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

metamorphosis

Woman with Necklace Picasso 1963

Plato opined that beauty lay in harmony and proportion, and was best discerned by the mind, not the eye.



Nude Chiam Soutine

Soutine was untraditional and uncouth. He was also maladroit . With portraits, he seems to have locked libido-wise onto certain parts of the sitter environment, and to have dismissed others. Faces and bodily postures can be uncanny, but backgrounds are often muddy messes, and hands can be almost comical. The fingers look like careless swipes or like deranged worms attempting to take off. These dualities are part of Soutine's essence. A more physically-driven painter than even Pollack, he seems to have worked in a frenzied, semi-trance, attached to his "existent" like certain American Indian initiates were attached to hooks through their chests to the "sun." When Soutine is "on," he produces paintings that are peristaltic, semi-metamorphic, absurd, brilliant, poignant, and unforgettable.


Seated Woman Modigliani


Modigliani originally saw himself as a sculptor rather than a painter.






Painting of Sue Tilly Lucien Freud 1963

Freud both highlights and undercuts the erotics of the female nude, opting out of the idealizing tendencies of much of the history of Western art.



Seated Nude Jacques Lipchitz 1915


Woman III Willem de Kooning 1953

Aggressive brushwork and strategically placed high-key colors merged with images of toothy snarls, overripe, pendulous breasts, enlarged eyes and blasted extremities to reveal a woman seemingly congruent with some of modern man's most widely held sexual fears.