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Romano had trained under the Renaissance master Raphael, many of whose more widely known works Raimondi also engraved. Lucrezia Borgia, the daughter of Pope Alexander VI, is given particular attention. Lucrezia is accused of is committing incest with her brother Cesare, and with her father, but it is commonly believed that that was a slander by her first husband, Giovanni Sforza, whom she married in 1493. The marriage was a political one, helping Alexander forge powerful ties with his uncle, the Duke of Milan, and she was just thirteen while Giovanni was twenty-six. Enemies of the influential family lapped up the incest stories, and rumours about Lucrezia’s general sexual behaviour were rife. The giant central form in this painting is one of Dalí’s signature, flaccid self-portraits, seen most famously in the foreground of
Sardax’s specialities are a conventionally figurative technique combined with an unbounded imagination. Though he has only illustrated two books, The Art of Sardax (Erotic Print Society, 2006) and his own translation of Leopold von Sacher-Masoch’s Venus in Furs (Stiletto, 2013), his artwork has featured in numerous specialist magazines and his commissions, many from working dominatrixes, have reached an enormous international audience. hardly raising eyebrows these days. But what about those works whose subjects slid right past first base (and sometimes even second and third)? These ten head-scratching artworks, excerpted from Phaidon’s new Every bid submitted is treated as a maximum bid. You should always bid the maximum you are willing to Purely for myself, I have chosen to paint women in an almost mythical setting – sometimes floating in the air, as I sometimes do in dreams. Trees have always turned me on, as I think has been reflected in a lot of my work to date. Any excuse and I bring a tree into the scene! More recently I have started to paint portraits of actual trees in my area. Some of the older specimens have a powerful presence, and I try to show my personal connection with them as well as revealing their radiance and majesty. And the publication which hit that sweet spot in 1979 was Miss Sadie Stern’s Monthly. There it was, sitting on the top shelf, willing me to explore what it offered. In hindsight all the models were rather tired-looking and disengaged, but it didn’t matter; it was all so new and rare, and I was young. Sadie Stern only appeared once a month, so I reread every issue again and again.where Nauman is shown spurting water from his mouth—are simple and witty, whereas others investigate less comfortable experiences, including endurance and claustrophobia. How has getting older and becoming more mature influenced your thoughts about what older people can usefully learn and experiment with in the area of intimacy and the life erotic? Over the last fifteen years most of my work has come from commissions. I have designed numerous bookplates for private collectors. This was a world I knew nothing about. Who these days thinks of commissioning their own little bookplate to paste into the frontispiece of a cherished book? Now collectors go to world-wide Ex Libris gatherings where they buy, sell or swap to enhance their own collections. As far as I know, no one puts them into actual books any more. Tree Meditation How did it all start? For some it started very early, but for me it was a lightbulb moment at the relatively old age of eighteen. Browsing the top shelf in a London shop, my eyes lit upon my first femdom magazine – it sent a shiver down my spine, something strange but delicious at the same time.
In a career spanning more than four decades, the London-based artist Sardax has earned a well-deserved reputation as one of the world’s best-known contemporary illustrators of what has become known as femdom, short for female dominance. Though the term was only first recorded in 1986, the concept and practice are as old as human imagination, where mistresses, madams and dominatrixes are a constant theme in erotic literature and illustration. While many concupiscent images relocate their sensuality on to the handling of paint, or displace
it into surrogate objects within the picture – foamy seas, cascading hair, writhing putti – this drawing
by Henry Fuseli is firmly anchored within the realm of nineteenth-century erotica. In this pencil and watercolor sketch, three women couple with a prostrate man, his head hidden between the thighs of the woman on the right. The four bodies form a pyramid; the figure at the apex lowers herself on to the erection of their common lover, while the third figure assists by holding his penis. The women’s clearly evident pubic hair and brazen sexual appetites suggest that they are prostitutes. Their elaborate hairdos corroborate that through a link to earlier works in Fuseli’s Whatever the historical truths, Katharina Kranichfeld sees many parallels between the experience of Lucrezia Borgia, her own experiences of sexual abuse, and the way that facts and rumours around the misuse of power are still rife today. This powerful series of etchings and paintings, made in 2010–11, is one of her most striking works. We show here the coloured versions, where the pale turquoise of a naked Lucrezia is contrasted with the purples and reds of church and court, the uncoloured etchings, and the paintings from the same series. Portrait of a Courtesan as Flora (assumed to be a portrait of Lucrezia Borgia), Bartolomeo Veneto, c.1520
Yes, my views have changed quite a bit since the demise of Februs. Suddenly the pressure was off, and I could start to review my attitudes. During the exciting and very active years of the eighties and nineties I had been under the impression that, if men and women could free themselves from taboos, they could take their pleasure in the same way. But now I think that women, on the whole, because of the way we are made, do experience sex in a way that is more linked to the emotions than men – not all men, of course. ‘Kama Sutra’
which he made in 1814. The book begins with a picture of a beautiful woman, and each scene thereafter depicts her in various states of passionate arousal with a lover, until the final picture focuses on a close-up of her genitals. He suggests that these themes show our interest in exploring sexuality differently than the learned norms of our upbringing. By breaking past our familial, cultural or religious beliefs, our fantasies can add MORE to the mind stimulation. Her reputation as a poisoner arose from several mysterious deaths that occurred around the Borgia family, including her own brother, Juan. It was rumoured she wore a hollow ring, containing poison, which she would deploy at parties. Maybe a steamy story with minimal touch gets you going. Maybe a lot of touch with minimal reading gets you going. Maybe the amounts are equal.
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Reflecting on the commercial world of erotic films in the light of these realisations, I can now see that whenever something becomes a lucrative industry it automatically starts imposing a formula and then the creativity and enjoyment goes out of it. The whole business becomes a sort of factory, churning out more of the same. Besides, I was being naive to imagine that anything involving real sex could possibly be an art form. We are making impossible demands on actors, expecting them to be convincing in a role at the same time as ‘performing’ sex for real. This is a misuse of the sex drive, and it goes against the natural inclinations of most human beings, so they are bound to feel used over time. I recall that hilarious scene in Woody Allen’s film ‘Sleeper’, where Diane Keaton invites him into the Orgasmatron to ‘perform’ sex with her. What could be more off-putting? Having acquired a reputation as a portraitist among the upper classes of Zagreb, Auer painted over 150 portraits. He was the sole Croatian painter to be included in the Munich Secession Exhibition of 1896, and his work received a special prize at the exhibition of Croatian painting at the Paris World’s Fair of 1906. He established his art studio in Rokovo Perivoj (Roko’s Park), near the Vila Auer, his parents’ house where he had grown up. Together with his wife, the painter Leopoldina Auer-Schmidt, he ran a private art school while also holding a professorship at the Academy of Fine Arts of the University of Zagreb. Cleopatra, 1908 We generally leave 1/4” - 1/2” of paper showing around the image, to accommodate signatures and for visual appeal.