of a licentious, destructive sexuality.
Yet, even in its tamed versions, eroticism remains a demonic power in human consciousness because it echoes the dangerous song of the sirens – trying to approach them is fatal. Devotion and surrender, regression and aggression: these are the powers that still tempt us. The convergence of desire and longing for death has always played a big part in literature.
Insofar as eroticism consists of distance and detours, the fetishist constitutes the picture-perfect eroticist. The fetishised object, in its fixed, tense relationship with what is immediate, is more significant to the fetishist than the promise of fulfilled desires represented by the object. The imagined body is more meaningful than any real body.
Collectors are eroticists as well. While the lecher or debaucher is active in real life, the collector lives with a chaste heart in a realm of fantasy. And is it not true that the chaste heart can relish the delights of vice even more deeply and thoroughly than the unbridled debaucher?
Distance permits freedom. Art, too – which can also represent a fetishistic production for the artist – affords freedom. It affords the freedom to play with fire without being burned. It appeals to the eye; it allows toying with sin without having actually sinned. This freedom through distance can be noted when observing the different reactions of viewers when looking at sex magazines and works of art: have you ever seen the viewer of a porn magazine smile? A quiet cheerfulness, however, can be observed frequently in viewers of works of art, as if art brings forth an easing of the compellingly sensual. Those, however, who in a derogatory manner pronounce a work of art pornographic prove nothing more than that they do not have any appreciation of what is artistic in the object depicted. Turning away in disgust does not necessarily have to be a characteristic of a special morality. Such people have a non-erotic culture. Eduard Fuchs, the past master of erotic art, whose books were accused of being pornographic during his lifetime, considered eroticism the fundamental subject of all art: sensuality is said to be present in any art, even if its objective is not always of a sexual nature. Accordingly, it would almost be a tautology to speak of ‘erotic art’.
Long before Fuchs, Lou Andreas-Salomé had already pointed out the true relationship between eroticism and aesthetics: “It seems to be a sibling growth from the same root that artistic drive and sexual drive yield such extensive analogies that aesthetic delight changes into erotic delight so imperceptibly, erotic desire so instinctively reaches for the aesthetic, the ornamental (possibly giving the animal kingdom its ornament directly as a bodily creation).” Once, when Picasso, in the evening of his life, was asked about the difference between art and eroticism, his pensive answer was: “But – there is no difference.” Instead, as others warned about eroticism, Picasso warned about the experience of art: “Art is never chaste; one should keep it away from all innocent ignoramuses. People insufficiently prepared for art should never be allowed close to art. Yes, art is dangerous. If it is chaste, it is not art.”
Viewed with the eyes of a moral watchdog, every type of art and literature would have to be abolished. If spirit and mind are the essence of humanity, then all those placing the mind and spirit in a position opposed to sensuality are hypocrites. On the contrary, sexuality experiences its true human form only after developing into eroticism and art – some translate eroticism as the art of love. Matters excluded from the civilising process assert themselves by demanding a medium that is spiritually determined, and that is art. It is in art that sexuality reaches its fullest bloom, which seems to negate all that is sensual in the shape of erotic art.
Pornography is a judgmental term used by those who remain closed to eroticism. It is assumed that their sensuality never had the opportunity to be cultivated. These culturally underprivileged people – among them possibly so-called art experts and prosecuting attorneys – perceive sexuality as a threat even when it occurs in an aesthetically-tempered format. Even the observation that a work has offended or violated the viewpoints of many still does not make it pornographic. Art is dangerous! Works of art can offend and injure the feelings of others; they do not always make viewers happy. After all, is it not the duty of art to annoy and to stir things up? The bottom line: the term pornography is no longer in keeping with the times. Artistic depictions of sexual activities, whether they annoy or please, are part of erotic art. If not, they are insipid, dumb works, even if harmless.
Eastern societies in particular have known how to integrate the sexual and erotic into their art and culture. Chinese religion, for example, entirely free of western notions of sin, considers lust and love as pure things. The union of man and woman under the sign of Tao expresses the same harmony as the alternation of day and night, winter and summer. One can say – and rightly so – that the ancient forms of Chinese thought have their origins in sexual conceptions. Yin and yang, two complementary ideas, determine the universe. In this way, the erotic philosophy of the ancient Chinese also encompasses a cosmology. Sexuality is an integrated component of a philosophy of life and cannot be separated from it. One of the oldest and most stimulating civilisations on earth thus assures us through its religion that sex is good and instructs us, for religious reasons, to carry out the act of love creatively and passionately. This lack of inhibition in sexual matters is mirrored in art from China.
The great masters of Japan also created a wealth of erotic pictures, which rank equal with Japan’s other works of art. No measure of state censorship was ever able to completely suppress the production of these images. Shungas (Images of Spring) depict the pleasures and entertainment of a rather earthly world. It was considered natural to seek out the pleasures of the flesh, whichever form they took. The word ‘vice’ was unspoken in ancient Japan, and sodomy was a sexual pleasure like any other.
In India, eroticism is sanctified in Hindu temples. In Greece, it culminates in the cult of beauty, joining the pleasures of the body with those of the mind. Greek philosophy understood the world as interplay between Apollo and Dionysus, between reason and ecstasy.
Only Christianity began to view eroticism in a context of sin and the world of darkness, so creating irreconcilable differences. “The Devil Eros has become more interesting to man than all the angels and all the saints,” a tenet held by Nietzsche, which would probably find no sympathy in Far Eastern Japan: Eros was never demonised there. In fact, that which Nietzsche lamented in the West never did occur in Japan, nor in many other Eastern cultures. “Christianity,” in Nietzschean words, “forced Eros to drink poison.”
In Western Europe, erotic depictions were banished to secret galleries. The floating, transitory world was held in chains, and only with great difficulty was science able to free sexuality from prejudices and association with sin. It is therefore no wonder that sexology developed wherever the relationship between sexuality and eroticism was especially ambivalent or troubled. Our cornucopia of a colourful, erotic world of images and objects shows that Eros can be an all-encompassing and unifying energy. These items provide an opportunity to steal a glimpse of an essential, human sphere – usually taboo – through the eyes of many artists with a continuously changing point of view.
Unlike pornography, which often lacks imagination, erotic art allows us to partake in creative joy. Even if some of the pictures seem strange to us, or even annoy and force us to confront taboos, we still should open ourselves to that experience. Real art has always caused offence. Only through a willingness to be affronted can this journey through the geography of pleasure also be profitable, namely in the sense that this fantasy journey enriches our innermost selves. The humour evident in many works of erotic art is only accessible to those who can feel positive about claiming the erotic experience.
This book invites you to take a special journey, one that will open up a vista of pleasures and desires. An abundance of images and objects from art as well as cult present eroticism and sexuality as the universal, fundamental subject. By opening ourselves to the origins in a variety of cultures, some of them strange, we may enrich our own culture as well… The many and varied points of view encountered in this work demonstrate the multifarious aspects of sexuality. It reveals that nothing is more natural than sexual desire; and, paradoxically, nothing is
