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 setting, resolved combining techniques of etching, aquatint and drypoint.
We arrive to Versailles of Louis XIV by the back door, we catch out him and his nephew Felipe de Orleans distributing between them holes of Madame Montespan. With his look of shipwrecked pirate, little remains of elegant aspect of the Sun King left to us by the camera painters.
The king lovers, far from being jealous from each other, delight in lesbian explorations or lay in chaises longues caressing priapic phalluses. Ithyphallic candlesticks illuminate the palatial lounges, but worship to phallus isn’t as a symbol of fertility but joy.
Amazons, jugglers, dominatrix, onanistic, zoophilic … parade under the box seats of opera houses, are hidden or exhibed themselfs behind velvet draperies. Antique frames dignify the scenes.
Alicia is not interested in royal jobberies, in private and public lives of those courtiers who reigned before French Revolution burst the bubble of hedonistic unreality floating in it. Nor is her intended caricaturing marquises and rulers as did the Becquer with the Bourbons, but merely extract the lubricious juice of a twilight period, an ode to rococo spirit, fantasy, fetish, libertine.
The exhibition can be seen until June at the Madrid cocktail bar Santa Maria, former brothel, remodeled with vintage elegance.