Art Nouveau and the Erotic

Book Description
The swirling sensuous forms of the Art Nouveau style are synonymous with the erotic. This provocative book, bursting with groundbreaking sensual images, shows how artists and designers from Aubrey Beardsley to Gustav Klimt explored and exploited the idea of the erotic in their creative endeavors. Ghislaine Wood uses a wide range of paintings, sculpture, ceramics, jewelry, photographs, and more-many from the superb collections of London's Victoria & Albert Museum-to illustrate the risqu, often shockingly explicit content of many works from a time of sexual license and decadent extravagance. Visually arresting and well-priced, this complement to the main exhibition catalogue is not only for lovers of Art Nouveau but also for the vast audience for books on erotic art. GHISLAINE WOOD is assistant curator of the major exhibition on Art Nouveau at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, and the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., and a contributor to the book Art Nouveau, 1890-1914. She lives in London. 80 illustrations, 60 in full color, 73/8 x 81/4


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Born at a time of rapid change, Art Nouveau flourished at the turn of the last century. While new media such as film and photography provided new ways of seeing the world, the moral landscape of Europe and America was beginning to shift, and artists and designers used the erotic to push the boundaries of established convention. The risque and often shockingly explicit content of many Art Nouveau works is one of the most striking and disturbing features of the style." "Divided into thematic sections, Art Nouveau and the Erotic draws on a wide range of paintings, sculpture, furniture, ceramics, jewellery and metalwork, from the V&A's collections and elsewhere, to bring an often hidden history to light.


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