Posing Sex: Toward a Perceptual Ethics for Literary and Visual Art views the long and provocative tradition of representing the sexual act in Western art as an occasion for challenging assumptions about personhood. It is uncontroversial that what Singer dubs the "sex image," the artist's posing of human figures in the act of coitus, is an enduring compositional armature for artists from antiquity to the present. Singer, however, makes the quite controversial claim that this aesthetic practice, in literature and painting especially, serves as a powerful metier for exploring how the mind is continuous with the sensuously lively body rather than its rationalistic antagonist. Singer draws upon a rich philosophical tradition-from the Greek Stoics, Descartes, Spinoza, and Hegel to contemporary theorists of perception and aesthetic agency-to show how the stakes of aesthetic experience epitomized in the sex image are essentially ethical. Referencing a broad range of image-based artworks-literary, painterly, and cinematic-Singer illustrates the proposition that "posing sex" broadens the scope of our knowledge about how feeling reciprocates with reason-giving.

Originally published in 1977 this book is a collection of photos, recipes and artwork.

Text in English, German & French. In the garden of Heaven, there already was a snake. As for the little juicy fruit Eve gave to humanity, it probably was, already, the carefully shaven genitals, pulpy and plump, that the girls display in this book with a smile. They offer themselves to be seen, self-confident, without hiding anything of their slit genitalia, like a tempting fruit. When they spread their thighs, they may unveil the little hill of their vulva but their cheeky looks and postures are always playful. Here we are in the realm of pretense, a world of fantasy where Eves daughters become elusive fairies.

Text in English & German. Of course, my photography is a "turn-on", a sort of Viagra, because, lets face it, it is extremely exciting for a man to view young girls in provocative poses. The aspects of forbidden love, past memories, ones first love, all this and related fantasies are triggered by these very young girls, who attract them like a magnet. Suspend your judgement of them while looking, because in each of them there is an unbridled, hidden sexual desire. Ordinary photographs can make extraordinary, sensational impressions. While revelling in the land of the forbidden, I wish the photos inspire you to have beautiful fantasies.

Oliver Rath's photographs range from spontaneous shots to conceptual work. Since 2010 he has been living in Berlin and so "Berlin Boheme" is the title of his first book. The work contains a scintillating display of dynamic, provocative eroticism with a dash of humour. His blog publishes new work every day, showing all the facets of our daily lives, more often than not a little "over the top". As Page 2011, the design magazine puts it: "The photographs look like stills from movie scenes, with carefully organised choreography, props and actors".

The declaration that a work of art is "about sex" is often announced to the public as a scandal after which there is nothing else to say about the work or the artist-controversy concludes a conversation when instead it should begin a new one.
Moving beyond debates about pornography and censorship, Jennifer Doyle shows us that sex in art is as diverse as sex in everyday life: exciting, ordinary, emotional, traumatic, embarrassing, funny, even profoundly boring. "Sex Objects" examines the reception and frequent misunderstanding of highly sexualized images, words, and performances. In chapters on the "boring parts" of "Moby-Dick," the scandals that dogged the painter Thomas Eakins, the role of women in Andy Warhol's Factory films, "bad sex" and Tracey Emin's crudely evocative line drawings, and L.A. artist Vaginal Davis's pornographic parodies of Vanessa Beecroft's performances, "Sex Objects" challenges simplistic readings of sexualized art and instead investigates what such works can tell us about the nature of desire.
In "Sex Objects, "Doyle offers a creative and original exploration of how and where art and sex connect, arguing that to proclaim a piece of art "about sex" reveals surprisingly little about the work, the artist, or the spectator. Deftly interweaving anecdotal and personal writing with critical, feminist, and queer theory, she reimagines the relationship between sex and art in order to better understand how the two meet-and why it matters.
Jennifer Doyle is associate professor of English at the University of California, Riverside. She is coeditor, with Jonathan Flatley and Jose Esteban Munoz, of "Pop Out: Queer Warhol."

Latest in the Song series of fantasy art books, Dragon Song takes a loving look (from a safe distance) at that most special relationship between a girl and her dragon! A remarkable oversized collection of paintings and illustrations that celebrate the magnificent flying reptiles of mythology and their ferocious female protectors! Artists include Pelaez, James Hottinger, Dave Dunstan, Carlos Valenzuela, Steve Fastner and Rich Larson, and many more. Fire-breathing was NEVER this hot!

"Clarke teaches us to think about how this art was understood and felt by those who lived with it in their daily lives and he speculates that it might even reflect what the Romans actually did. This is the first genuinely contextual and theoretically informed study we have of a vast panoply of classical art about sex. It will be an illuminating book for classicists, historians, and anybody else who finds lovemaking interesting."--Thomas Laqueur, author of "Making Sex

"There are few scholars as able to take on this material, as well versed in theories of sexuality, and as comfortable dealing with both heterosexual and homoerotic content as Clarke. The topic is timely and the execution is professional."--Natalie Kampen, Barnard College

"This book should attract not only classicists, but also scholars of sexuality in any field. Clarke succeeds both in introducing little-known material and in defamiliarizing the familiar examples of erotic art."--Anthony Corbeill, University of Kansas

""Looking at Lovemaking proves that the ancients were very different from you and me--that they saw sex not primarily as procreation and never as sin but rather as sport, art, and pleasure, an activity full of humor, tenderness and above all variety. John R. Clarke, by looking at Roman artifacts from several centuries destined to be used by different social classes, reveals that the erotic "visual record is far more varied, open-minded and playful than are "written moral strictures, which were narrowly formulated by the elite and for the elite. This book is at once discreet and bold--discreetly respectful of nuance and context, boldly clear in drawing the widest possible conclusions about themalleability of human behavior. Clarke has, with meticulous scholarship and a fresh approach, vindicated Foucault's revolutionary claims for the social construction of sexuality."--Edmund White, author of "The Beautiful Room is Empty

A glimpse through the keyhole of history: From the earliest nude daguerrotypes to experimental nude photography The history of nude photography is the history of people s fascination with the topic. Indeed, the photographic depiction of the human body is the only subject that has enthralled photographers, theoreticians and consumers over such a long period more than 150 years. No other motif is as prevalent as this one during all the phases of development comprising the history of photography, no other is present, whatever the technique, and is a subject of discussion within the context of nearly all aesthetic movements. Nor has any other pictorial topic produced such a variety of specialities as the nude: from the ethnological interpretation of the body to the glamour shot, from nudist photography to the pin-up of today. No other photographic field of application has inspired as much desire as it has awakened official wrath. 1000 Nudes offers a cross-section of the history of nude photography, ranging from the earliest nude daguerrotypes and ethnographic nude photographs to experimental nude photography. The period of time spanned by this work is from 1839 to roughly 1939, from the medium s infancy to the end of the classic modernist period. Content-wise, the book pays tribute to the full range of pictorial approaches, from the manually elaborated artistic nudes of the turn of the century, enveloped in layers of theory, to the obscene postcard motifs which had not the slightest artistic pretension and were intended to exert a maximum effect on the buyer s wallet. All the pictures shown are taken from the late Uwe Scheid s collection, which was one of the world s largest and most important collections of erotic photography."

Text in English & German. This is the second volume by renowned photographer Dirk Krauzig, transports you into a new erotic universe. With heavily upholstered armchairs, discreet lighting, antique furniture, lacquered and painted walls, the stage is set in the lounge bar to display the passions of his adult models. Adults only! Once again the qualified professional succeeds in capturing revealing performances and candid images of timeless elegance. His photographs are stimulating yet sophisticated; classy, and with a style of lighting that has become his trademark. He also takes exceptional care of image design and development. Allow yourself to be enchanted by the girls and women in this volume, and see what happens! Visit the Pussy Lounge, and become a voyeur in a world of sensuality, passion, eroticism and licentiousness!

Storyville was the infamous red-light district of New Orleans. It was a world where normative social values didn't apply and was shrouded in mystery and myth until the photographs of E.J. Bellocq were rediscovered. Bellocq's depictions of Storyville's sex workers have typically been treated as tragic, ominous and emblematic of New Orleans' singularity. Yet, such interpretations have projected gendered stereotypes of frailty and victimhood onto the women they portrayed. In Images of Sex Work, Mollie LeVeque interrogates these glib readings and argues that sex work was a routine aspect of life in a modern city. She supports this theory by examining a range of cultural forms such as crime fiction, illustrations and paintings from contemporary urban centres like Paris, London and New York. In doing so, she advances the new argument that Bellocq humanised his subjects, de-sensationalised sex work and gave these women the dignity they were all too often denied.

This body of work is a contemplation of human beings' passage on earth and their intimate interrelation with the environment. This book attempts to bring humour to the things we are getting attached to. It points at the invisible within the visible, the immaterial within the material or the vertical nature of being (and its mirror-like quality) within our horizontal way of living (where our mind, time, and space condition our experiences). The naked body is seen as our primary indivisible unit of perception which is usually pushed and pulled by our thinking mind's desire to either get less or more. In other words, our lives are coloured by our minds and since body-mind is a single entity, most of the colours painted on the body are an allusion to the range of our changing desires from being invisible or transparent to wanting to be singular and the centre of attention. The book's Interviews (the interviewers are from Russia, Colombia, Korea, Germany, and the US) stanzas, and photographs are not seen as being subservient to one another but can be seen as an assemblage of three independent directions that may or may not intersect following each reader.

Text in English, French & German. By removing their pubic hair, these young women seem to be wanting to stay forever young, suspended in a state of disquieting purity. This is the extraordinary effect these naked pictures have on us: they are showing us "indecency" as a supreme form of innocence. They convert the brazenness into an ideal of ingenuousness and turn sexy models into icons of chastity.

Text in English, French & German. How beautiful are these pilose vulvas that are natural and hairy and not shaven bald. I feel happy whenever I see something beautiful. Many past cultures worshipped vulvas. And its no small wonder that today, vulvas have started again to unfold their magical charms, at least within the world of fine art. So it is that Paramonov's angels appear unashamed of their hairiness, act rather proud of their unshaven, natural beauty.