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Sexual fetishism

Parent categories: erotica - paraphilia - perversion - sexual fantasy - fetishism

By medium: fetish art - fetish erotica - fetish photography -

Theory: Alfred Binet - Sigmund Freud

Related: BDSM - foot and shoe fetishism -

Body parts: body - buttock - breast - ear - eye - foot - genitals - hand - head - leg - mouth - nose

Definition

Sexual fetishism, first described as such by Alfred Binet in his Le fétichisme dans l’amour, though the concept and certainly the activity is quite ancient [depends on your intepretation, see Colin Wilson, The Misfits], is a form of paraphilia where the object of affection is a specific inanimate object or part of a person's body. The term arose from fetishism, the general concept of an object having supernatural powers, or an object created by humans that has power over other humans. --http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_fetish [Dec 2005]

Freud's fetish

Psychologists have made liberal use of the term ever since 1887 when Alfred Binet first applied it to describe certain kinds of unusual male sexual activity. The term was picked up and popularized by Krafft-Ebing, the sexologist who, in the medicalizing terminology of the day, termed it a pathology, a deviant sexual practice, and a perversion. 'Fetishists' as a category described those men who developed erotic attachments to objects rather than to people and who sought sexual gratification with and through that object. It might be a boot, a glove, a piece of underwear, a fur (these are the time honored examples, but it could be practically anything else). This practice, once catalogued and described, became something of a "model perversion" in the nineteenth century. For sexologists of the day, it practically defined abnormal sexual behavior. But while the category existed and was increasingly diagnosed as the cause of all kinds of moral degeneracy, it really had no convincing theory to support it and thus remained somewhat enigmatic.

In 1905, in his Three Essays on Sexuality, Freud offered one theory to account for this behavior. In his view, the fetish originated with the male child's horror of female castration. Confronted with the mother's lack of a penis, the child represses this lack and finds some object to stand in for and substitute for the missing penis, thus relieving the anxiety and restoring in a displaced way) the erotic attachment to the female. The act involves not only finding a substitute object, but also a subsequent act of forgetting the act of substitution. For Freud, the fetish is a kind of creative denial, a sort of magical thinking that helps the fetishist ward off anxiety and restore a sense of well-being, all the while producing a kind of amnesia. Of course, this theory does not really help explain why some men become sexual fetishists and others do not. Nor does it explain how or why a woman might develop a fetish. (The French psychoanalyst Lacan added some interesting twists in explicating this theory, but since his theories are not widely known outside of academia, I won't pursue them here.) --http://eserver.org/bs/41/wray.html

Sigmund Freud theorized fetishism thus: the naked female body, when first seen by a little boy, "lacks" a penis. Linda Williams remarks that the little boy's discovery causes an unconscious desire to disavow this lack by putting a fetish in its place. Next, the fetish object --a shoe, an undergarment, the woman herself-- becomes the substitute for the phallus "which the little boy once believed in" and which "he still wants to believe." Stuart Hall has extended Freudian fetish object to the black body itself, noting that in contemporary representation, for every image of the black subject as a savage, native or slave, there is a comforting image of the docile servant or clown. 15 --Theresa M. Senft, Department of Performance Studies [accessed June 2004]

Common varieties of fetishism

--http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_fetish#Common_varieties_of_fetishism [Apr 2005]

Less common forms of fetishism

--http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_fetish#Less_common_forms_of_fetishism [Apr 2005]

Sexual objectification

Sexual objectification is, in some circumstances, the fetishistic act of regarding a person as an object for erotic purposes. Allen Jones' sculptures Hat Stand and Table Sculpture, made in 1969, which show semi-naked women in the roles of furniture, are clear examples of the depiction of the fantasy of sexual objectification. (This particular interest, a form of sexual bondage that involves making furniture designed to incorporate a bound person, is also known as "forniphilia".)

Some feminists have long argued that traditional attitudes to women in many societies constitute non-consensual sexual objectification of women.

A desire to be objectified occurs in many men and women's masochistic sexual fantasies. Objectification for fetishistic purposes may provide erotic humiliation for the person so regarded, whether male or female. As with most sexual activities, it is generally viewed as abusive if it is not part of a consensual arrangement, such as in BDSM play. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_objectification [Oct 2004]

Japanese Fetish Erotica [...]

Fetish photography [...]

Fetish Artists:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Fetish_artists [Jan 2005]

Subdivided in

--adapted fromhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fetish_artist [Jan 2005]

Gilles Berquet [...]

Berquet is one of the driving forces in the European fetish scene. He is also the editor of maniac. Kinky fetish and bondage photography with a film noir feel. Carefully posed with obvious illusions to the subrosa fetish photography of 1920's Paris, the photos maintain a caught in the act modernity. Berquet is one of the driving forces in the European fetish scene. He is also the editor of maniac.

Guido Crepax [...]

Milanese architect and artist Guido Crepax started one of the first-ever erotic comic series, "Valentina." He has also adapted many pieces of erotic literature to comic form, including a number of works by De Sade, "The Story of O," and "Emmanuelle."
After 'Valentina', other titles followed, such as 'L'Astronave Pirata' (1968), 'La Casa Matta' (1969), 'La Calata di Mac Similiano' (1969), 'Belinda' and 'Bianca'. Recurring themes were those of victimized girls, sadomasochism and violence. It is not surprising that Guido Crepax illustrated classic erotic stories like De Sade's 'Justine', Pauline Réage's 'Histoire d'O' and Sacher-Masoch's 'Venus in Furs'.

Guido Crepax draws delicate girls, many of them inspired by actress Louise Brooks, whom Crepax adored. His subtle, esthetic graphics have earned him fame all over the world.

Dolcett [...]

The art of Dolcett spans a number of interests. Asphyxiation (especially hanging) and gynophagia (the eating of women), especially after impalement, seem to be the most frequent subjects, but execution by gunfire, electrocution, decapitation, and several more exotic tortures (such as the use of honey and ants) are included in his portfolio. I have heard that Dolcett first began creating these masterpieces as an outlet for his own fantasies, and Dolcett himself says that he has been creating them since he learned to draw. Copies of some of his art has made its way onto the commercial market, but this was not his intention. Dolcett produces his art entirely for his own enjoyment - he has NEVER sold any of his artwork; he only gives them away as gifts. [...]

Felicien Rops [...]

Rops was born in Namur in 1833, and was educated at the University of Brussels. Rops's forte was drawing more than painting in oils; he first won fame as a caricaturist. He met Charles Baudelaire towards the end of Baudelaire's life in 1864, and Baudelaire left an impression upon him that lasted until the end of his days. Rops created the frontispiece for Baudelaire's Les Epaves, a selection of poems from Les fleurs du mal that had been censored in France, and which therefore were published in Belgium.

Rops's association with Baudelaire and with the art he represented won his work the admiration of many other writers, including Théophile Gautier, Alfred de Musset, Stéphane Mallarmé, Jules Barbey d’Aurevilly, and Joséphin Peladan. He was closely associated with the literary movement of Symbolism and Decadence. Like the works of the authors whose poetry he illustrated, his work tends to mingle sex, death, and Satanic images.

Hans Rudolf Giger [...]

Swiss painter who began with dark, detailed, mechanical works in "underground" publications, and attracted wide attention beginning in the '70s. He designed the visuals for the movie Alien and several others, plus many album covers. His work is often morbid, monstrous, filled with grotesque biomechanoids and occult imagery -- a merger of sadomasochism, science-fiction and Lovecraftian lore.

Hans Bellmer [...]

  • Hans Bellmer - Behind Closed Doors [1Book, Amazon US]
    The German-born Surrealist Hans Bellmer (1902-1975), best known for his life-size pubescent dolls, devoted an artistic lifetime to creating sexualized images of the female body--distorted, dismembered, or menaced in sinister scenarios. In this book Sue Taylor draws on psychoanalytic theory to suggest why Bellmer was so driven by erotomania as well as a desire for revenge, suffering, and the safety of the womb. Although he styled himself as the quintessential Oedipal son, an avant-garde artist in perpetual rebellion against a despised father, Taylor contends that his filial attitude was more complex than he could consciously allow. Tracing a repressed homoerotic attachment to his father, castration anxiety, and an unconscious sense of guilt, Taylor proposes that a feminine identification informs all the disquieting aspects of Bellmer's art. [...]

    Harmony Publications [...]

    Bondage Photo publisher which carried illustrations in its Bondage Life magazine and occasionally in others. Carried work by Brian Tarsis, SMS, Robert Bishop and many more. Harmony Concepts is adamant about promoting safe, consensual SM, and refusing to stray from it in the work they produce -- a policy which is admirable, but also sometimes restrictive in a medium which lends itself more to wild fantasy. [...]

    TAO Productions [...]

    HOM (House of Milan) [...]

    Also known as Lyndon Distributors / London Enterprises, started in the 1970s. Directed by photographer Barbara Behr in the '80s and well known for the work of Robert Bishop which graced the covers of their novels and were collected by them for publication. They published work by Brian Tarsis, SMS, Lou Kagan (who also did a photo series for them) and authors Frank Campbell, John Savage and Geoffrey Merrick.

    Irving Klaw [...]

    A New York City cheesecake photographer and publisher who began his business (Movie Star News) in 1947. In 1955, the controversy surrounding his fetish works spurred on by Estes Kefauver caused him to shut down this part of his business (and in the process, he destroyed his entire collection of fetish works to avoid prosecution), but the classic works which have survived in personal collections have endured for fans everywhere. He lent notoriety to model Bettie Page and artists Eneg, Eric Stanton, Jim, Ruiz, John Willie and others.
    It is estimated that Irving Klaw burned over 80% of his photos when the government went after him as a pornographer in the early 60's. I am not sure who owns the rights to his photos now, but these are from a flood on the Usenet and the quality was just too good not to share. In knowing what was once done to such artists, it gives us all the more reason to fight to keep freedom on the net.

    Eric Stanton [...]

    He's been called "the Rembrandt of Pulp-Culture" and it's not hard to see why - Stanton is the creme de la creme of his genre. His imaginative, detailed full-colour comic strip narratives picture buxom, leggy femmes fatales having their way with tied-up, handcuffed, or simply awestruck men. Look at it how you want - Stanton's imagery is either an empowerment of female sexuality or a gross caricature of female-domination fantasy.

    John Willie [...]


    John Alexander Scott Coutts was born of British parents in Singapore. He studied in England, then moved to Australia. From there, he sent his designs to the US. Most of his work was published (under the pseudonym John Willie) between 1946 and 1959 in Bizarre magazine, which Willie also edited. His most famous stories were 'The Adventures of Sweet Gwendoline', 'Pauline's Peril' and 'Hairbreadth Harry'. John Willie was a master of the bondage genre, and he created numerous works for private orders, which unfortunately have never been published. He retired to Guernsey, where he died in 1962. [...]

    Bizarre Magazine [...]


    John Willie's Bizarre appeared from 1948 - 1959 at irregular intervals. Alongside articles, photographs, letters to the editor and drawings, mostly originating from the pen of Willie himself, they contained Willie's classic comic strip "Sir d'Arcy d'Arcy" with the unforgettable Sweet Gwendoline. Willie is the recognized master of bondage photography and illustration

    ( Taschen) BIZARRE: The Complete Works of John Willie reproduces the entire run of the rarest and most collectible fetish magazine ever created in an incredible 1540-page, boxed, double volume format packed with erotic images of women in high heels, silk hose, garter belts and panties--all bound, gagged, caged, whiipped, hobbled, and humbled! A staggering 1650 illustrations, comics, and photos by the artist/author of Sweet Gwendoline.

    Richard Kern [...]

    Richard Kern (born: North Carolina, 1954) has lived and worked in New York City since 1979. In the eighties, he produced a series of short films that now are recognized as the central works of the movement now known as the Cinema of Transgression. In the 90’s he switched to photography full time and occasionally directed music videos for bands like Sonic Youth and Marilyn Manson. Kern has published seven books and is a regular contributor to a variety of international publications.

    Eric Kroll [...]


    Fetish photographer and editor with an incredible diversity of subject matter. Formerly a New Yorker, he now resides in San Francisco. His website features an astounding amount of work, filmed with a keen eye and brilliant mind. He has also published some collections ("Fetish Girls" and "Beauty Parade"), and composed introductions for influential works such as the compiled 2-volume "Bizarre" collection and some Taschen folios. Eric Kroll is a man with a profound love for the diversity of fetish, and has done much to encourage newcomers to the field, as well as to inspire them with his camera work. [...]

    Taschen Publishers [...]

    Milo Manara [...]


    Ink and watercolor comics artist and writer whose work often exudes an intense eroticism along with a keen social insight. He has produced several graphic novels, some which feature the writing of Hugo Pratt and Frederico Fellini.

    Moebius [...]

    (French cartoonist Jean Giraud (a.k.a. Gir) whose work frequently strays into the erotic, with voyeuristic and sometimes sadomasochistic overtones.

    Heavy Metal Magazine

    Publisher of comic strips, fantasy art, has run work by Tanino Liberatore.

    Bettie Page [...]

    Famed pin-up model of the '40s and '50s, Bettie Page did a significant amount of fetish-based work. She helped popularize playful tease, high heels, girdles and stockings, appearing as both a whip-wielding mistress and a helpless bondagette. Her allure was added to by her "disappearance", but she has been recently reported to be alive and well, enjoying her life out of the public eye.

    Hajime Sorayama [...]

    Japanese airbrush artist who became a freelance artist in 1972 and became world-renowned after the first publication of his "Sexy Robot" works in 1983. His work is known and recognized around the globe, and there have been several collections of his work. .

    Tanino Liberatore [...]

    Born in April 1953 to Quadri (Chieti), Gaetano Liberatore, said Tanino, frequents the artistic school of Pescara (together to Andrea Pazienza) and from 1974 at 1978 it designs covers of disks and it collaborates with some agencies of publicity. It begins in 1978 as author of comic strips on the Cannibal magazine. Next he has collaborated to "Il Male" and he has been one of the fondadoris of "Frigidaire", on whose pages have continued Ranxerox, a kind of monster of Frankenstein punk created by Stephen Tamburini. Popular in France, where he has lived for years and where he is well soon imposed on the pages of the "Echo des Savanes" like one of the most interesting authors of his generation, Liberator has also realized numerous brief histories without fixed characters, often characterized by a notable erotic position over that from abundant doses of violence.

    Yoshifumi Hayashi [...]

    Little is known about Japanese artist Yoshifumi Hayashi. Apart from this page and Thierry Zalic's site, and some books on arcanabooks.com, not much is available online. I encountered the work of Hayashi in Paris when I was seventeen. I was browsing a bargain bin of books right across the centre Pompidou. His work 'struck me' immediately but I was too shy to buy it at the time. [...]

    Links

  • http://directory.google.com/Top/Adult/Society/Sexuality/Fetishes/ All fetishes according to Google.
  • http://www.sweetchastity.com/who03.shtml I loosely based this page on that page.
  • http://www.erosarchives.com/books.htm

    Books

    1. The Beauty of Fetish - Steve Diet Goedde [Amazon US] [FR] [DE] [UK]
      Steve Diet Goedde is a self-taught erotic photographer who has made a name for himself by going against the traditional cliches of erotic photography. While most erotic photographers explore nude landscapes, Goedde prefers to survey the sensual appeal of fetishism. While lovingly documenting such textures as latex, PVC, and leather, Goedde manages to remind us that there are indeed people under the clothing. In addition to the high degree of eroticism, a sense of individuality and warmth seep through his portraits and settings. His first hardcover retrospective "The Beauty of Fetish" was just released by renowned Swiss publisher Edition Stemmle.

    2. Motel Fetish - Chas Ray Krider, Chas Krider [Amazon US]

      "Taschen is this art vampire. He's going to bite me on the neck and my art is going to have immortality." - Chas Ray Krider (from an interview with Eric Kroll)

      A number of years ago I began to see distinctive layouts in Hustler's Leg World that got me nervous. The photographs were that good. Whoever it was had style and made the women his women. Krider women. Women I began to desire on a monthly basis. In the world of professional golf there is an expression "the world's greatest golfer not to win a major tournament." Chas Ray Krider was the world's greatest erotic photographer not to have a book.

      Thanks to TASCHEN we now have over 160 Krider images to pore over. To salivate over. Like a good film noir, he takes us to lustful places. Is it a crime scene or a sea of lust? These beautiful, languid women wait for whom? For me. For you. They play the "waiting game" beautifully. An ass in the air, a pair of crossed legs in nylons, all bathed in warm tones. A still life unstuck in time. So this is what goes on behind closed doors?

      Oh, I almost forgot. Alongside these many Midwest femme fatales is Dita, raven-haired icon. Not since Betty Page has a woman fleshed out so correctly a vintage girdle and bra ensemble.

      Enjoy. He takes you places where you only vaguely think you have been. - Eric Kroll, editor and pupil

    3. Fantasies of Fetishism: From Decadence to the Post-human Amanda Fernbach [Amazon UK]
      At the dawn of the 21st century, Western culture is marked by various fantasies that imagine our future selves and their forms of embodiment. These fantasies form part of a rapidly growing discourse about the future of the human form, the disappearing boundary between the human and the technological and the cultural consequences of greater human-technological integration. This book is about those cultural fantasies of fetishism, the different forms they take and the various ways in which the transformative processes they depict can reaffirm accepted definitions of identity or reconfigure them in an entirely new fashion. This book argues that the orthodox interpretation of "classical" fetishism is not and never has been up to the task of explaining all cultural fetishisms. It identifies several forms of fetishism - decadent fetishism, magical fetishism, matrix fetishism and immortality fetishism - and accounts for its sometimes radical and productive edge. Ranging widely over texts and cultures, Amanda Fernbach applies these concepts of fetishism to topics in cultural studies, such as sexual difference, queer identities, computer culture and the "post-human" and also to her objects of study: cross-cultural dressers, techno-fetishists, cyberspace cowboys, cyborgs, geekgirls and SM/fetish cultures. This book argues that fetishism can contest postmodern malaise and provide utopian tools for a post-human existance. It urges that we embrace the new fetishism emerging from the fringes of the fetish scene and that we begin to classify fetishism in a manner that does justice to its multiplicity.

    4. City of Broken Dolls - Romain Slocombe [Amazon US] [FR] [DE] [UK]
      Tokyo metropolis. Both in hospital rooms and on the neon streets, beautiful young Japanese girls are photographed in plastercasts and bandages, victims of unknown traumas. These are the "broken dolls" of Romain Slocombe's Tokyo, a city seething with undercurrents of violent fantasy, fetishism and bondage. City of the Broken Dolls is a provocative photographic document of the girls whose bodies bear mute witness to Tokyo's futuristic, erotic interface of sex and technology. --Book Description, amazon.com

    5. Prisoner of the Red Army - Romain Slocombe [Amazon US] [FR] [DE] [UK]
      Influenced in equal part by '70s Japanese porn movies, the bondage art of Eric Stanton, and the revolutionary doctrines of Chairman Mao, this is a modern classic of dominance and submission.

    Fetishes (1996) - Nick Broomfield


    Fetishes (1996) - Nick Broomfield [Amazon.com]

    Fetishes is a 1996 documentry by Nick Broomfield filmed at Pandora's Box, one of New York City's most luxurious SM/fetish parlours. The film contains interviews with professional dominatrices and their clients including the New York filmmaker Maria Beatty.

    The documentary opens with black and white footage from an Irving Klaw film depicting models including Bettie Page wearing fetish attire. Nick Broomfield and his film crew then arrive at Pandora's Box on Manhattan's Fifth Avenue and are given a tour of the facility by Mistress Raven, including the dungeon and the medical room. The rest of the documentary consists of the following eight chapters:

    The film was produced in the United Kingdom, and was originally made for HBO. It was released in the United States on DVD (runtime 84 minutes, filmed in colour), and more recently as part of Nick Broomfield's 'Documenting Icons' box set. A full, uncut version with additional archive material is also available in the UK. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fetishes_%28documentary%29 [Apr 2005]

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