For Henri Matisse, drawing was an exercise as personal as it was essential to his art. These black and white and gently colored sketches allow the viewer to appreciate the quality of Matisse's lines, their confidence and ease, as well as the intense relationship between artist and model. Matisse's joie de vivre, his love of beauty, and his fascination with the human body are fully in evidence in this lovely volume.

A celebration of the human body and spirit in more than 100 photographs - all nude, all taken at night. These photographs illustrate the hard work and the dedication it takes to succeed in dancing, acting, photography - or really any creative endeavour that at first may be incredibly frightening or make you feel vulnerable, but once achieved offers an exhilaration previously unimagined. The photos were shot over 200 nights, with 300 different dancers, in more than 400 locations, in all kinds of weather. The photos are grouped by theme - Vulnerability, Ferocity, Stability, Ecstasy - and include shots from sunset to dawn, in spectacular black and white and glorious colour. Many will be accompanied by an inspiring quote. Additional text will include Jordan's introductory essay, describing how he came up with the book idea and how he is inspired by the dancers he photographs, as well as "Behind the Scenes" stories of how the shot was achieved and "In Their Shoes" - words from the dancers on what it was like to be photographed in nude in public.

Art and Pornography presents a series of essays which investigate the artistic status and aesthetic dimension of pornographic pictures, films, and literature, and explores the distinction, if there is any, between pornography and erotic art. Is there any overlap between art and pornography, or are the two mutually exclusive? If they are, why is that? If they are not, how might we characterize pornographic art or artistic pornography, and how might pornographic art be distinguished, if at all, from erotic art? Can there be aesthetic experience of pornography? What are some of the psychological, social, and political consequences of the creation and appreciation of erotic art or artistic pornography? Leading scholars from around the world address these questions, and more, and bring together different aesthetic perspectives and approaches to this widely consumed, increasingly visible, yet aesthetically underexplored cultural domain. The book, the first of its kind in philosophical aesthetics, will contribute to a more accurate and subtle understanding of the many representations that incorporate explicit sexual imagery and themes, in both high art and demotic culture, in Western and non-Western contexts. It is sure to stir debate, and healthy controversy.

Art and Pornography presents a series of essays which investigate the artistic status and aesthetic dimension of pornographic pictures, films, and literature, and explores the distinction, if there is any, between pornography and erotic art. Is there any overlap between art and pornography, or are the two mutually exclusive? If they are, why is that? If they are not, how might we characterize pornographic art or artistic pornography, and how might pornographic art be distinguished, if at all, from erotic art? Can there be aesthetic experience of pornography? What are some of the psychological, social, and political consequences of the creation and appreciation of erotic art or artistic pornography? Leading scholars from around the world address these questions, and more, and bring together different aesthetic perspectives and approaches to this widely consumed, increasingly visible, yet aesthetically underexplored cultural domain. The book, the first of its kind in philosophical aesthetics, will contribute to a more accurate and subtle understanding of the many representations that incorporate explicit sexual imagery and themes, in both high art and demotic culture, in Western and non-Western contexts. It is sure to stir debate, and healthy controversy.

The man behind the paintings: the extraordinary life of J. M. W Turner, one of Britain's most admired, misunderstood and celebrated artists J. M. W. Turner is Britain's most famous landscape painter. Yet beyond his artistic achievements, little is known of the man himself and the events of his life: the tragic committal of his mother to a lunatic asylum, the personal sacrifices he made to effect his stratospheric rise, and the bizarre double life he chose to lead in the last years of his life. A near mythical figure in his own lifetime, Franny Moyle tells the story of the man who was considered visionary at best and ludicrous at worst. A resolute adventurer, he found new ways of revealing Britain to the British, astounding his audience with his invention and intelligence. Set against the backdrop of the finest homes in Britain, the French Revolution and the Industrial Revolution, this is an astonishing portrait of one of the most important figures in Western art and a vivid evocation of Britain and Europe in flux.

In A Third Look, Joseph Maida reflects on Lee Friedlander's nudes from the 1970's and 80's, reinterpreting this series as a cutting edge homage both to Friedlander, the modernist titan of photography, and to LGBTQIA+ bodies across gender and identity spectra. When curator John Szarkowski first presented Friedlander's nudes in a solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in 1991, he wrote that "the qualities of generosity and openness, and the habit of continual exploration-of logical extemporization enlivened by an unassuming audacity" make Friedlander's nudes so "richly and rewardingly complex." Maida, viewing the traits of openness, exploration, extemporization, and audacity as queerness itself, reimagined Friedlander's nudes by picturing different bodies in A Third Look to converse with Friedlander's. Maida calls their feminist reclamation of history "a visual queering of modernist photography, providing a visible reconciliation of where the canon of art photography has historically allowed us to see" with the broader spectrum of the human nude.

The first Yale French Studies issue on photography, examining French photography's place in art, identity, and society through a lens of diversity and interdisciplinary investigation In its first issue on photography, this volume of Yale French Studies presents multiple avenues of interdisciplinary investigation designed to intersect and open up new areas of inquiry in the twenty-first century. These intersections push beyond traditional geographic and gender boundaries, exploring women's photography, new cultural contexts, trans orientalism, and minority and marginalized bodies. As they do so, they ask us to reconsider the way that we conceive of photography's place in the past and in our lives today.

"I like depicting sexy, strong women - the spirit of a dominatrix. Through my work I explore the part of my personality that enjoys teasing and provocation. In doing this, I've seen the change and growth of myself as a person, a woman, a lover, a critical open-minded thinker and, most important, as an artist." - Alejandra Guerrero. In the second decade of the twenty-first century we are witnessing an unprecedented exploration of female sexual power, while on the other hand reactionary cultural forces contrive to keep women as defenceless as possible. In this context, the work of photographer Alejandra Guerrero can be understood as a clarion call. Hers is a rarefied visual art that marks a turning point for female sexuality in erotica, her eloquent tableaux revealing the intricate ways in which women exert their erotic power. Here we see a future in which women dictate raw, yet refined desires. Each moment comes from the erotic fever dreams of the participants and the desires of the woman behind the camera. Sometimes, when Guerrero turns the lens upon herself, those moments are one and the same. Contents: We delight in wickedness by Violet Blue; Plates; Biographies; Credits.

Newly revised and expanded, this second edition of Timon Screech's definitive "Sex and the Floating World" offers a real assessment of the genre of Japanese paintings and prints today known as shunga. Changes in Japanese law in the 1990s enabled erotic images to be published without fear of prosecution, and many shunga picture-books have since appeared. There has, however, been very little attempt to situate the imagery within the contexts of sexuality, gender or power. Questions of aesthetics, and of whether shunga deserve a place in the official history of Japanese art, have dominated, and the question of the use of these images has been avoided. Timon Screech seeks to re-establish shunga in a proper historical frame of culture and creativity. Shunga prints are not like any other form of picture for the simple fact that they are overtly about sex. And once we begin to examine them first and foremost as sexual apparatus, then we must be prepared for some surprises. The author opens up for us the strange world of sexual fantasy in the Edo culture of eighteenth-century Japan, and investigates the tensions in class and gender of those that made and made use of shunga.

This intimate and elegant hardcover art book features contemporary oil paintings of explicit, celebratory, whimsical and intense sexual subject matter by Laura BenAmots. The raw private images are both tantalizing and surprising. The work is non-exploitative mature and playful. Clearly these paintings reflect a fearless celebration of the physical. Eros On Canvas has a clean calm design that creates a type of purity or visual "white noise" in which to view the unambiguous representations float. The title sheet is followed by a table of contents, words (artist's bio and interview), forward by Noel Black and an introduction. The paintings are separated into 3 groups: first is a brief introduction with an eclectic sampling of other artworks by Laura BenAmots concluding with three paintings titled the muses from the portrait series of beautiful men that led to Eros On Canvas; next is a chapter titled Through The Peep Hole comprised of nine miniature images of up-close-and-personal body parts; finally, the body of the book is titled Catching Breath and features a full range of medium and large scale flesh-toned canvases rendering highly private sexual interludes. The book concludes with 2 facsimiles of hand written and typed erotic poems by the painter.