“And through the darkest lashes, I see the dull flame of desire.”
Björk x ANOHNI, Dull Flame of Desire
The tingling in the spine and in the roof of your mouth. The flushing cheeks, fluttering chest, the burning lava creeping throughout your veins, the sweaty palms, the intoxicating brain fog. For some, desire means pain – both the bad and good kind. It can consume us whole and spit out confused and tattered. Desire is scary because it is wholly uncontrollable, makes us lust, lose our heads, commit (later) embarrassing acts. Sometimes. As to why do we keep chasing its burning clutches evades many a mortal. The hardcore pragmaticist would say it’s part of nature’s breeding mechanism – and they would certainly be right to an extent. As our brains have been cursed with abstraction, our desires take turns from the most mundane cravings to pure, distilled dreams incompatible with all natural sciences.
Desire is a drivetrain. Desire is possesive. Desire is a source of fascination to many.
In our third theme of 2022, we have set out on a path to allure, beguile, tease, and arouse you; make you uncomfortable but so that you can’t look away. If there is something well adapted at portraying and provoking desire, it is art. Let our curated selection get to you, invite it under your skin. We will be right there with you in our mansion, watching from the secret peephole.
FOR YOUR READING AND LISTENING PLEASURE
Björk x ANOHNI: Dull Flame of Desire
Fetish-Fashion-Power-Valerie-Steele (1996)
Erotic Art by Muthesius, Angelika; Neret, Gilles; Various
FASHION, DESIRE, AND ANXIETY: IMAGE AND MORALITY IN THE 20TH CENTURY (2001) By Rebecca Arnold
Radical Eroticism: Women, Art, and Sex in the 1960s, Reviewed By: Miriam Kienle
Fashion and Fetishism by David Kunzle
Jenny Hval: Paradise Rot
Desire Change: Contemporary Feminist Art in Canada, Edited by Heather Davis. McGill Queens University Press & Mentoring Artists for Women’s Art (MAWA)
Objects of Desire: Surrealism and Design, 1924–Today, Edited by Mateo Kries, Tanja Cunz. Text by Alex Coles, Tanja Cunz, Krzysztof Fijalkowski, Mateo Kries, Claudia Mareis, Vera Sacchetti.
Andy Warhol. Love, Sex, and Desire. /Drawings 1950-1962, Edited by Drew Zeiba and Blake Gopnik
Prime: Art’s Next Generation, published by Phaidon
Burning with Desire / The Conception of Photography, By Batchen, Geoffrey (University of Oxford)
Emotional AI: The Rise of Empathic Media: Autor Andrew McStay
Desire and Avoidance in Art: Pablo Picasso, Hans Bellmer, Balthus, and Joseph Cornell Psychobiographical Studies with Attachment Theory by ANDREW BRINK
Design: The Invention of Desire Hardcover – May 24, 2016 by Jessica Helfand
Louise Bourgeois & Pablo Picasso: Anatomies of Desire, Edited by Marie-Laure Bernadac. Introduction by Jerry Gorovoy. Text by Marie-Laure Bernadac, Émilie Bouvard, Ulf Küster, Gérard Wajcman, Diana Widmaier Picasso
Bodily Desire, Desired Bodies: Gender and Desire in Early Twentieth-Century German and Austrian Novels and Paintings by Esther K. Bauer
Closet Devotions by Richard Rambuss
Disrupted Realism: Paintings for a Distracted World, Autor / John Seed
Complete Masterworks / Autor Hajime Sorayama
Araki: Tokyo Lucky Hole / Autor Nobuyoshi Araki
Something Wicked from Japan / Autor Ei Nakau
Araki – 40th Anniversary Edition
ORGIES – a private collection of obscene photographs by Dupouy, Alexandre
Ways of Seeing by John Berger
The Little book of Big Penis by Hanson Dian
Little Big Book of Legs by Dian Hanson
Aperture 241: Utopia
Article: DESIRE AND INTIMACY by The School of Life: https://www.theschooloflife.com/article/desire-and-intimacy/
