Eros in the Mind’s Eye: Sexuality and the Fantastic in Art and Film

This lively collection offers a wide-ranging exploration of the erotic and the fantastic in painting, illustration, and frilm. It covers Western art of six centuries–from medieval woodcuts to contemporary poster art–and the cinema of six decades–from horror classics of the 1930s to recent slasher films–documenting the surprising variety of guises in which sexuality appears in fantasy art and cinema. Among the subjects treated are occult eroticism in Medieval and Renaissance art; the use of fantasy as a vehicle for depicting erotic subjects in periods of sexual repression; the fascination with unconscious and aberrant sexuality in the visual arts since the publication of Freud’s theories; movie monsters and aliens as emblems of the submerged id or libido; and monstrous metamorphosis as a symbol of the changes accompanying puberty.