Sexuality in Western Art
by Edward Lucie-Smith
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Sexuality in its many guises has preoccupied Western artists from Michelangelo to Picasso, Rubens to Robert Mapplethorpe. Almost every form of the subject has been portrayed, whether covert or overt, crude or highly sophisticated. Edward Lucie-Smith considers the fruits of this obsession in his incisive, invigorating text. From the conflation of the sacred and the erotic in Paleolithic art, to the ethereal sensuality of Botticelli's "The Birth of Venus," to imagery of cruelty and amorous show more suffering in nineteenth-century Symbolist art, Edward Lucie-Smith explores both the cultural context and the pictorial language of sexuality in Western art. show lessTags
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This book contains many insights not so much into art as into the repressive cultures for which art is an outlet. It contains works not easily available elsewhere and is very generous with its illustrations.
The first half is a chronology which is the more convincing half. The second is thematic and I found myself questioning much of the too-easy Freudian speculation and frankly unsubtle assessments.
Having said that, this is a popular guide and not a monograph in an excellent series and, as an introduction, presumably updated as Western identity politics was rising to its peak, it is to be recommended.
The first half is a chronology which is the more convincing half. The second is thematic and I found myself questioning much of the too-easy Freudian speculation and frankly unsubtle assessments.
Having said that, this is a popular guide and not a monograph in an excellent series and, as an introduction, presumably updated as Western identity politics was rising to its peak, it is to be recommended.
Sex and visual art in one volume... What else do you want?
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211+ Works 5,038 Members
Well known as an art historian, curator, lecturer, and critic, Oxford University-trained scholar Edward Lucie-Smith is also a poet, biographer, and broadcaster. His knowledge of twentieth-century art and culture is vastly wide-ranging
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- Canonical title
- Sexuality in Western Art
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- Members
- 185
- Popularity
- 177,429
- Reviews
- 2
- Rating
- (3.72)
- Languages
- English, French, Spanish
- Media
- Paper
- ISBNs
- 3
- ASINs
- 1
