The Erotic Object: Sexuality In Sculpture From Prehistory To the Present Day

The power and eroticism of sculpture, form, volume and space are sensitively explored in this wide-ranging study, which ranges over the history of sculpture from prehistoric times to contemporary art.

Featuring discussions of many famous sculptors, including: Michelangelo Buonaroti, Antonio Canova, Auguste Rodin, Constantin Brancusi, Pablo Picasso, Barbara Hepworth and Gianlorenzo Bernini.

Many contemporary artists are studied too, including installation and performance artists (Catherine Elwes, Karen Finley, Carolee Schneemann), and women sculptors such as Alice Aycock, Mary Miss, Rebecca Horn, Nancy Graves, Eva Hesse, Kathe Kollwitz and Judy Chicago.

Regardless of what sculpture depicts, it can be seen as erotic. The surfaces, materials and forms are sensuous: wood, stone, marble, granite, clay, bronze. Touching is pleasure. It is a pleasure that is, perhaps, pre-institutional, pre-industrial and pre-political.

Touching cuts through social and cultural constructs, such as art, ideology, education and war, and goes back to a primeval form of being. At same time, touching is a sense of the both personal and societal. John Keats said, 'touch has a memory'. Sculpture activates this fundamental relation with things. Sculpture renews contact with the simple but utterly crucial experiences such as touch, sight, smell.

Fully illustrated, with many rare and fascinating illustrations, including prints, paintings and builings as well as sculptures and statues.