Edward Lucie-Smith
Related art - erotic art - sexuality - art criticism - art theory
Biography
John Edward McKenzie Lucie-Smith (born 27 February 1933) is a British writer, known as a poet and art critic, and as a curator and author of exhibition catalogues.
He was born in Kingston, Jamaica, moving to the United Kingdom in 1946. He studied at The King's School, Canterbury , and after a little time in Paris at Merton College, Oxford.
After serving in the Royal Air Force and working as a copywriter, he became a full time writer. He succeeded Philip Hobsbaum in organising The Group, a London-centred poets' group. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Lucie-Smith [Dec 2005]
Sexuality in Western Art (1991) - Edward Lucie-Smith
Sexuality in Western Art (1991) - Edward Lucie-Smith
[Amazon.com]
[FR] [DE] [UK]
Eroticism in Western Art (1972) revised as Sexuality in Western Art (1991)
Synopsis
Edward Lucie-Smith's examination of sexuality in Western art from prehistory to the present first treats the tradition chronologically, then considers its characteristic themes and symbols. --Amazon.de
See also: sex - art - erotic art
The Waking dream: Fantasy and the surreal in graphic art, 1450-1900 (1975) - Edward-Lucie Smith
The Waking dream: Fantasy and the surreal in graphic art, 1450-1900 (1975) - Edward-Lucie Smith [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
The tradition of the grotesque is particularly alive in prints. The fantastic is especially suited to the graphic medium, and it is possible to track almost its entire history in etchings, engravings and woodcuts. A fine book The Waking Dream: Fantasy and the Surreal in graphic Art 1450-1900 charts this progress through Holbein’s Dance of Death, the macabre prints of Urs Graf, the engravings of Callot, seventeenth-century alchemical prints, scientific, medical and anatomical illustration (I adapted the embryonic development diagrams of Ernst Haeckel for my drawing Species/Gender), emblems, the topsy-turvy world popular prints, Piranesi’s Prisons (which influence my architectural fantasies), Rowlandson, Gillray (whom I studied for guidance on how to draw caricature for drawings like my Seven Sins) , Goya, Fuseli and Blake, and into the nineteenth century with Grandville, Daumier, Meryon, Doré, Victor Hugo’s drawings and Redon. The tradition continues with the Symbolists and Richard Dadd, Ensor and Kubin, through to Surrealism, which recognised many of the artists of the grotesque and fantastic tradition as precursors. It is via Surrealism that much of this work has come to be appreciated. In the twentieth century this type of imagery has permeated culture, and is found everywhere, in diverse art forms including: the satiric installations of Kienholz, the drawings of A. Paul Weber, the cartoons of Robert Crumb, the animated films of Jan Svankmajer, photographs by Witkin, plays by Beckett, science fiction by Ballard, fantastic literature like Meyrink’s The Golem, Jean Ray’s Malpertuis, the art and writings of Bruno Schulz and Leonora Carrington, films by Lynch, Cronenberg and Gilliam; all are part of a spreading network of connections, the branching tentacles of the grotesque. -- Paul Rumsey via http://www.angelfire.com/pa5/rumsey/artist.htm [Dec 2005]
See also: fantastic art - art horror - horror - grotesque - art - grotesque art - printmaking - illustration - Gustave Doré
Erotica : The Fine Art of Sex (1997) - Edward Lucie-Smith
Originally released in 1997 by Rizzoli having been produced by The Ivy Press in the UK with the title ARS EROTICA: AN AROUSING HISTORY OF EROTIC ART.
Edward Lucie-Smith has published more than a hundred books in all, more than sixty books about art, chiefly but not exclusively about contemporary work. He is generally regarded as both the most prolific and the most widely published writer on art in the world, with sales for some titles totaling over 250,000 copies. A number of his art books, among them Movements in Art Since 1945, Visual Arts of the 20th Century, A Dictionary of Art Terms and Art Today are used as standard texts throughout the world. Other well-known texts include Sexuality in Western Art. --About the Author via amazon.com
Edward Lucie-Smith is probably the best-known author in his field internationally respected for the breadth of his sympathies, for the clarity and directness of his writing on art, and for his ability to make complex contemporary developments accessible to a wide audience. He brings all of his talents to bear in this book, which is a wonderful compendium of erotic art and literature, selected by, and commented on by the world's leading authority on the subject. --Book Description via amazon.com
Edward Lucie-Smith continues to write books that embrace all aspects of art and this current release is not exception. Originally released in 1997 by Rizzoli having been produced by The Ivy Press in the UK with the title ARS EROTICA: AN AROUSING HISTORY OF EROTIC ART, this book remains intact in the St. Martin's Press release. The quality of the paper and the quality of the art reproductions is of the highest nature.
Lucie-Smith has the gift to inform conversationally as he writes about the history of eroticism in art. His writing includes excerpts from poems, novels, articles, and quotations that are liberally reproduced throughout this extremely visual book. The overview of erotic art is divided into chapters: Sex in the Head, Naked as Adam, Naked as Eve, Loves of the Gods, Down to Earth, Looking On (voyeurism), Boys will be Boys, Women in Love, En plein Air, Solitary Pleasures (onanism), Coming Together (group sex), All Change (gender alterations as well as costumes), and Love Hurts (sadomasochism). He has selected a wide range of artists - painters, sculptors, printmakers, photographers - who truly span the timeline with titillations form Egyptian and Greek imagery to present day practitioners of Eroticism.
Lucie-Smith may concentrate on potentially over-the-top images, but he never loses sight of his mission to inform. His writing is lucid, often humorous and equally often deeply thoughtful when challenging the mores of our time. A fun and very informative book. --Grady Harp via amazon.com