LENDING A HAND: 1920s Erotica

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Georges Hugnet (11 July 1906 – 26 June 1974) was a French graphic artist. He was also active as a poet, writer, art historian, bookbinding designer, critic and film director. According to one source, Hugnet’s early rebelliousness eventually developed into a combative, stubborn nature causing quarrels with publishers, other artists, poets, friends, and family throughout his life. In the 1940s, Hugnet was part of the French Resistance in German-occupied France. In 1943, Hugnet collaborated with Spanish surrealist Óscar Domínguez to create Le feu au cul, a term generally used with someone who is on the lookout for sexual liaison opportunities. The book of art and poetry was published secretly during the wartime occupation. Hugnet’s erotic poetry was well paired with Dominguez’s overtly sexual artwork, which, “ demonstrated an unceasing preoccupation with the subconscious, with automatism and with unfettered spontaneity.” These early 1920s erotic postcards originated in France, like the majority of similar sexually-charged postcards of the era. In the United States, all cards of this sort were known as "French Postcards," no matter where they originated. Please be aware that this blog post contains content that may be offensive to some readers; the decision to read the post is at your own discretion. It’s more of a literary drama than the usual explicit offering. You can read the book on-line. Roman Polanski adopted Venus in Furs for the silver screen in 2012. While the French were all wild, the Americans were a bit more reserved. In their vintage porn films, men are slower when approaching women and the women are not as wild. Not that the action is any less hardcore.

The French started making porn movies in the early 1900s, and by the end of the First World War, the Americans followed suit. While most of the porn is lost to history, the one that survived is referred by the internet as vintage porn. I know you are interested in this evolution of the adult entertainment culture. So I have you covered. By the turn of the next decade, motions to censor and govern public morality had failed. The year 1933 saw Prohibition repealed, and as the '30s wore on erotic photography became more visible and popular. Perhaps early 20th-century composer Cole Porter said it best in the song "Anything Goes:" This verbose, first person narrative follows the fictional Charlie Roberts from his young sexual awakening all through his maturation and development. The Romance of Lust chiefly noted not for the perversity of the acts themselves, which include orgies and incest. All four volumes are available on-line. 8 The Sins of the Cities of the Plain The early porn films may have had a grainy production, but the action was clear and remarkably modern. Boys would meet girls faster than you can spell the word pussy and within no time, they would be disrobed and ready to get down to business. However, men were a bit reluctant to go down on women and had to coax women into giving them oral. In one film, a man invites a woman to take a closer look at his erection. He then tells her to ‘ blow it.’ She opens her mouth. Do you need me to explain what follows?Right: https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/GDTLVQ153556106/AHSI?u=omni&sid=AHSI&xid=32b93350&pg=74 Homosexual Erotica Jean Genet, (born December 19, 1910, Paris – died April 15, 1986, Paris) spent his early life as a petty thief and a vagabond, yet later became a writer, playwright and human rights activist. Genet was also openly homosexual, and many of his works explicitly portrayed themes of homosexuality and criminality, reflective of his own life journey. In 1947, Genet published La Galère ( The Galley), a poetic work about a virile murderer who is transformed into a tragic “queen” in a fantasy involv­ing a galley ship transporting prisoners to apenal colony in Guyana. Le Cinglant Argument is one of the books in a sub-collection of Enfer known as Flagellation. Between the 1880s and the 1930s, an editorial subgenre flourished in France: the novel de flagellation, a specialized branch of erotic literature. In this context, “passionate flogging” is a sexual act consisting of experiencing an erotic pleasure to be whipped. The Flagellation books in Enfer consist of literary works on spanking, caning, and whipping.

This famous erotic and somewhat autobiographical work is actually the origin of the term masochism (for those who wonder, we can thank the Marquis de Sade for “sadism”). The protagonist, Severin, is infatuated by a beautiful woman and offers himself as her slave. Obsessed with his total submission to her, he urges the woman, Wanda, to humiliate and degrade him more and more cruelly as the story goes on. The book is focused on fetish and S&M, and remains very popular. Surrealism was a cultural movement which developed in Europe in the aftermath of World War I and was largely influenced by Dadaism. According to André Breton, surrealism utilised art and literature to “resolve the previously contradictory conditions of dream and reality into an absolute reality, a super-reality”, or “surreality”. Surrealist artists and writers frequently employed free association, dream analysis, and the unconscious mind to create their works. Surrealism was a philosophical movement, but also a revolutionary movement most commonly associated with communism and anarchism. From the 1920’s onward, Paris was a centre of the surrealist movement, so it is no surprise to see a number of works in Enfer written and illustrated in surrealist style.

Retro 1920 pornographic pics with classic sex

If you enjoyed reading about the images in nineteenth and early twentieth texts in L’Enfer de la Bibliothèque nationale de France, you may enjoy Phil’s discussion of images in earlier works from the seventeenth to nineteenth century. You may also be interested in reading about another module in Gale’s Archives of Sexuality and Gender series, Sex and Sexuality, Sixteenth to Twentieth Century, in Sex! … and Sexuality, and Gender which discusses the Private Case from the British Library, materials from the Alfred C. Kinsey Institute for Sex Research and the New York Academy of Medicine. His drawings for Paris-Éros featured a combination of pencil and watercolour washes, depicting women and men in elegant attire and seductive poses. Aside from the titillating qualities of some of the illustrations, it is interesting to see the fashions of the period depicted. One such illustration shows two fashionably dressed ladies likely wearing corsets that gave their figures the wasp-waisted look that was in vogue. Dumont, Auguste. Paris-Éros Première série Les maquerelles inédites / Martial d’Estoc / dessins de Gaston Noury. Illustrated by Gaston Noury, Le Courrier littéraire de la presse, 1903. Archives of Sexuality and Gender, This is a fine example of the so-called “petticoat governance books.” While Englishmen may have been lords and masters of their homes and families, it’s clear from the popularity of this type of novel that many had secret submissive longings. This particular example features lots of incidents in which a young man is forced to wear women’s clothes, including a corset, and serve very dominant females’ whims as a young woman. The narrative includes explicit encounters with women and men, humiliation, bondage, discipline, a drag king, and some imaginative corporal punishments. The six short stories featured in Le Cinglant Argument feature characters whose sexual frustrations and desires find release in all sorts of flagellation. The sixteen illustrations featured in this book, illustrated by an anonymous artist, leave no doubt this is a flagellation novel; they offer a wonderful visual aspect to the stories. Aside from the erotic nature of the illustrations, it is interesting to see the fashions, furnishings, and stylings of the turn of the twentieth century brought to life. Le Cinglant argument / préface de Pierre Guénolé. Office central de librairie, 1900. Archives of Sexuality and Gender, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/GEYFLB626093737/AHSI?u=omni&sid=AHSI&xid=55793c24&pg=111

In the twentieth century, erotic art became more adventurous, not only in what it depicted, but in the art forms used. A variety of twentieth-century art and design movements, from abstract expressionism to art deco to pop art to surrealism, are illustrated in the books of Enfer. Additionally, erotic literature changed with the times. Some of the works still offered social commentary and criticism, but there were just as many texts dealing with love, sexual desires, fetishes, and outright pornography. On the subject of study, Enfer provides us with many opportunities to explore art and social history in a wide variety of imaginative works. While some of the books simply offer flights of fancy, erotic fantasies to titillate and arouse, many of the works in Enfer offer social commentary and criticism. After exploring the fantastic imagery in texts from the seventeenth to nineteenth century, I was intrigued to continue my search and explore how imagery developed in the late nineteenth and twentieth century, when authors and artists were often at the forefront of the social and cultural movements of their time.

1920s pinups

Domínguez was a Spanish artist best known for his loosely rendered Surrealist paintings. Influenced by avant-garde European painters such as René Magritte, Giorgio de Chirico, and Yves Tanguy, he employed bizarre subject matter to great effect. Domínguez, like Max Ernst, used a technique called decalcomania, a technique used by some surrealist artists which involves pressing paint between sheets of paper. Hugnet, Georges. Le feu au cul / [Georges Hugnet]; [illustrations d’Oscar Domínguez]. Illustrated by Oscar Dominguez, [Robert J. Godet], [1943]. Archives of Sexuality and Gender, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/GKUCFJ839309656/AHSI?u=omni&sid=AHSI&xid=be484433&pg=5 Hugnet, Georges. Le feu au cul / [Georges Hugnet]; [illustrations d’Oscar Domínguez]. Illustrated by Oscar Dominguez, [Robert J. Godet], [1943]. Archives of Sexuality and Gender, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/GKUCFJ839309656/AHSI?u=omni&sid=AHSI&xid=be484433&pg=20 Illustration for plays As a result, the identities of French postcard models -- as well those of the people who took them -- remain unknown to this day.