The Blowfish Blog

[Caught in the Net] Illustrious

Before the advent of cheap photography (and presumably the widespread availability of women willing to be photographed naked), there was a brisk trade in sexual illustrations, from Tijuana bibles to erotic etchings. The art of sexy illustration is still with us, of course, and some of the more hardcore porn you’ll ever find is erotic comics and cartoons — especially in the realm of, say, BDSM, there are things you can do in a drawing that it would be impractical or painful or outright impossible or expensive to do on film. So let’s look at some sexy pictures, shall we?

First, Shunga, the ancient Japanese art of erotic woodcuts. You can see a gallery of Shunga here, including the picture above, of a woman being pleasured by an octopus — it’s vintage tentacle porn from 1820!

On to something more modern: Siriguana’s fantasy art, a whole ebay listing of erotic pin-ups featuring characters from Catwoman to Red Sonja — I’m especially fond of Goth Supergirl.

While we’re on the subject of fictional characters in compromising positions, consider the incredible strangeness of Transformers Yaoi. Yaoi is boy/boy erotica, usually comics. Transformers are, you know, Robots In Disguise. It’s a whole website with fan art featuring male robots getting nasty with one another. The run of Femtoy magazine covers — the Transformers equivalent of Playgirl — is especially impressive and odd. You haven’t lived until you’ve seen a robot bugger another robot. The internet is truly a palace of wonders.

Finally, I give you the weird-ass illustrations of Art Frahm, as compiled by James Lileks in his famous website “Art Frahm: A Study of the Effects of Celery on Loose Elastic”. Frahm was a successful commercial artist from the 1940s to the ’60s, but he will be forever remembered for his series of “Women in Distress” pin-ups featuring women in public with their panties inexplicably fallen down about their ankles. The women generally look startled or mortified; the men leering and lecherous. And, for some reason, in most of the pictures the women are carrying grocery bags in which stalks of celery are visible. Any attempt to comprehend the complete fetish that surely lurks behind these works is doomed to failure, but the art certainly speaks for itself. Wikipedia has more on the life of Mr. Frahm, should you find yourself fascinated.

Next week I’ll continue in the illustrative vein, but with a focus on animation — tune in!

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, 22 October 2008 at 9:49 am and is filed under Caught in the Net. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.