The Men's Room

"The Source" by Gustave Courbet 

Das ewige weibliche zeiht uns hinan said Goethe. Is it however perfection or idealization? And does it take a material or spiritual form? In L'Avventura (1960), Antonioni portrayed through Monica Vitti, a balance between eros and ethereality.  Bertolucci knelt to Dominique Sanda in The Conformist (1970) and literally ravished Maria Schneider in Last Tango in Paris (1972) through his proxy Marlon Brando (who raped her for the sake of verisimilitude in the famous butter scene). The Dutch actress Maruschka Detmers was cast by both Pasolini, First Name Carmen (1983), and Bellocchio Devil in the Flesh (1986), for her "natural" look (in specific her dramatic Venus mound). The wanton pose of the model in Courbet's "L'Origin du Monde" (1886) continues to be a "piece de scandal."  But where is the end? Fantasy may be materialized but can it be consummated?

read the Kirkus review of The Kafka Studies Department by Francis Levy

and watch the animation of Erotomania