Dreams of Desire 60 (Venus of Urbino)

Venus of Urbino-Titian circa 1532-1534

I have concentrated in the Dreams of Desire series on erotic images produced by the various avant-garde movements that followed the great rupture with tradition that was Impressionism, especially the Symbolist, Expressionist and Surrealist movements. However eroticism had long been a staple of Western Art, notably in the Renaissance.

Although Titian’s painting bears the title Venus of Urbino, it is immediately evident that it represents a break from the numerous preceding pictorial versions of the Goddess of Love. This is a Venus that is shown in a domestic scene as opposed to the bucolic countryside, and she has been largely stripped of her standard allegorical and mythological accoutrements.  The viewer is presented with a sensual and erotic image of a earthly woman (probably a courtesan); nothing more, nothing less.

Also startling in a painting almost 500 years old is the frankness of the steady gaze of Venus, a  frankness that certainly invites comparisons with Manet’s Olympia, a painting  that caused such controversy and consternation upon being first exhibited in 1865.

Edouard Manet-Olympia 1863

FOR-EVER

Young American Girl In A State Of Nudity-Francis Picabia 1915

A cynical statement on the mechanization of desire and sexuality, Francis Picabia’s Proto-Dada illustration was first published in Alfred Stieglitz’s magazine 291. Employing the style of commercial graphics found in trade magazines to downplay any notion of a highbrow and bourgeois art, the line drawing of a spark plug takes on a new meaning with the deeply ironical title.