental cousin, erotica, has raged since the emergence of philosophy and morality. Many artworks that are now considered masterpieces were originally denounced as obscene.
The statement “All art is erotic” is often attributed wrongly to Gustav Klimt. In fact, it comes from the architect Adolf Loos’s infamous essay Ornament and Crime ( 1908), which sought to denounce the “erotic insalubrity” of Klimt and other supposedly louche Viennese contemporaries. Klimt’s response was to sketch a lewd caricature of himself, Selfportrait as Genitalia ( c 1915, not far removed from schoolboy graffiti), and to carry on creating ravishing images of naked women.
Only a lazy critic would assume that what is explicit must also be pornographic — as if the mere act of exposing flesh can somehow corrupt the viewer. Eroticism is as much about what we do not see or know, as what we do. It prompts us to wonder about the dynamic between the creator and the subject, the finished work and the viewer who gazes at its revelations and is very probably aroused. Erotic art engages the imagination; it teases and seduces with all manner of mystery.
The first artwork I regist ered, years ago, as being erotic in its intent was Bronzino’s An Allegory with Venus and Cupid ( c 1545), which hangs in the National Gallery, in London. It has been described in the gallery’s own guide as “the most frankly erotic painting in the collection.” Only the most innocent viewer would fail to register the lascivious intent of the goddess in her son’s embrace, or the possessive clasp of Cupid’s hand on her breast. The painting is dense with metaphor and allusion, but few would deny that the top note is pure lust.
When the work was acquired by the gallery, in 1860, the director, Sir Charles Eastlake, ordered “restoration” work that obscured some titillating details. The painting’s power to perturb has remained undiminished: in 2003 a 36-year-old man was charged after slashing the artwork. Bronzino might have enjoyed what can be inferred: namely, that we forget at our peril that human attraction can unleash terrifying passions.
Before the age of psychoanalysis, the representations of the pleasures of the flesh were comparatively straightforward. There is a joyful abandon to the Hindu Kandariya Temple carvings, with their elaborate group couplings. They bear witness to an epoch in which prudery was meaningless. The secular murals in the Pompeii brothels are similarly unabashed.
By the time of the Renaissance, Christian strictures had made it difficult to celebrate erotic pleasure as a virtue on its own terms. But you could paint a naked saint in torment, or a glowing Madonna, or a nymph being ravished by a god. We can sense the delight many artists took in subtle acts of transgression. In Antonio Correggio’s 1532 painting, Io takes rather too much delight in being seduced by Jupiter in the shape of a cloud.
In the post- Freud world the i mage becomes concerned less with what the viewer feels they want than with what they fear they want. The obvious admiration in a luscious nude by François Boucher or in a creamy Renoir, is often missing. Sexual representation becomes darker and more complex. Two world wars and the rise of psychoanalysis suppressed the instinct for raw sentiment and sincerity ( in relation to sex, in any case) and promoted cynicism. Max Ernst’s The Fall of the Angel ( c 1923), with its tumbling lovers and sharp- angled backdrop, induces anxiety, rather than lust. Francis Bacon’s Two Figures ( c 1953) depicts a carnal wrestle that is painful in its animalistic frenzy.
More than half- a- century later, it seems absurd to try to stifle a visceral reaction. Why not allow that lust is part of the instinct a viewer demonstrates when gazing at Titian’s Venus of Urbino ( 1538)? The coquettish Venus marks a turning point. Her unashamed seducer’s gaze, turned directly on the viewer, announces that she is what she is: a grande horizontale. Other examples include Goya’s The Naked Maja ( c 1800) and Ingres’s La Grande Odalisque (1814). These artists painted naked flesh for naked flesh’s sake, and it is glorious to behold.