Friday, December 6, 2013

Next Show: Los Angeles ART BOOK FAIR January 30 ~ February 2, 2014



Vasta Images/Books is pleased to announce our participation at the Los Angeles Art Book Fair, January 30 ~ February 2, 2014 The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA. Save the date and hope to see you there. Details about our presentation at the fair to follow in January. Click here for information about the fair.

Based in New York City, Vasta Images/Books is an international dealer specializing in the body, the nude and the erotic arts. Focus for the fair will be artist's books, photography books, posters, photographs and ephemera, circa 1960s~2000s in our areas of specialty. Additionally featured will be material from the collection of the late John McWhinnie by arrangement with his estate.

Wednesday, December 4, 2013

COUVRE-FEU Parisian Flagellation Novels '20s/30s Wighead + Galding NEW Book!



I rarely rave about a new book or publication, here's an exception. The long awaited Les Editions du COUVRE-FEU, the first volume in a long range, four-part series Le Collection bibliographique illustree de la litterature flagellante has just been published in Paris by Editions Astarte. A collaboration between the editor/publisher Alexandre Dupouy and Christophe Bier who did the research, wrote the excellent text and the extensive bibliographic annotations for each book cited. More info here.


 

A collection and reference to the list of sado-masochistic, bondage, flagellation novels published in Paris in the 1920s/1930s under various imprints of le maison Leon Vidal. Featured are illustrations by various artists, especially the incredible Wighead, as well as the always seductive fetish photographs created by the Ostra Studio. Includes extensive annotations and bibliographic information for all the books discovered by Bier and Dupouy, as well as thumbnails of the book covers in color and black & white. The most ambitious book published by Editions Astarte since the incredible 2007 Ostra Studio tome. 

More about Christophe Bier, his cinema research and his activities with Serious Publishing, here.





A must have for the masochist in your life!


Sunday, December 1, 2013

NUDISTS & NATURISTS Sun Loving Nudes 1950s



Selection from the archives of American and European nudist magazines circa 1950s. Sun Annual, Tidlosa, Vive d'Abord, Helios, Sonnen Freunde and others.

Above on right: Diane Webber






Wednesday, November 27, 2013

L'INVITATION Georges Delfau Erotic Artwork 1993



Georges Delfau is an artist, you might say a painter of "ordinary love". His strikingly simple tableaux depict older man and xtra-large women in sexually explicit scenes set in domestic environments, most presented voyeuristically, as if seen from a doorway. His book, L'Invitation, was published in Paris, 1993 by Editions Jean-Pierre Faur. Other than this significant trace of Delfau's work, little else is known about him.  

His work, first viewed in the early 1990s, was at first difficult for me to grasp, but soon, the deeply personal eroticism of the people depicted took hold. They are our aunts and uncles, the concierge, the woman at the bakery around the corner, the clerk at the bank; all people of a "certain age". People we rarely think about out of context, never associating them with "real" lives, let alone fantasizing what their sexual desires may look like brought to life in paintings. 




Adults Only! Advertising Brochures Magazine Films 1960s~'70s



Here's an ad hoc collection of brochures, flyers, advertising for adult only material, circa 1960s/early 1970s. Here's what showed up in your mailbox in response to $1.00 you sent to the address in an ad at the back of a men's magazine. Nudist Art, Uncut Action!, Breast Orgy, Instant Sexual Arousal, Nudism Goes Mod, Stag Party Records, Girls Who Want To Meet YOU! Social Intercourse (great names for tumblr blogs!) and lots more, all with purchase inducing ad copy.  













Tuesday, November 26, 2013

Gene Bilbrew FETISH ART Irving KLAW Studio 1950s



Irving Klaw's New York City studio is arguably most well known for his early 1950s photographs of Bettie Page. As many collectors are aware there was much more going on at Klaw's 14th Street location then selling movie star, pin-up and bondage photographs (Klaw never made photos of nudes believing that would get him into trouble with the law!). He created Mutrix publications and the digest size magazine series as a vehicle for fetish, bondage and cross-dressing themed publications, illustrated with photographs as well as artwork by Eric Stanton and Gene Bilbrew. Along the way Klaw also published many bondage illustrations and stories as "serial", sets of 12, 24 or 48 plates recreating original illustrations on glossy photographic paper. 

Here is a selection of those "serial" illustrations. Even though signed by different artists (Brody, Van Rod), they are all by Gene Bilbrew, aka Eneg.