Life-preserving instincts

"Eros" Pionteki Kehrlein

Merriam-Webster Dictionary definition of Eros:

Main Entry: Eros
Pronunciation: \ˈer-ˌäs, ˈir-\
Function: noun
Etymology: Greek Erōs, from erōs sexual love; akin to Greek erasthai to love, desire
Date: 14th century

1 : the Greek god of erotic love
2 : the sum of life-preserving instincts that are manifested as impulses to gratify basic needs, as sublimated impulses, and as impulses to protect and preserve the body and mind — compare death instinct
3 a : love conceived by Plato as a fundamental creative impulse having a sensual element b often not capitalized : erotic love or desire



"Nascita di Venere" Botticelli 1485

In Freud's classic theory, erotic energy is allowed a limited amount of expression, due to constraints of human society. In 1497, Girolamo Savonarola and his followers carried out the "Bonfire of the Vanities" in Florence,(luckily for humanity, Botticelli's Venus escaped this horror). A large amount of 'degenerate art' by Picasso, Dalí, Ernst, Klee, Léger and Miró were destroyed in a bonfire on the night of July 27, 1942 in the gardens of the Galerie nationale du Jeu de Paume in Paris.
Human society can certainly be obtuse, cutting off the hand that feeds the mouth. I really don't think that Botticelli was trying to "sexually arouse" anyone! Yet, the seashell is a symbol for the vulva and he did present the female(in a pose reserved during the Middle Ages for the Virgin Mary), nude. In my own work I'm not trying to "sexually arose" anyone, I am trying to arouse our aesthetic sensitivity. Aesthetic sensitivity can be expressed as disequilibrium in the form of lack­ing emotional satisfaction with the existing state of
affairs.


Nude standing by the sea Picasso 1929

Apparently Picasso was not emotionally satisfied with the existing state of affairs when he painted this very complexe image of a woman. I find this painting extremely "arousing"



Nude Descending a Staircase Marcel Duchamp

Duchamp complicated matters even more! Brancusi simplified....


Torso of a Young Girl Brancusi 1922

Guided by a pure spirit

Ecstasy of St. Therese (detail) Bernini 1652

"The sublime, like the beautiful, is prodigally diffused throughout the whole of nature and the capacity to apprehend both is implanted in all men; but the potentiality to do so is unequally developed and must be aided by art." Schiller





Origine de Monde Courbet


The year was 1866 and Courbet was already a well-known painter in France for his technical skill, but mostly for his critical and corrosive attitude towards the bourgeois society and its moral values.
The Origin of the World was an inspired work of art, visionary even,a most important aesthetic act and a work of grandeur.




Begining of the World Brancusi 1920



Origine de Monde Pionteki Kehrlein 1985

.......

Venus

Venus of Hohle Fels 35000 years old

"Beauty evokes a feeling of pleasure. This pleasure is closely connected with our infantile desire for security. Those forms or shapes which we associate with the satisfaction of this desire for security will forever give us that sense of complete satisfaction. In so far as the child's original notions of security are connected with the form of his mother, the curves and tactile planes in the human form are the origin of this satisfaction. The artist draws on these areas of security when he depicts the human body. The love for these human shapes is then transfered to similar shapes in the world at large" Mark Rothko




Princesse X Brancusi 1915

Feminine changed into masculine ( we can associate the image to the phallic representations of antiquity) becomes the eternal androgyne, the complete primordial "être", the origin of humanity as was described by the oldest religions of the world.


"Eros" Pionteki Kehrlein 1984

Antiquity relates all their abstractions to expressions of the human personality, and do so thoroughly, that they provide the artist with the most enviable sort of vehicle for the representation of his plastic notions. For, from the begining of things, the human figure has always been the artist's most complete examplification of plastic coherence.