Inside Gloria's Mind

Ilsa and Me, Harem-Keeper and Harem-Shower

When I was a crazy constantly restless girl of 20, living in Paris out of one small duffel-bag and traveling around Europe with an even crazier lover, we'd often take unplanned trips. We'd be at a cafe on St. Germain or playing a game of chess in our tiny studio and suddenly decide to see the Normandy coast. I'd pack clean panties and off we'd go. This impulsivity meant we often ended up pulling into sleeping country towns in the middle of the night, which meant bunking at filthy, semi-abandoned youth hostels (I remember walking into one in a rural area and finding only a goat wandering through the halls), or sordid, strangely vacant pensions. Sometimes we slept in fields or on beaches or in the car. I woke up one morning in Dijon thinking we were being attacked by thugs. Turned out to be angry peasants building stands around us: the deserted lot we pulled into the night before was actually Dijon's big farmer's market and we, apparently, were obstructing tomato sales. Once - in Saint Malo - we ended up overnighting in a whorehouse. But that's another story.

One of our most memorable inadequately planned and risky, ludicrous adventures was a long camping trip we took in Switzerland. We hadn't really intended to go to Switzerland. Or to go camping. We were in Switzerland because I'd been seized by an overwhelming craving to see Venice. We were so drunk when we decided, we thought we could do the drive in a day. At least I hope we were drunk, because when we discovered (at a still-considerable distance from our destination but already 2 days out of Paris) that we had never actually unfolded the fucking map all the way - thus bringing Venice nearly to the border of France - it would be nice to be able to blame it on alcohol instead of, um, STUPIDITY.

So there we were, in Switzerland. At Lake Geneva, we decided to stop and look around. We got a cheap rent-a-tent that was as leaky and battered as our relationship. In the tent beside us a couple of Brits, unashamed of national stereotypes, had imported their backyard to Switzerland. Sitting on plastic lawn chairs in their robes and slippers (the wife forever in curlers), they fried kippers at 7 a.m. every morning and had loud Pythonesque quarrels all day. Inside our tent, things were not nearly so amusing. My goal soon became to find things to do to distract me from angry boyfriend melt-downs.

Fantasizing helped. I loved staring out onto Lake Geneva, where the land slips away into a dream. During the day, I could stare at the lake all I liked. But at night, we roved the streets in search of something, anything, to distract us. We couldn't afford the restaurants and the cheap touristy places were closed. We visited a casino and quickly left, feeling like trash. All I remember is vast expanses of red velvet dotted by bright and shiny bling, and perfectly manicured beautiful people in suits and cocktail dresses.

Depressed, I finally spotted a movie theatre. A well-lit establishment, neat and tidy as could be. I decided that even if the movie was in German, a language I barely understand, we were going. I almost broke into a run, I was so anxious to sit in a movie theatre for a couple of hours. I stopped dead before I got to the ticket counter. There was a big poster of the movie that was playing.

My parents are Holocaust survivors! I could be related to lampshades! Plus crazy angry boyfriend had taken me, many many times, to sex shops in Paris, and had dragged me to the back area where they stocked hoods and masks and torture devices and that was bad enough. I was no where near ready to deal my own SM issues back then, and 2 hours of unrelenting Nazi horror and torture on a big screen was just NOT the reprieve I was looking for. Boyfriend, on the other hand, was starting to look a little turned on. My feet suddenly revved up like Road Runner and I was half-way across town before I knew it, with him puffing behind me, trying to catch up.

These memories came flooding back the other day as I was preparing this week's Erotic Art Show. I'm doing one feature on depictions of harems in art. So I was doing my usual googly thing, and what should pop up as the first "harem" image but...

This time, I just laughed. It looks so funny and campy to me now, and so unbelievably cheesy. And, geez, was their budget so low they had to use the same art twice?

Anyway tomorrow I'll show you images of some REAL harems. Along with some dreamy images of fantasy harems. I promise it'll be a whole lot more sensual and classier than Ilsa.

p.s. if you are the kind of man who actually prefers girls like Ilsa...mmm...drop me a line. I'm not as easily scared as I used to be.

All clucked up

Well, well, well, those clever chickens! They give new meaning to the expression "hen party."

Hens change sex behaviour to outfox males

....in groups where there were a higher proportion of males, hens chose to mate with desired males in the morning and then avoid males in the evening. This enabled them to mate without suffering sexual harassment from gangs of cockerels. It is the first study of its kind to demonstrate that female birds change their sexual behaviour in this way.

Good tip for human women too: avoid those gangs of cockerels!

A Loaf of blog

Aw. A very sweet profile of me in today's Creative Loafing, Atlanta's most happening newspaper. Thanks to the very kind writer, Andy, and to Joeff Davis, the photog who came all the way up to our wilderness to shoot the pic of me.

Bright lights in the blogosphere: Five local bloggers who matter: Creative Loafing Atlanta.

When doctors won't talk to you about sex

I was going to call this "Don't let your deal go down" because this is, in part, a cautionary to adults of a certain age (i.e., around my age). But it raises a bigger topic - of how doctors all too often fail to provide people with sensible advice about sex that will spare them many woes as they get older.

The easiest example is male prostate health. What many urologists and GPs fail to tell men is that the best single thing they can do for themselves as they age is to masturbate regularly. I recommend at least once a day. Not only has research shown that men who climax on a regular basis have a longer life expectancy, but routine masturbation helps promote and maintain your sexual health, from clearing the prostate to maintaining virility to the end of your life. Put another way: if you can appreciate the benefits of exercise, then do not stop at your groin. If you're slouching into maturity with a stubborn resistance to exercise then make it a rule to masturbate daily, and you can console yourself with the knowledge that at least you did something good for your health.

Which brings me to a similar plaint about how docs deal (or, rather, don't deal) with female sexuality. One of my curious preoccupations is sexual medicine, so I take a lot of post grad mini-classes on-line. Today's course was about new guidelines on treating vaginal atrophy. If you're a woman and your vagina just closed up in terror, I can't blame you. SCARY.

Lots of women of a certain age - those about to go into menopause, those in menopause, those who've finished with menopause - know that certain natural changes occur. The most noticeable change is a sudden Sahara-like feeling in parts that once drowned in moisture. Some women experience pain during intercourse, usually caused by that dryness. These are both warning symptoms of vaginal atrophy - that phase of life when a woman's formerly juicy mucous membranes begin to dry and shrink. AGH! Fortunately, doctors have a pretty effective treatment: vaginal estrogen, usually in a cream or a ring that is applied directly to your genitals. Still, estrogen can be a tricky proposition for some women. Known side-effects are vaginal bleeding and breast pain. As in "fer chrissake, can't they find a way to help us without killing us?"

Don't think it can happen to you? Up to 40% of all post-menopausal women develop vaginal atrophy. I swear, I'm kegeling as I'm typing this.

After finishing the mini-class, I was struck by the lack of one important treatment option: increasing your sexual activity. Topicals and lubricants are fine, but unless you keep on exercising those vital muscles they will continue to deteriorate. Weirder still, medical literature is primly closed-mouthed about how to stop this from happening in the first place. Fact is that regular sex (fucking, jerking off, anything that makes you climax) is the single best preventative to vaginal atrophy, and will spare you the intense physical discomfort, irreversible tissue damage, and emotional angst this condition causes.

So why don't doctors routinely recommend masturbation and encourage sexual activity as routine preventatives for vaginal atrophy and a range of other uro-genital ailments? Because they're too fucking embarrassed to tell patients - and particularly older patients - that sex is good for them. About 1/3 to 1/2 of the people who come to me either got bad information about sex from doctors or no information at all. It drives me crazy. Doctors will not talk to patients about simple sexual facts that could change the quality of their lives. Their entire lives.

Waiting until people have health problems and then offering them expensive medications and invasive surgeries is a piss-poor approach to healing. Medical schools REALLY need to shock-train docs to get over their own inhibitions and start delivering sound medical advice about sexual health.

From cave to dungeon, perversions old as time

A new study has just made a big contribution to the literature on human sexuality by going back in time to explore the sex habits of humanity's earliest ancestors. Their results lend further scientific evidence to what we cutting-edge sex theorists already know: much of what we consider "normal" sexual behavior (missionary position only, monogamy, sex for reproduction only, etc.) are social/moral trends, and not - as moralists hold - what nature intended. The study claims that,

Practices ranging from bondage to group sex, transvestism and the use of sex toys were widespread in primitive societies as a way of building up cultural ties.....

Highly recommended reading for anyone interested in history and biology of sex.

Nonconsensual tittly-winks

I came across this silly bit of footage in the blogosphere

It makes me wonder about a topic always near and dear to our hearts: what constitutes consent?

My guess is that some dweeb got footage of this gorgeous girl at the gas pump auto show [thanks for the correction, Dan], then went home and labored mightily, applying his creative energies to making her tits bounce around like Mexican jumping beans. My first reaction to that is, naturally, Good God, man, we're still waiting for a cure for AIDS and you're squandering your technological genius on titty-dancing? For shame, Sir, for shame!

OK, maybe I fib a bit. I might've giggled. But then I felt very ashamed because what about this poor girl. Did she KNOW some geek was going to turn her tits into a two-ring circus act? Doubtful. She probably thought some sweetly lecherous guy (the kind of guy she would never date, but still sweet in a hormonally crazed kind of way) was paying her a giant compliment by getting footage of her.

And then that dark feministic side of me rises up. WTF. If he was indeed the kind of dweeb who could only have women like these in his dreams (or his computer), was the manipulation of her titties actually an act of rage? A way to make the object of unattainable sexiness into a laughingstock? To insult the very beauty that so drew him to her - as a kind of unconscious means of disempowering it? Perhaps he had no idea that there was anything disrespectful or cruel about this...but I doubt he'd feel the same if the tits-in-question belonged to his mother. (And if he did, I'd really be worried!)

I'd like to think the girl signed off on this, as amused by the concept as the person who manipulated the film. Maybe a girlfriend who shares his sense of humor; or perhaps a submissive who gets off on the humiliation. At least I hope so.

If it was me, and someone had done this without my direct consent, I'd be PISSED. Consent is the pivot on which it all turns: if she didn't consent, if in fact she would be horrified to learn her tits are making millions laugh on youtube, it turns this seemingly harmlessly amusing video into a virtual rape. Sounds ugly, I know, but that's the bottom line.

Is that a long arm in Kerry's pocket?

More thanks to Mayim for pointing out that something about Kerry isn't Kosher.

Just add a little Heinz ketchup to that dog and we're done.

Sex gadgets for tech heads

The headline, Dominatrix steals 'Sex Hacks' show with live demo made me think the entire article will be about the domme-in-question, Mistress Natasha Strange of the UK. Alas, she was listed as the third of four sex-product presenters. Oh well. Her specialty was an electronic buttplug and she did a real live SM demo for hackers and I wouldn't have minded reading a whole lot more about it.

What really caught my eye though was the product they put up front: an incredibly silly shoe for streetwalkers.

Technologically-savvy pros can install alarms, a GPS system, even X-rated videos to play on the heel's tiny screen. But, as the reviewer points out, if they're that technologically savvy in the first place, they probably wouldn't be working as pros.

For clitorally-challenged men

MapQuest Helps You Find The Clitoris

(Thanks to Mayim for the link!)

Erotic Art Friday: Edvard Munch

Unlike the previous artist, Edvard Munch (1863 – 1944) is one of the best-known artists of modern times. Most everyone has seen The Scream. Like other of his most popular paintings, the canvas conveyed a profound anguish. Darkly colored, half-real, they are the works of a depressed mind. It's that darkness I think about when I think about Munch. But for all the times I've seen his work in museums, I'd never realized that Munch also created a large number of paintings with erotic themes. For the most part, this is a softer, more optimistic and more brightly colored world, a world of sensual pleasures, where people seem relaxed and features are defined. But true to form, there are some intensely cruel visions of love here as well (check out the last two below: the murder of Marat and the image of the red-headed vampire are particularly harsh). What a strange, fascinatingly complex and undoubtedly emotionally unbalanced man.

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Erotic Art Friday - May 25, 2007: Édouard-Henri Avril

For an artist whose works have continued to live on, remarkably little seems to be known (at least on the Internet) about painter Édouard-Henri Avril. He also worked under the name Paul Avril. His date of birth is in dispute, with some putting it at 1842 and others at 1849. He was born in Algiers, came to study art in France and died there, in Raincy, in 1928. Even Wikipedia wasn't much help - only the German version lists him.

Beyond that I couldn't find more about this fellow who illustrated many notorious books, including John Cleland's 18th century smut classic, Memoirs of Fanny Hill; and Gustave Flaubert's scandalously homoerotic Salammbô.

Here is a long exciting look at his work. Click the images to see them full-size. You may want to keep a Kleenex or towel handy to clean up afterwards. :)

Intimations of Immorality

I wonder what I should wear to tomorrow's Erotica show??

iGasm: orgasm with an iPod

Thanks to Mayim for these links to the latest little foofaraw over sex toys.

Apple computer is upset by an ad campaign for the new'iGasm', a naughty new hi-tech vibrator from Ann Summers/UK that turns your iPod into a sex toy. YUM!

Ex-con pro domme

This profile of a Phoenix-area prodomme blew me away. Would you submit to a convicted felon?

In this case, the crime was DUI which, in the SM scheme of things, is arguably better than being convicted of fraud or assault or abuse. On the other hand, people who drive drunk are knowingly putting other peoples' lives at risk. Plus alcoholism and SM = BIG BAD PROBLEM.

Given that issues of trust and honesty are so fundamental to consensual SM, I wouldn't think anyone would want to play with her until (a) she'd served her time and (b) was in rehab, or maybe even (c) Sober for a year.

Imagine if you'd been seeing her WHILE she was serving her sentence, and only found that out now the the lady spanking you went home to prison every night? (Please try to imagine it with the big head, not the little one, you sluts.) That she kept working at a dungeon at a time when the Law was *supposed* to be keeping an eye on her and could have walked into the middle of a scene at ANY time - is just in-fucking-credible to me. Her presence compromised the confidentiality of that A-List of clients she claims she wants to protect. And her bosses supported this?? Holy shit.

Pick your panties from the line-up, ladies

Just three little questions for your typical college coed:

1. Do you care enough about panties that went missing at the laundry to want to view thousands of other girls' panties in hopes of finding yours?

2. Are you really ready to admit that those little "Hello Kitty" undies your mom keeps sending are yours, especially in front of a bunch of male police officers?

3. Who really wants to reclaim their panties after some stranger has jerked off into them? As in, like, EUUUUUUUUUUUUUW.

All that said - I wish cops in Ft. Collins good luck in trying to crack the Case of the Purloined Panties.

Reclaiming your breasts

I got this kick-ass email today from a reader who gave me permission to share both her story and some photos. Below, an excerpt from the email she sent - all names omitted. In it, she explains how she has reclaimed her breasts after years of struggling with artificial implants.

Most of us who take body-mod seriously are well-acquainted with and bound to the idea of reclaiming your body as a cleansing and rebirthing ritual, whether it's to make a new epoch in your spiritual evolution or to make manifest some internal and previously invisible reality. Taking one's breasts back from the mess that doctors made of them, learning that your natural shape makes you happiest, and that health is what makes for beauty -- not size or shape -- is an equally empowering and deeply personal journey.

Guess her story made me feel a bit metaphysical. I hope it will inspire others who are coping with similar journeys of self-acceptance and rebirth. Just be aware that the wicked photos she sent may inspire other kinds of reactions. ;)

I'm a 48 y.o. woman who had breast implants when I was much younger and far too pressured by society's false god of "beauty". I hated them instantly and ended up wearing nothing but big baggy old sweats to hide the "udder" fakery, then ultimately became very ill from them (acute double mastitis, encapsulation, fibrous growths, and blah...) and had to have them removed via emergency surgery. I couldn't believe it when the doc's first question was whether I wanted new ones implanted! Gah! Feh! I paid double the money to have my own battered flesh reconstructed. It took 5 hours to extricate the offending compromised silicone implants and the complications of leakage and scarring. But it felt so good to be back in my own skin again, to just be me.

Given all of this nasty-ass history, I feel really good about the fact that I can be happy and have fun with my own boobs again, even if they are smaller than they ever were to begin with - yay! A triumph of function over form.

I am submitting 2 photos of what I consider to be true breast beauty, play fun with boobs, taken by my partner, Fred Keegan. I hope that you'll consider posting them.

House honored by Castle

Anyone else addicted to the TV show "House" or its star, Hugh Laurie, who was just honored by that funny old English lady with the high-pitched voice and glittery crown. (She's supposed to be a Queen but, gee, I don't know...she doesn't look very dominant to me.)

House...even though the plots have become thoroughly predictable, even though someone's going to be intubated or jabbed in the spine at least once per show, and though we have all the proof we could possibly need that House is a disagreeable sociopath...despite all that none of us here can stop watching the show. Hugh Laurie is just so....so....I don't quite know what. Kinky?

Why do some actors just suck you into their charisma while others who are supposed to have charisma leave you completely cold? It isn't just about beauty, though Laurie does pack a dashing and dreamy dose of man-flesh.

Those piercing blue eyes! Those eyes....those...

Where was I? Oh yeah. Gregory House is a BAD MAN. But he's a bad man we just can't hate because out of his badness comes something beautiful: the ability to save lives. He's awful to women, but we have no illusions about his desperate loneliness he suffers because of it. He's so cold. And yet so fragile. He's emotionally wounded! MELT goes a femdom's cold and tiny heart. A poor lost boy! OOOOOOO. It doesn't hurt that he rides on a motorcycle in leathers either. (fashion tip to Laurie: black is always more appropriate when trying to look tough.)

A photographer was here earlier today, taking pix of me for a local paper, and mentioned in passing how sometimes when he goes on assignment to shoot celebrities he's admired, only to meet them and realize they are assholes. It reminded me of all the times I've been entranced by some Hollywood star right up until the minute I see them on a talk show and they open their mouths to reveal what they're like when someone else isn't writing the script. Every once in a while, someone's just as clever as you'd hoped but more often than not the fantasies all die there.

So I'm not taking my mild obsession with Laurie too seriously. I'm loving his act and that's good enough. For all I know, when he's home, he really looks like this.

('tho to be honest, I could probably eroticize that look too.....)

Inscrutable no more

AHA. Diligent keywording finally led me to the page for the inscrutable perversion posted yesterday.

It's listed as an illustration from an 18th century homoerotic book by a Turkish poet. This image is titled (or called) "Masseur." The figure is of a young worker in a Turkish bath.

I also found a site which uses the illustration to explain the history of Turkish baths, including this fascinating historical detail:

Traditionally, the masseurs in the baths, tellak in Turkish, were young boys, helping the men in washing their bodies. Their duties were not just washers, but also sex workers. We know today, by texts left by Ottoman authors, who they were, their prices, how many times they could bring their customers to orgasm, and the details of their sexual practices....

At times the relationships became intensely personal. It is recorded that in the mid-18th century, a janissary had a tellak for a lover. The latter was kidnapped by the men of another regiment, and the boy given to the use of their commander. A days-long battle between the two regiments ensued, which was brought to an end only by the intervention of the Sultan, who had the tellak hung.

Found: Ancient scourging and Son of ancient scourging

This famous Roman mosaic, from Pompei ca. 60BC, has been sitting in my files. Wasn't sure how I'd use it but was intrigued by the depiction of a whipping in so erotic a context. Scholars may shrug it off as the punishment of a slave. But to SMers...OMG, it's the punishment of a slave! While a man holds her and a woman in a dress whips her and a naked girl plays cymbals. Like OMG.

Didn't I see this exact scene at the Vault in the 80s? Put a mirrored wall behind them and I swear, I'm having a flashback.

I love finding such antiquities for two main reasons. It reminds me, first, that sexual fantasy and so-called sexual aberrations have always been normal aspects of human life - it's the moral and religious attitudes towards them that change over time, not the acts or the people themselves.

Second, for every ancient mosaic that remains, thousands if not tens of thousands of mosaics were lost or destroyed. If the record were whole, if not for censors and zealots set on destroying art that contradicted their ideology, what is the portrait of sexuality we might have seen? I suspect we'd see what we see now in the sexual subcultures of the world where people have given themselves permission to acknowledge their biologically natural instincts. In other words, we'd see endless sexual diversity.

The other day while surfing around, I stumbled onto this and did a double take. Yes, indeed: a much much later (unknown) artist took a stab at re-interpreting this mosaic with a painting of the same scene.

Found: inscrutable perversion

Another odd find from my restless roving for erotica. I think I found this somewhere on Wikimedia Commons, but can't for the life of me remember what keywords led me there. WTF. Did I type "Incomprehensible perversions and funny footwear from the past"? or perhaps "Ancient androgynes with anal play fetishes?" Go figure.

Anyway, everything in this picture is so very odd - except, of course, for the ubiquitous dildo seat. I mean, everyone's got one of those in their basement, right?

Gay parentage: it's natural

I hope someone with balls reads THIS into the Congressional record.

A pair of gay flamingos have adopted an abandoned chick, becoming parents after being together for six years, a British conservation organisation said Monday.

Carlos and Fernando had been desperate to start a family, even chasing other flamingos from their nests to take over their eggs at the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust (WWT) in Slimbridge near Bristol.

But their egg-sitting prowess made them the top choice for taking an unhatched egg under their wings when one of the Greater Flamingo nests was abandoned.

The couple, together for six years, can feed chicks by producing milk in their throats.

"Fernando and Carlos are a same sex couple who have been known to steal other flamingos' eggs by chasing them off their nest because they wanted to rear them themselves," said WWT spokeswoman Jane Waghorn.

link for more.

Heartily endorsed safe sex

File this under "things you probably didn't know about love and sex." The old "I heart you" signs will never look the same to you.

(Thanks to Mike for sending me the link!)

I Love (not having kids with) You; Birth Control of Yesteryear

Found on eBay: Katy did what?

Wow, I bet all the other oversexed katydids will be jealous that this isn't their cage.

The less you screw, the more you're screwed

It's been proven, ladies and gentlemen. Sexlessness can screw you up.

The bad news: the less you fuck, the less you fuck.

The good news: sexual frustration makes you work more.

Note to self: stop talking about how overworked you are. People might get the wrong idea.

A team of German researchers...is arguing that sexual frustration...can precipitate a downward spiral, pulling couples helplessly and unbeknownst into a swirling vortex of all work and no nookie.... Ragnar Beer of the University of Göttingen surveyed almost 32,000 men and women for his Theratalk Project, which has found that the less sex you have, the more work you seek.... link

Pussy footing around

Thanks to AlphaFemm for sending me think link to the ultimate (and ultimately creepy) toy for foot fetishists. All I can say is that I wouldn't want to walk a mile in her shoes...

Birthday suits busting out in Vermont

Even as women across America are (allegedly, according to whomever found a clever new way to play on women's insecurities about their bodies) getting ass facials, in good old Vermont, the sight of a bare ass on main street is stressing out some locals. Nudity's not illegal so now that spring is here, the birthday suits are blooming.

I sure hope they don't succeed in changing their local laws. They could still outlaw public sex acts but there's just nothing wrong with people enjoying a bit of naturism. Children too should be able to see naked people without reacting negatively - unless the parents have convinced the children that seeing naked bodies is, in itself, wrong or dirty. Why should the rest of the public be forced to go along with people whose attitudes about sex and nudity are a mess in the first place?

Clothing-optional towns or districts would actually be a pretty cool thing. Crime would be low too in those areas. At least you wouldn't have to worry about pick-pockets or concealed weapons.

Booty-fication trend

For the rich bitch who has everything, just a little more:

Facials for your ass.

(OK, ladies - how many of you are now thinking it might not be such a bad idea....?

Erotic Art Show Extra: Candle in the wind

I promised you two features today but have decided to throw in something extra. This batch of images has been sitting in my files for months. I've looked high and low, with no success, for authoritative information on the artist who created these. It's been so long since I've had them, though, that I cannot even remember where I found them in the first place. Wherever I did, they were attributed to someone named "Candle." Again, no luck in figuring out if that was the artist's name or pseudonym, or whether some playful person called him that because of all the candle-play.

Whoever the artist was, it's time to get them off my machine and into your face. The work speaks for itself. What a pervert! And, by the looks of it, an 18th century pervert.

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Erotic Art Show: Edward Weston

Though my parents exposed me to lots of classical and contemporary painting and sculpture as a kid, when I began visiting galleries on my own in my mid-teens, I generally went in search of the kind of art you didn't see, or only saw in tiny bits, at museums. You had to hunt out experimental artists, emerging artists, and artists in non-traditional media at private galleries. In 1973, my freshman year of college, I was introduced to the then-obscure world of SoHo galleries. The gentrified, yuppified, teemingly commercialized SoHo of today barely resembles the creepy cavernous feel that SoHo had then: two great neighborhood bars and a bodega were the main businesses on West Broadway between Canal and Houston, and the sidestreets were like mauseleums. It looked like what it was - an abandoned factory district filled with the kinds of buildings my dad - a sweatshop worker - labored in. Only the ugly, graffiti-covered steel doors of SoHo concealed artist lofts, often as fanciful as the artists themselves, set up as studio/galleries so unrecognized artists could show their own works to whomever dropped by. Here and there, the most successful galleries - like O.K. Harris - had shows which drew art collectors from the upper east side and, a few years later, the nouveau riche from Great Neck who arrived in small busloads with big wallets. When the tourists left, SoHo was as desolate as the Sahara - except inside the bars, which were as lively as Sodom (albeit minus the butt-fucking).

But even in SoHo, it was difficult to impossible to see good photography shows. While the art world praised several icons of American photography, only a handful of their works made their way into museums. Some of the best photography shows I saw were mounted in the lobbies of big corporate buildings, sponsored privately by IBM or Chase Manhattan or Merrill Lynch. But in 1974, things changed in the NY art scene when the International Center for Photography opened in a beautiful upper East Side mansion. I'd make the pilgrimage there as often as I could to see some of the most beautiful photography imaginable.

One photographer I always admired was Edward Weston (1886-1958). Born in Highland Park, Illinois (the birthplace of our own Jennifer!), Weston was a pioneer in American photography. If you've surfed the Internet enough, sooner or later you've likely seen one of Weston's photos. His moving landscapes are standard stock in almost every poster gallery in America.

But it is his studies of nudes that left the most powerful impression on me. You can only stare at a landscape for so long without getting bored; but a nude - oh, a person can explore every wrinkle, crease and curve for hours with her eyes. Funny thing is that in my teens and twenties, I tended to look at nudes as I'd been taught to look at art: with some measure of objectivity and critical observation. That they were naked was only one element of the work and not the most important one. I looked for the dynamics of composition and shadow and light and sometimes the subject was secondary. I never identified with the subject; I never wanted to reach out and touch the subject; I never saw myself in a truly personal relationship to the subject, except AS a subject.

After all, in art, every work is both about its subject and not about its subject per se; sometimes the subject isn't the subject at all, but just an expression of an underlying subject. The fabulous Frank O'Hara poem, "Why I Am Not A Painter" might help explain it.

When I look at Weston's nudes now, though, I see nudes. I see naked flesh in all its beautiful complexity, its soft natural order, its vulnerability and mystery. Now it all looks sexual to me. I'm enjoying them more than ever before.

Read about the man and his work on Wikipedia: Edward Weston.

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Erotic Art Show: 5/18 - Felix Vallotton

Today will be a feast for the eyes. Two visually sumptuous shows, one featuring a 19th century artist who I just discovered, and the second featuring a 20th century photographer whose work I've admired for years.

I'm starting with Swiss painter and engraver Felix Valloton (born in 1865, died in 1925). His nudes are wonderful and so real, it's amazing to think these were painted 120 years ago. Valloton seems particularly obsessed with asses though more high-minded people choose to think he was obsessed with backs. Judge for yourself (and note the spanking engraving - part of a later-life series he called "Crime and Punishment").

For more information about his life and work, check out

Félix Vallotton on Wikipedia in English

or

Fondation Félix Vallotton en francais.

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