We are beings of desire, Lacan said, and as such, incomplete. Our wish is to be object of desire, be recognized and completed by the Other, he placed another in the unconscious. Sartre also understood the desire as a lack only in the imaginary plane can be solved. Apropos of Flaubert concluded that in literary creation is where you can live a life of pure desire, dwelling among existences whose lack of organs make impossible […]
To be naked is to be deprived of our clothes, and the word implies some of the embarrassment most of us feel in that condition. The word «nude,» on the other hand, carries, in educated usage, no uncomfortable overtone. The vague image it projects into the mind is not of a huddled and defenseless body, but of a balanced, prosperous, and confident body: the body re-formed. (Kenneth Clark, Naked, nude and ideal form) From our […]
Miss Van’s dolls don’t require external mechanisms to move, don’t demand the male gaze to be defined, eroticism is born and dies in themselves. Masquerade lovers, they dabble with endless fugitives identities: nymphs or witches, showgirls or shepherdesses, sadistic countesses or lubricous girls… They started on the street, provoking passer-by with their slanted eyes, but soon percolated into galleries and museums. The CAC Malaga didn’t want to be outdone, inviting them to occupy its rooms. […]
Loving nature is outdated, thought the aristocrat Des Esseintes, who after wasting half of his fortune in worldly pleasures invested the rest in his artificial paradise away from the Parisian triviality. Mechanical fishes, monstrous hothouse flowers, a turtle with precious stones in the golden shell, a design to match the carpet. With this character, Joris-Karl Huysmans marked the zenith and the decline of decadence. The title of the novel, À rebours, summarizes his intention to […]
Since in the eighties contributed to forge what is known as Fura language, Marcel·lí Antunez Roca has continued bluring the boundaries between spectator and performer, between scenic language and visual arts, street and classical theatre, folk art and advanced technology. In their projects coexist the use of sophisticated interactives with experiences that keep intact the umbilical cord with his origins: the family butchery, the abattoir, village festivals…, as inheritance of a worldview linked to rural […]
The gay sauna, in a way, was born in gyms of ancient Greece, male socialization places where young people were trained in both physical exercise and spiritually. Athletics practiced naked (gymnos means nude) by young men with oiled bodies, with chiseled pectorals as Discophoros, admired by mentors (erastés) that would address their military, intellectual and sexual education. Gymnos, baths, palaestra, symposium … were the route gay friendly of the period, with the difference that they […]
Engraving and eroticism interlace their paths throughout art history: from I Modi illustrated by Aretino and Renaissance engraver Marcantonio to the twilight lust of Félicien Rops, or the least publicized etchings of Rembrandt (monks rapists, hot scenes in canopy beds…) without forgetting the Shunga woodblock prints of Edo period, excellent marriage of explicit sex and refinement. Refined and explicit also aims to be Alicia Burrieza’s porno chic rococo in these boudoir scenes series of eighteenth-century […]
Pre-Columbian codices report cosmogonies full of cruelty and eroticism, magic and transformations. Early interpretations, completely biased, of these pictograms came to us from the hosts of Hispanic conquerors, scandalized by polisexual divinity and phallic worship. In Mayan and Huasteca cultures, goddesses related to sexuality as Ixchel and Tlazolteotl were hermaphrodites. The second one incited to lust and drunkenness but was the assistant of women giving birth, healing, earth and moon deity. It was often represented […]
