Eroticism in Archery Photography and Art

By Charles Moffat - January 2015.

I find it fascinating how people like to combine erotic imagery with archery - usually with scantily clad or nude women, and rarely ever men in poses that look more like classic pin ups. Like the images below.

Pin up art is relatively tame by modern standards.

This piece is more about youthful athleticism then it is erotic.

This photograph is so tame she is even wearing fancy shoes.

Whereas this image looks like something out of "Mad Max".

Some images show a complete lack of archery knowledge.

A fancy dress and an expensive compound bow, it doesn't even match.

Again the lack of archery knowledge, this time for a fashion shoot.

In comparison these men look like that don't whether they are supposed to shoot the bow or stroke it. Penis envy?

Archery was in vogue back in the 1950s, and it was the rise of the male pin up model.

And last but not least this is a male model / bodybuilder from the 1950s/60s who often did nude poses of himself with archery equipment. He did so many nude archer poses it became known as his specialty.

Eroticism in Art History = Awkward?

November 2014.

So I was browsing art history books on Amazon when I came across the book "Erotic Art: An Annotated Bibliography with Essays" by Eugene C. Burt, as seen below.

And as you can see, judging by the cover, it is quite possibly the least sexy book about erotic art you will ever see.

396 pages of essays about erotic art - quite possibly without even showing erotic art.

The white tag on the cover makes me think it was stolen from a library and someone is trying to sell it. Hence why there are 6 used copies available.

It got me thinking about how awkward it must be sometimes for university students to be writing essays on the topic of erotic art and then having to submit their essay to their possibly ugly professor. Or maybe the professor is totally hot and looks like Tom Selleck or Cindy Crawford (you know, once they got older, but still very attractive).

I can only guess some students will feel mightily embarrassed about handing in their essay about eroticism in the art work of [insert artist name here]. It could even lead to awkward silences or awkward conversations.

(Although to be fair I think the awkwardness would be even worse if someone was caught using a plagiarized essay from an essay writing company and then got kicked out of their university for academic dishonesty.)

I have a feeling students might feel more comfortable about talking about sex in art / eroticism in art if the professor swore once in awhile. A few F-words here and there might allow students to relax a bit more and be able to talk about eroticism without all the embarrassment.

Or maybe some of them will be like many typical (or stereotypical) university students and be drunk / stoned / sex-crazed maniacs in their early 20s who can eloquently talk about "the money shot" in pornography as if they were discussing 18th century French literature. With no awkwardness at all.

The type of people I have no doubt would get along with Flavio and Alexandra, the authors of "How to Read Erotic Art". I have a hunch, just guessing, but my hunch is that Flavio and Alexandra were dating (or maybe have an open relationship) when they were writing their book.

"How to Read Erotic Art" is just one of many books on this topic, but according to description it does go into depth into the idea of how interpret erotic art and possibly also how to talk about erotic art. It therefore might be one of the few books which 'breaks the ice' or 'kills the elephant in the room' when it comes to talking about erotic art.

Most people after all just sort of awkwardly stare at erotic art and then look away embarrassed. When asked what they liked about it they respond with something generic. "It was, uh, very realistic." or "I liked the symbolism."

Erotic art books often become top sellers and yet surprisingly most people only look at the pictures and never "read" the book in question. You should, in theory, do both just so you learn more from the book and garner all the knowledge that is to be learned on the topic you paid money for.

There are 1,225 books, art history books, graphic novels, manga and more on the topic of 'erotic art history' on Amazon.com. If I use eroticism instead of erotic, the list is reduced to 78 - and includes everything from paintings to pottery to Pompeii frescoes.

It is a big long list. The type of books you expect to see on the coffee table in your aunt's condo - you know, the aunt who never married and brings a new man to Christmas gatherings every year. And each year the men seem to get younger. (Another stereotype, huzzah!)

The same aunt who gave you "the talk" when you were 15 and was later scolded by your parents for overstepping her boundaries as an aunt. The same aunt who made raunchy jokes you didn't get when you were younger but now think are hysterical. The same aunt who gave you a giant box of condoms and an "how to guide" when you went off to university and just smiled and drank her wine when the other relatives just looked aghast and awkward.

If you managed to survive having an aunt like that, chances are likely you are surprisingly well adjusted, well-informed and "adult" when it comes to all things dealing with sex and eroticism. You probably didn't get your liberal-mindedness from your parents.

And if you've managed to read this post all the way to the bottom, you are most definitely liberal minded.

The Sensual Eroticism of the Song of Solomon

By Charles Moffat - May 2011.

If you've ever read "The Song of Solomon" you might have asked 'What is this type of writing doing in the Bible?' Most people would not expect to find such explicit, yet highly poetic, descriptions of a sexuality and lovemaking in the Holy Bible.



Depending on whom you talk to "The Song of Solomon" is literary smut but it is also one of the greatest examples of historical erotica. As a book in the Bible it celebrates sexuality as the most beautiful act a husband and wife can do together, a celebration of "God's Creation". In that line of thinking, eroticism itself (if done with poetic finesse and imagination) can be seen as a celebration of "God's Creation".

"Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth: for thy love is better than wine" says the female poet. Later she says "bundle of myrrh is my well-beloved unto me; he shall lie all night betwixt my breasts."

If you read between the lines of The Song of Solomon you will notice that in Chapters 2 to 3, oral sex appears to be described: "the apple tree among the trees of the wood, so is my beloved among the sons. I sat down under his shadow with great delight, and his fruit was sweet to my taste."

The male poet, Solomon, says, "Thy two breasts are like two young roes that are twins, which feed among the lilies.... Thou has ravished my heart, my sister, my spouse; thou has ravished my heart with one of thine eyes, with one chain of thy neck.... Thy lips, O my spouse, drop as the honeycomb: honey and milk are under thy tongue."

Solomon describes his beloved as "a garden", presumably a reference to her bushy pubic hair and her fruit-like breasts.

His female lover writes "Awake, O north wind; and come, thou south; blow upon my garden, that the spices thereof may flow out. Let my beloved come into his garden, and eat its pleasant fruits."

Its pretty obvious then they're meant to enjoy oral sex.

These poetic and metaphorical descriptions of intimacy lead us back to the question as to why this type of writing is in the Bible? The answer is because mankind is supposed to be "fruitful and multiply", because marriage isn't just a symbol before 'God', because marriage is also a sanctuary for lovemaking, and this lovemaking is both a celebration of the human body, and an act for creating children.

It is presumable that 'God' would wish children to be born from lovemaking, and not from rape or rampant fornication.

At the time the Holy Bible was put together it was previously just a collection of stories. Evidently the people deciding which chapters should go in it had a lengthy discussion about how prudish a book they were making. They wanted to off-set some of the more anti-sex ideas in the book with a chapter that celebrated sex. This was a conscious decision to endorse lovemaking and eroticism.

It also says something about the nature of sex of lovemaking. The moment of ecstasy is a moment wherein the whole body, the whole mind, is caught in rapture. It is perhaps no surprise therefore that many people in the moment of orgasm cry out "OH GOD!"

We should note that at the time the Song of Solomon they lived in a fairly liberal culture where both common peasants and the wealthy ran amok having sex with one another. True, they knew the dangers of sexuality, like pregnancy and the STDs of the time, but it was not a 'wholly anti-sexual culture'. Rather it was surprisingly knowledgeable about what causes babies to be born and had learned methods of effective contraception (likely finishing with oral sex or pulling out at the opportune moment).

At such a time we know that prostitution was a constant and that it was also vitally important that sexually transmitted diseases be kept to a minimum which may explain the many warnings in Proverbs and other Biblical passages against fornicating with "the strange woman" and "the harlot".



But while fornication was frowned upon, lovemaking within the sanctity of marriage was actually encouraged because it increases the chances of faithfulness and reduces adultery (which leads to other problems).

Eroticism therefore was not feared by ancient cultures but celebrated for increasing fertility and faithfulness between lovers. The Song of Solomon however is not about fertility of faithfulness however. It is a celebration of lovemaking's ability to give pleasure and to enrich the lives of those we love. It was created by and for people who savored the pleasures of the flesh and was meant to be enjoyed within marriage.

The Song of Solomon can also be appreciated as a larger metaphor. Some people see it as symbolizing the relationship of God to Israel, of Jesus Christ to the Christian Church, etc.

In the end The Song of Solomon is enduring testimony to the pleasures of lovemaking. While it is said that poets make good lovers, we can only assume Solomon was a great one.

(This essay is from the website The Song of Solomon and is courtesy of The Religion eZine, an online magazine which discusses religion, philosophy, atheism and mythology.)

Profane Love and Erotic Art in the Italian Renaissanc

"Cameo cup fragment with lovemaking scene [Roman] (81.10.349)". In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art


by Linda Wolk-Simon

In the intellectually sophisticated milieu of Renaissance Rome, as elsewhere in Italy in the sixteenth century in the decades before the Counter-Reformation, the sacred and the profane were not distinct or separate realms, but rather two aspects of a single, seamless culture. Both proceeded from a learned immersion in classical antiquity, which offered paradigms both lofty and low: the humanists who revered and emulated the noble prose of Cicero also devoured the racy texts of Ovid and the humorous dialogues of Lucian. The artists who studied the Apollo Belevedere and the Laocoon in an effort to revive that heroic manner found that the ancient Romans had indulged, in equal measure, their taste for prurient, less noble fare. Scenes of heterosexual and homosexual lovemaking were commonplace in Roman wall painting, and also frequently appeared on small-scale decorative objects such as cameos, silver, pottery and oil lamps. Like the monumental architectural and sculptural remains, these miniature and often fragmentary relics of classical antiquity were keenly studied by Renaissance artists and humanists—particularly in Rome, where such material, already abundant, was constantly augmented by new archaeological discoveries. Such antique exemplae both fueled and sanctioned their enthusiastic embrace of lewd imagery, which could be justified (however speciously) as a learned revival of the maniera all'antica.

Some of the most rhetorically elevated, learned, and refined works of Renaissance art and literature were produced by painters and poets who turned their energies with equal facility to lewd, salacious, and erotic subject matter. Artists like Giulio Romano, Perino del Vaga, Francesco Salviati, and Parmigianino decorated sacred liturgical spaces with decorous frescoes and altarpieces at the same time they were exploring in their drawings more earthy subjects like fornication and pederasty. Marcantonio Raimondi, Raphael's gifted engraver who reproduced that master's most brilliant pictorial inventions, was also responsible for some of the most sexually explicit and transgressive prints ever produced. Cesare da Sesto, a talented follower of Leonardo da Vinci from Milan who spent a number of years in Rome, drew standing saints next to copulating figures in the pages of one of his sketchbooks. The poet and curial secretary Francesco Berni, a learned humanist, penned an ode to his urinal and rhapsodized in verse about the pleasures of sodomy, enlisting as a stand-in for the male buttocks a peach—one of the many suggestively shaped fruits and vegetables endowed with erotic alter egos by literary wits of the day and a treat, he quipped, to be enjoyed at any time (other favorites were figs, parsnips, green beans, and zucchini)—while the painter Bronzino, who was also a gifted poet, found literary inspiration in his paintbrush and frying pan. If such banal objects strike a modern audience as dull muses, contemporaries conversant with the burlesque lexicon of the day would have immediately recognized the phallic and sodomitic references encoded in his witty encomia.

In the Renaissance as in antiquity, the theme of illicit, carnal, erotic love thus provided an endless font of inspiration. Some of the images in question are unabashedly vulgar and lurid in their portrayal of licentiousness. Others explore erotic subject matter with learned erudition. And informing many is a parodic, burlesque sensibility that mocks or satirizes with wit and humor more intellectually elevated modes of literary discourse and artistic display. Regardless of the particular tone that distinguishes them, most of these drawings, paintings, and objects were made for private rather than public consumption: they were meant to be enjoyed by a privileged audience, be it a single individual, or a select few gathered behind the protective walls of a villa, studiolo, or academy. (Prints are an exception: produced in multiples, they had the capacity to disseminate scandalous imagery to a vast, uncontrollable audience and were for this reason the frequent targets of censorship campaigns launched by the Church and civic authorities.) And like the sculpture of a nude Venus described by the satirist Pietro Aretino—that most vocal and prurient champion of erotic love—erotic images were not intended to incite the viewer to virtuous thoughts or noble deeds, rather, their purpose was to arouse pure lust. In disavowing all "Petrarchan subtleties," Aretino's lusty heroine, the prostitute Nanna, announces not only the essence of profane love, but also of profane art, in the Renaissance.

Wolk-Simon, Linda. "Profane Love and Erotic Art in the Italian Renaissance". In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/prof/hd_prof.htm (November 2008)

"Cameo cup fragment with lovemaking scene [Roman] (81.10.349)". In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/rcam/ho_81.10.349.htm (November 2008)

The Role of Kama Sutra in a Relationship

By Charles Moffat - 2008.

In our youth the schooling system tries to explain how sex works, the anatomy of the body and the importance of using protection such as condoms/the Pill. But there is no time scheduled to discuss the actual mechanisms of sex, foreplay, positions or even matters of romance.

So instead we get our information from "more experienced" friends, from the mass media, from books, movies, etc. and eventually, without really discussing it in depth we develop a methodology with regards to how to be romantic, how to flirt, how to conduct foreplay and even what to do during sex.

Now here's a personal pet peeve. Ever watched a movie and the guy drives his date up to a makeout place above the city where they can view the city (and maybe the stars)? Its a 1950s stereotype of what people thought was romantic. And its completely lame. It lacks creativity and tells your date that you have no imagination whatsoever.

So if that is what the guy thinks is romantic, what does he think is good foreplay or good sex? The missionary position? Again, no imagination.

This is where Kama Sutra comes in... either Vatsayayana's Kama Sutra or a more modern version like the Penthouse video. Or you could learn a thing or two just from looking at Kama Sutra art.

Vatsayayana's Kama Sutra doesn't just focus on sex, its also a complete guide to attracting a mate, courtship, betrothal, marriage, spicing up your marriage, cheating/affairs and how to be romantic. For example there's even a section on how to plant a garden designed to entice your senses and spark your sense of romance.

The Indian tradition believes that every aspect of human life is governed by one or more of the following motives:

1). Dharma: Virtuous living.
2). Artha: Material prosperity.
3). Kama: Gratification of the senses.
4). Moksha: Liberation.

So Kama Sutra isn't just about relationships, its about enjoying yourself through your senses. You can't learn that in school.