Tag Archives: fine art

New art for Erotic Mad Science

You might have noticed a few minor design changes here at EroticMadScience lately, as I’ve decided to go a level or so deeper in indulging my inner weirdness and commission art with an appropriate mad science theme.  (It’s always a good day, really, when you can spare something that’s merely money and get art in exchange.)  Most readily recognizable (since she now appears in the header bar as a sort of presiding spirit for the site) is this:

(Image above Creative Commons licensed.) Creative Commons License

Yes, it’s the Maschinenmensch from Fritz Lang‘s Metropolis, at a critical moment in her transformation into a virtual Maria.  Albeit done a little more explicitly than might have been possible for the big screen in 1927.

The artist who created this image is Hugo Araújo, working for Glass House Graphics.  [Faustus May 11, 2018: The original link for Hugo is dead, but there is a modest gallery of his work to be found here, and he has a blog here and a DeviantArt site here.] And I must say, if you ever want to do bespoke fantasy art of your own, I can recommend these folks highly.  They’re creative and they’re fun and a joy to work with.

Of course, where would robot Maria be without her mad scientist creator, also rendered for me by Hugo:

(Image above Creative Commons licensed.) Creative Commons License

Rotwang, that very image of the mad scientist.  I really like what Hugo’s done with all those glowing tubes.

I hope you enjoy these images.  I might commission more in the future.

Light, more light

One might criticize EroticMadScience for being a little to much inside the hetero male gaze, and that criticism, I fear, would be sound.  So a little relief therefrom (I hope) following the theme of bringing light to the world, which I explored a bit a few days ago.

An illustration cover to a an 1894 novel by Karl May (1842 – 1912), a very prolific German-language writer, many of whose stories were set in an imagined American West.  May was immensely popular in his day:  his reputation is done a grave injustice by the fact that Adolph Hitler liked his books (which, as far as I know, provide no support for Nazi doctrines — note that Albert Einstein was also a major fan of May).  I haven’t been able to find much about this particular cover, although there is some interesting French-language commentary on its homoerotic implications here [Faustus May 11, 2018. I can no longer find the original post, but the blog of which it was a part is preserved in the Internet Archive].

Oceanic feeling

In celebration of the reappearance of Li Anwei and in recognition of what she has become, an illustration.

(Proximate image source Janitor of Lunacy.)  It would seem that Anwei in her new transform often has what might be called the oceanic feeling, a feeling of sensual limitless, or lacking strict boundaries to oneself, combined with the perception that one is flying that would come of life in warm tropical water.

Who hasn’t at least sometimes fantasized about become some sort of sea creature?

Bringing light to the world

Looking for the appropriate link about Jules Joseph Lefebvre for yesterday’s post brought my eye to this lovely image, which I thought worthy of a digression.

La Vérité (Truth) the original of which hangs in the Musée d’Orsay in Paris.  The Wikipedia caption notes  “The painting is contemporary with the first small scale model made by Lefebvre’s fellow-Frenchman Frédéric Bartholdi for what became the Statue of Liberty, striking a similar pose, though fully clothed.”

Great Cthulhu, thinks I.  If only they had used Lefebvre’s version for what now stands in New York Harbor, instead of the severe and heavily-draped figure created by Bartholdi!  I for one would be so much more patriotic.  (Maybe it’s a bit late but if you’re a U.S. citizen and want to write your congressman and protest the choice, you can use this form.)

All well and good, but any link to Erotic Mad Science, except the bloggage?  Well, I suspect there is a connection to patron divinity Prometheus, anyway, through this piece of artwork created by Maxfield Parrish.  I for one suspect a visual influence:

Prometheus bringing light to the world.  In the form of light bulbs made by Edison Mazda, it would seem.  A reproduction hangs right outside my study.  Honest.

Moar Kanai

Having brought up Kiyoaki Kanai as a visual inspiration for a pirates post a few days back, I would feel remiss if I did not at least note, before returning to the main thread of posts on Gnosis Dreamscapes that Kanai has some work that can be much appreciated by thaumatophiles. The images to the left and below (those below you can click through for larger) are prime examples.  As usual I don’t read Japanese, and running the accompanying text on the pages  through Google translate tends to leave me feeling even more befuddled than before.  Your tastes may vary, but statements like “So, I accidentally forgot the appeal of humanoid robot was there, I became a robot servant of his sex slave robot and robot body instead of a relative…the human mind, remedies or the mind, the need for further development of the robot to go towards a better feel in your area” tend to leave me scratching my head.  (Although sometimes the pictures do lead to a better feel in my area, I must admit.)   But I think it’s pretty clear that the images to the left and immediately below suggest the manufacture of female sex robots, combined with extensive testing thereof.   Shades of Robotrix!  Perhaps we’re looking at the Consumers Union laboratory of the near future?

And Kanai, naturally, also did his own rather complex take on the important theme of the sex machine.

That’s something dear to our hearts here!

Boxed up

The visual image of Abigail the Lady’s Maid — captured and ravished by Moorish pirates, and now boxed up for shipping out as “a pretty addition to some harem.” has a rather specific visual inspiration in the art of Kiyoaki Kanai.  I’ve blogged about Kanai before at ErosBlog, and his interest in girls in boxes has leaked into Gnosis Dreamscapes, it seems.

And perhaps more to the shipping out point, this curious illustration, which I think is meant to illustrate some sort of novel about sex slavery.

We’re a long way here from the Age of Fighting Sail, but the connection is no doubt clear.

Oriental princess

I might have a real weakness for sorceresses, but not for princesses, even if they are designed like the fearsome but alluring Michiko Maeda.  If you’re a sorceress, you can keep all your clothes on and you’ll still have me at the word “abracadabra,” but princesses will have to work harder, even if Rob’s dream-self will fall hopelessly and fatally for you.

What constitutes working harder in the context of an oriental fantasy might be easy to specify but not that easy to find.  But I have a certain weakness for orientalist art (more evidence that I am a Bad Person) and it turns out that Flickr makes available a pool of fine orientalist art, from which the image to the right stood out for me.  This will do very nicely as the image of an oriental princess working harder for my attention.  I am especially pleased by the use of jewelry here, which seems to me spot-on.  I’m not sure that the image was originally intended to represent any sort of royalty but really, who cares?

But the thing that really tickled my fancy when I looked into the provenance of this image a little further was that I found out it had been created by Henri Privat-Livemont (1861-1936), who was more famous as a creator of this Art Nouveau advertising poster.

An advertisement for Absinthe Robette. That works for me double. Not only does it reference the fact that Rob undergoes a dream analogue of the Apsinthion Protocol, but it also picks up on a theme I find personally appealing…

Black Mass

What with all the generalized do-badding, and all the uses and abuses of religious settings going on around Gnosis, I guess it would only be a matter of time before someone decided on performing a Black Mass.

Félicien Rops (1833 - 1898), "Black Mass" (or "The Sacrifice") 1883

Just not that kind of Black Mass, fond as we all can be of Félicien Rops (intriguing gallery here).

This kind of Black Mass.

Alexander Scriabin‘s Sonata No. 9, performed here by naughty (but clearly virtuosic) young Arthur Kaufman, first seen in Invisible Girl, Heroine precipitating an orgy. A talented young man indeed!

The point at which Maureen walks in on him to settle his hash respecting the aphrodisiac she stole from him is approximately here in the score.

The dynamics marking in the score at the end of the crescendo shown in the third measure is only f, but I have yet to hear a recording of this work in which the performer interpreted that to mean anything other than “wicked loud.” I wouldn’t know how to characterize the technical demands of this piece other than “wicked difficult.” Small wonder Maureen had little trouble dropping in on Arthur.

And if you want to see it performed, you’re in luck, because YouTube has Yevgeny Sudbin doing just that.

Scarier than some old ritual with daggers and alters, or at least so it seems to me.

“A total hate-fuck…”

Jill’s accidentally-on-purpose finishing off of the Generalissimo might seem over-the-top, but it too belongs to a long tradition of women who kill men through sex.

The human imagination…the male human imagination, surely? — has long created female monsters who kill men through sex, either draining them of their energy or otherwise.  It is this fear that doubtless underlies the myth of the succubus and perhaps a large part of that of the vampire as well.

Edvard Munch (1863 - 1944), "The Vampire" (1893-4)

And of course, it’s a theme that plays a lot in popular culture as well. I know of at least one rather obsessive internet compilation called “out with a bang” the lists appropriate scenes.  And a thaumatophile line?  Well, there are doubtless many, but we could begin with a personal touchstone, the plot of Invasion of the Bee Girls, which pushes the “kill men through sex” line so thoroughly that we even get a Bee Girl point-of-view at the fatal moment.

And there are doubtless many others — ponder for a moment, and by all means comment if you come up with any.