0 comments/ 5636 views/ 0 favorites Artistic Effects By: Cal Y. Pygia All art, erotic and otherwise, which features portraits of human beings, whether nude or dressed, or male or female, must, to retain interest, do more than merely display a figure, even of the handsomest or most beautiful appearance. Artists accomplish this end in divers ways. Their various approaches form the subject of this essay. But, first, a dare. Artists of words, your visual colleagues challenge you. Can authors, like illustrators and painters, find as many creative ways to intrigue their readers as their counterparts in the visual arts have done? Here are some of the techniques illustrators and painters have used to attract their viewers' gaze. * * * Setting is one of the chief ways by which artists create and maintain interest in a drawing or a painting whose central feature is that of a human figure. Elegant surroundings, suggestive of wealth and luxury, wherein tapestries adorn walls, furniture is richly upholstered, curtains are of velvet, and gold and precious stones are seen upon polished mahogany tables, capture and hold the gaze, for what viewer of such a drawing or painting would not wish to find him- or herself among such lavish appointments and accoutrements? If a beautiful nude, her flesh golden; the nipples of her high, full, round breasts rosy pink; her contours curvaceous; and her form sleek, a flower in her hair, perhaps, and, despite her nakedness, a look of innocence upon her lovely face, happens also to adorn the suite, why all the better! She is, of course, the focal point of the work of art, but the elegance of her surroundings make her something of an afterthought--or so the careful artist makes it seem! Surreal effects also generate and sustain observers' interest, so a picture may show juxtapositions of odd objects--a lovely young woman's face beneath an unwound scarf painted, with pearl necklaces round her honeyed neck, upon a pasteboard or wooden rectangle that she holds before her own face, above her proud breasts, firm and round, with puffy areolas and erect nipples, their perfect proportions in relation to the painted visage on the board above them enhancing the illusion that the face and torso are of the same woman and not just a composition composed of the painting of a head upon a board held above the woman's bosom; to add to the surrealism, the painting might show a rectangle behind the pasteboard or wooden square of a different color--gray, perhaps--than the foreground's painted panel, and, below the woman's midsection, a horizontal rail may pass, before which stands a white rose. The images fit with one another more through illusions created by clever juxtapositions and through a witty positioning of the objects than otherwise, and the eye, although initially fooled into seeing a unity among these independent and discrete parts (which, in reality, are not, and cannot be, the components of a whole) realizes that, in fact, there is no unity and seeks to learn, by scrutinizing the objects and their relationships to one other, the method of the trick. Once again, the breasts are forgotten for a time, shortly after they are first seen, and, when, as contemplation completes itself, they reassert themselves, becoming visible again, as it were, their naked beauty surprises and delights anew. Other pictures rely upon the suggestions of narrative or a drama to hold their observers' attention beyond the moment, showing, for example, a group of young women, some nude and others in various stages of dress or undress, gathered by circumstance and tending to a common task. Such a work might depict a dozen young concubines, showing some fully dressed, others half-dressed, and still others nude, bathing in a pool that is built into a balcony, as fellow wives in the harem converse among themselves at a balustrade or while seated in chairs beneath the arches in the wall that fronts the balcony before them, while the other women bathe or dally among themselves. One of the twelve might half-sit and half-recline, in the painting's foreground, seeming, by dint of perspective, larger by far than the others, a platter of fruit before her--grapes and melons and bananas and oranges and pears--but idle, looking into the distance, a vacant look upon her lovely countenance that could signify boredom, contemplation, or nothing in particular at all. Viewers' attention is seized and held by the suggestion of activity as well as the exotic setting itself and the dozen women, dressed, half-dressed, or undressed, all of whom are wives to the same master in front of whose house they lounge or frolic. The picture depicts an unlikely life, and its very improbability attracts the eye of observers who would pause to imagine such an romantic existence. The very oddity of objects in a setting can also attract the eye. A young woman, lovely and bare-breasted, disports herself, let's say, with one leg showing from thigh to ankle but with the rest of her body covered by the long gown that she wears, her face, her breasts, her right leg, and her upper arms in full view (she wears dark, diaphanous gloves that cover her from mid-biceps to fingertips), and her costume a peek-a-boo striptease whenever she moves or the fabric shifts. She half-sits, half-reclines upon a bed, the frame of which is ornately carved, resting upon a white pillow marked with black stripes resembling a zebra's pattern. A chain of silver twice wraps her right forearm, dangling a crystal charm; in her right hand she holds a slender, curved pipe, white as porcelain. At the foot of the bed, in a gilded cage, a white bird with blue coverts upon its wings perches upon a driftwood twig. Behind her, on the wall, a series of shelves bear odd artifacts and objets d'art: a bronze gas tank, a coffee grinder, presses and mills, a large glass jar, and small, colored bottles. A set of keys of various sizes, some large, hang, side by side, beneath a great feather or leaf of gold mounted upon a long scrap of parchment bearing a message illegible in the distance, and vague shapes resembling goose feathers and ornaments like ruby-studded scimitars fountain from a vase. Wooden blocks, also mounted upon the rear wall, seem to float in space. Kept busy by this variety of curious objects, as if one is in a museum of antiquities and curios, rather than a young woman's boudoir, the intrigued eye, now mystified, now amused, now overwhelmed, is busied, as is the mind, and the artist holds his viewer spellbound. The nude remains where she always has been, but she has been temporarily forgotten as the gaze flits here and there; when she again commands attention, she seems newly discovered, as if she were only now introduced into the room in which is located upon a bed wherein she half-sits, half-declines, studying the white pipe in her gloved left hand. Pastels soften, and a painting full of them--drapes the color of the golden dawn, cloud-white sheets, a soft-pink blanket, and a carpet the color of marigolds inside a bedroom wherein, seated at the edge of her mattress, a lovely girl adjusts the top of her left stocking, having already donned its black mate and one high-heeled shoe, also black, the other of the pair upon the carpet, beside the low bed, awaiting its turn to be drawn onto her other foot--softens all besides. She has also donned a gossamer black dress or slip, the skirt of which is raised to accommodate her as she dresses, but her upper body, from the waist up, is bare, and the viewer marvels at her slender frame; her sleek, small breasts; and the serene loveliness of her maiden's face, framed by curly goldilocks adorned, at one side, by a bow the same rosy color as her blanket. Outside, through the parted drapes--and through their sheer fabric, too--the observer sees a Mediterranean city, stucco walls of white, banded at their tops with stripes of brown or blue or pink, beyond which a haze of rectangular shapes make up a low skyline before an off-white sky. The viewer does not know the damsel, but wishes that he or she might. The young woman's face, her slender form, and her small breasts suggest that she can be no older than eighteen, if that, and her charming innocence, like her loveliness, is as fresh and beautiful as the day that, earlier, broke and lit the world with muted, pastel beauty charming to behold. A close-up can arrest the eye as well, as artists know, and if the close-up is of a lovely young woman performing an intimate and erotic act, the arrest will detain the viewer's wandering eye many times past its usual pause. A medium-brown wall and a slightly rumbled sheet, printed with pastel posies of lavender, blue, and pink hues, upon an uncovered bed, are the sole backdrops to the blonde whose face, somehow pensive and rapt, its eyes half-closed, its nostrils flaring, and its mouth agape, that the pink tongue might unfurl itself between coral lips and ivory teeth to lick the pink gumdrop-glans of the erection spewing thick ropes of pearly seed across her oral appendage and against her sleek cheek as she holds the convulsing organ of her lover's manhood in her two-fisted grip, staring intently at its operation, looks as if it has never been in so close proximity to a man's manhood as this, creating the impression that she has never seen such a sight as this before. She is caught up in the moment, as is the viewer-turned-voyeur who witnesses both her hunger and its appeasement by her lover's seed, which has become her sustenance. One may never know why smoke flows, rolling, from the pointing right index finger of an angel come to earth, or why she's nude, this young maiden who stands, left leg bent at the knee, its foot raised, bracing her left hand against the open door behind her, but one thing is sure: one sees her, admires her, and wants to caress this fleshly angel's flesh, her downy pubes, and the pinions that she fans behind her shoulders; one wants to touch and feel her angelic face and form, regardless of the mission she has lit here, in this room, to perform. Once again, the artist--this time with mystery and magic realism as his or her techniques--has transfixed and transported us. Mask, gloves, brassiere, panties, garter belt, stockings, and high heels, all empty and floating as if worn by a woman invisible, astonish the gaze. The artist has triumphed; the observer is spellbound and cannot look away until his or her eye has investigated this assemblage of a woman absent from her display. Another technique that illustrators and painters of erotic subjects sometimes use is the inclusion, often as the main or only figure, a man transformed into a woman or a woman changed into a man--or, to be more precise--parts of them so altered. Of the two possibilities, it is typically the man who is made a woman, rather than a woman who is changed into a man. A few such works of art depict a man who has been assigned a mons veneris, labia, a clitoris, and a vagina in lieu of a penis, testicles, and a scrotum, but, more frequently by far, is the substitution, in a woman, of male for female genitals. Usually, the secondary sexual characteristics remain unchanged, so that a man with a vagina is otherwise masculine, with flat chest, muscular arms, firm abdomen, sinewy legs, hirsute body, and, sometimes, even facial hair, while the woman with a penis, testicles, and a scrotum remains, otherwise, feminine, with sleek skin; full, firm, round breasts; an ample derriere; long hair; and other features indicative of her femininity. Sometimes, especially in female figures who are equipped with male genitals, the penises are not penises per se, but phalli, and these artificial penises are often shown in gigantic proportions, their superhuman size making them all the more astonishing, ludicrous, and, strangely enough, arousing. More typically, though, the genitals are real--or, at least, are genuine in appearance, being penises, testicles, and scrota attached to the females' pubes by dint of the magic of graphic arts and computer-generated special effects. Other techniques, briefly, are: Anal intercourse, homosexuality, BDSM, or other "perverted" sexual situations or activities Humorous situations Mythological themes and figures Religious motifs (for example, demons having sex with mortal women) Feminization of men by women or other men Orgies and group sex and a variety of sexual activities Multiplications of secondary sexual characteristics, such as breasts Men and women portrayed as statues Penises represented as the equivalents of fleshly swords, fencing or dueling Images of necrophilia (for example, nude corpses or women making love to skeletons) Winged phalli, often hovering or in flight Biomechanical art in which women 9and, less often, men) appear as cyborgs or human-machine hybrids Close-ups of disembodied body parts, such as cunts or cocks, breasts or buttocks Penises as snakes and snakes as penises Caricatures of well-known, actual persons * * * These are some of the ways that illustrators and painters have caught and held their viewers' gaze. They have thrown down the gauntlet. Can writers find as many innovative ways to titillate and fascinate their readers as these other artists have stimulated and enthralled their viewers? Some writers already do employ the literary equivalents of such visual techniques, but the challenge, to them, is to do so with an immediacy approaching that of erotic drawings and paintings, so that the effects of such techniques are themselves also more immediate--and intense. Can writers find a way to accomplish this purpose? If so, erotic fiction will improve. (Note: The descriptions of the techniques cited herein are based, each and every one, upon actual drawings or paintings of erotic figures, situations, and behaviors.)