"The illustrations
are fascinating and the commentary consistently cool . . . just the
right amount of information."
— The Sunday Times
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 suffering
in nineteenth-century Symbolist art, Edward Lucie-Smith explores both
the cultural context and the pictorial language of sexuality in Western
art.
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 suffering
in nineteenth-century Symbolist art, Edward Lucie-Smith explores both
the cultural context and the pictorial language of sexuality in Western
art.