Erotica 17th-18th Century (TASCHEN Icons Series) [Paperback]

TASCHEN (Creator), Gilles Néret (Author)

Book Description

Series: Icons | Publication Date: April 15, 2001

This is a collection of the best 17th and 18th century images from Erotica Universalis, volumes I and II. From Rembrandt to Fragonard and lots of others in between (known, unknown, and anonymous), a plethora of delightfully naughty pictures!

Product Details

• Paperback: 192 pages
• Publisher: Taschen (April 15, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 3822855359
• ISBN-13: 978-3822855355
• Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 5 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.5 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,063,158 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

40 of 42 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Successful erotic art, May 23, 2001

By 

Eileen Galen (USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Erotica 17th-18th Century (TASCHEN Icons Series) (Paperback)

This is a small scale (pages measuring 5" by 8") high quality art book of explicit erotic painting and engravings - along with a spirited and sensitive ideological introductory essay by Gilles Neret. He starts out with the far-reaching assertion that "there is only one real antidote to the anguish engendered in humanity by its awareness of inevitable death: erotic joy." This collection focuses on the representation and the provocation of that erotic joy. Those who enjoy explicitly graphic erotica (including those who might prefer to call it 'pornography') will not be disappointed in this book.

Neret has an abiding enthusiasm and a curatorial talent, for he has assembled a wide range of examples of erotic paintings, drawings, and engravings. In addition he has a sturdy confidence in the rightness of erotica's goal for its admirers: the enhancement of sexual experience. So yes, at least some of this art will do the customary and expected job of successful 'erotica.'

The approximately 170 plates are by European painters and printmakers. When color was used, it has been faithfully reproduced. The range of media and mood is wide, and the subject matter is consistently explicitly sexual.'Everything' is revealed at times. Threesomes, orgies, assorted combinations and recombinations are sometimes the subjects of these works.

There are boudoir scenes from the 1700's ( paintings of French artist Francois Boucher; the golden and voluptuous paintings of Jean-Honore Fragonard (softly beautiful women: dreaming - attended by cherubs - or sated and asleep in appealing disarray) and an assortment of anonymous politically satirical aat the same time sexually explicit paintings. There are social and cultural satires and a series of explicit and graphic paintings "for the education of the dauphin" that Napoleon hung in his bathroom. (Only several survived). A 1797 Dutch edition of de Sade's "The Story of Justine or the Misfortunes of Virtue" featured detailed and often gruesome illustrations - and some are included here.

From Italy, Carracci's series of engravings, "The Loves of the Gods," done in 1602, shares similarities of mood and topics with much mainstream pornography of today, but Carracci named his exuberant couples after classical gods, and inserted edifying visual details into his scenes of frank and explicit sexual activity: the satyr's hooves, Bacchus' grapes, Achilles' warrior equipment, discarded in favor of Briseis, etc.

Rembrandt (yes, Rembrandt) loved to paint women and evidently loved sexual subjects, for he did numerous erotic paintings, often of his wife and himself. His women (and his men) are real, often in a sort of sensuous and happy disarray, wrinkled and classically imperfect - and beautifully human. The attitudes of the lovers are unidealized, sensuous because so natural - and the drawings are lovely.

English painter Thomas Rowlandson published a series of graphic and consistently and deliberately insulting caricatures of "the sexual practices of the English aristocracy" in the early years of the nineteenth century. Orgies, various sorts of sexualized cruelty, and an assortment of sexual embarrassments pervade his paintings. They were published then, and are reproduced here.

This is a great little book. Art history enthusiasts will not be disappointed in this collection. More to the point, those in search of explicitly sexual art that succeeds at erotica's primary goal will not feel that they have wasted their money on yet more Art History.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars ART/EROTICA HAS IMPROVED, June 3, 2010

By 

Joseph H. Race "Jose Mango" (SAIPAN, MP United States) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Erotica 17th-18th Century (TASCHEN Icons Series) (Paperback)

Love and sex were doing well in the 17th-18th Century, as exampled by the numerous paintings and sketches. It also showed that for humans there are only many ways to make love and display the human body. Some of the scenes were hilarious and funny, while others were typically beautiful and enjoyable. There was little S & M but a lot of mingling between nuns and soldiers, and other combinations considered inaccessible and part of fantasies. As with most Taschen books, it was well documented and printed in a high quality fashion. I liked it for the art and also for the historical significance of male-female desire and copulating. I suppose much of erotica has improved with the modern DVD's and computers, printing processes, and explicit colors, but this erotica was fun and intriguing.

3 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Page 184 looks fun., July 24, 2006

By 

Dymon Enlow "Dymon Enlow" - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Erotica 17th-18th Century (TASCHEN Icons Series) (Paperback)

Fun book that you can get a few giggles out of, I especially enjoyed the flying [...] with butterfly wings [...] a nun on pg. 153 and the cat watching the friar tugging at a rope tied around his [...] while smacking himself in the [...]. Another funny one was the guy getting shot in the [...] by cupid while he's [...] on page 171.

Funny stuff aside, the highlight on the book is the de Sade engravings from page 111 to 141. Also the artistic ability by Agostino Carracci is amazing. His engravings are absolutely beautiful.