Reflections on Stephen Alexander's 'Lascivious' (1985) - A Guest Post by Sally Guaragna

 

Fig. 1: Stephen Alexander: Lascivious

 Oil on canvas (c. 1985) 

 

 

Stephen Alexander's aureate canvas entitled Lascivious depicting a rather shy and youthful-looking faun sharing a coital embrace with a flame-haired and sexually more experienced nymph, is, sadly, lost to the world: destroyed by the artist's sister in an act of malice that displayed sororal spite, philistine contempt for culture, and a previously unsuspected streak of puritanism [1]. 

 

The painting, which, as the title indicates, is essentially a reimagining of one of Agostino Carracci's erotic prints (c. 1590-95) [2], also betrays the influence of Van Gogh with its dynamic starry night sky and use of warm, radiant golden-yellow [3] (Alexander was at the time an avid reader of the Dutch artist's letters and kept a postcard featuring Vincent's self-portrait with a bandaged ear by his bedside). 

 

We also discover something of D. H. Lawrence's painting style in Alexander's canvas; see for example Lawrence's Fauns and Nymphs (1927) which features a golden-brown satyr embracing a large-breasted sun-nymph; and see also Lawrence's 1928 painting entitled Close-Up (Kiss), which may have influenced Alexander's compositional decision to simply produce a headshot of his mythological lovers (as well as the picture's golden-yellow colouring). 

 

Like Lawrence, Alexander seems primarily concerned with the invisible forces of desire that work upon the flesh and distort and deform bodies, caring little for anatomical fidelity. Deleuze terms such an art of sensation - an art that is neither representational nor symbolist.  

 

Lascivious is not, therefore, the work of an innocent Sunday painter; it's a philosophical gesture born of Alexander's libidinally material - essentially pagan - worldview. Very deliberately and with joy - though perhaps not with great subtlety or success - he promotes a Lawrentian concept of phallic tenderness in a manner that is not so much all'antica (despite the mythological theme) as très moderne.

 

Figs. 2-4

For details see note [4] below. 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] The digial image shown here is taken from a photo of the painting in the artist's possession.

 

[2] Agostino Carracci (1557-1602) was an Italian artist recognised internationally as one of the finest engravers of his time. 

      Between 1590-1595, he produced a financially rewarding series of fifteen erotic works known as the Lascivie, inspired by a notorious earlier set of prints known as I modi (c. 1524-27) engraved by Marcantonio, after drawings by Giulio Romano and illustrating various sexual acts and positions.

      Whilst enhancing his reputation amongst wealthy collectors of such works, Carracci's prints elicited censure from the Church which inveighed against works of an openly sexual nature even when they were given a mytho-classical veneer in an attempt to make them appear less salacious and the men who took pleasure in contemplating the images seem cultured rather than just pervy.

 

[3] Alexander discusses his love for the colour yellow (with reference to the works of Van Gogh) in a post on Torpedo the Ark entitled 'How Beautiful Yellow Is' (1 May 2024): click here.

 

[4] Fig. 2: Agostino Carracci, A Satyr and Nymph Embracing, print from an engraving (150 x 102 mm), British Museum, London. One of fifteen in the series Lascivie (c. 1590-95).

      Fig. 3: D. H. Lawrence, detail from Fauns and Nymphs (1927), oil on canvas (95 x 80 cm). 

      Fig. 4: D. H. Lawrence, Close-Up (Kiss) (1928), oil on canvas (45 x 37.5 cm). 

 

Art critic Sally Guaragna has written two other posts for Torpedo the Ark. Click here to read  Reflections on Stephen Alexander's 'When the Moon Hits Your Eye' (5 May 2023) and/or here to read Reflections on Stephen Alexander's 'I Want to Hold Your Hand' (6 August 2024). 

On the Art of the Kiss 1: Auguste Rodin

Auguste Rodin: The Kiss (1901-04) 

Tate Collection (1953, Reference: NO6228) 

Pretty much everyone is familiar with Rodin's sculpture known in English as The Kiss. If they haven't seen the 1882 marble original in Paris at the Musée Rodin, they'll have seen the full-size version displayed at the Tate here in London. But what everyone mightn't know is that it commemorates Francesca da Rimini, the 13th-century Italian noblewoman and adulteress immortalised in Dante's Inferno, who copped off with her crippled husband's younger (and able-bodied) brother, Paolo. 

Observant viewers will note that Rodin doesn't actually allow the lovers' lips to touch, suggesting perhaps that they never consummated their affair (and that Le Baiser - a title supplied by the critics - is something of a misnomer). But this romantic idea isn't true. In fact, they carried on their illicit relationship for a full ten years before they were discovered (in flagrante delicto) and met their tragic fate at the hands of the cuckolded figure of Giovanni Malatesta.         

The sculpture's provocative combination of down and dirty eroticism - the male figure is clearly aroused in the original life-sized work - with high aesthetic idealism, secures it a permanent (if controversial) place within the history of Western art as well as the pornographic imagination. Rodin prided himself on depicting women, their bodies and their sexuality, in an active manner and Francesca is seen here as a willing partner in crime.

However, despite being a celebrated work, Rodin himself amusingly considered it as far from being a masterpiece; he described it privately as very traditional in style; little more than a large sculpted knick-knack that follows the usual formula.

And this remark - a kind of kiss this to popular opinion and conventional taste - makes me love him all the more.