Wednesday, October 10, 2007

"We want London to be thinking about nothing but sex for three months."


The art of Seduction:Sex through the ages, from every possible angle

From ancient miniatures to modern film, 2,000 years of civilisation's frankest moments go on show.This is a serious, art-historical exhibition, which is why even potentially controversial material -
Here is an amber, life-size carving of male genitalia, and a tintinnabulum, a Roman bronze windchime featuring a winged phallus. "These are absolutely wonderful objects,"
said Prof Wallace. "They are good luck charms: the idea is that the penis is the only part of the body that moves up and down without control.
That links it to fate or fortune, which also moves up and down of its own volition."
"sex is a universal part of our being. It doesn't matter when or where or with whom sex is had: sex is sex is sex."
The Queen, it turns out, is the unlikely keeper of some of the more explicit material - including Annibale Carracci's 16th-century pen and ink drawing of Leda, from classical myth, making out particularly enthusiastically with a swan, the god Jupiter in disguise.
"We do talk about arousal," said Prof Wallace. "We do want the show to be arousing for all the senses. This is what we want it to be about, rather than nudge-nudge, wink-wink."
http://arts.guardian.co.uk/art/news/story/0,,2187310,00.html

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