Bibliotheca Universalis
5 total works
The Kama Sutra gives detailed instructions on how to spank it. Contemporary Italians touch it for luck before placing a bet. Americans are having it cosmetically enhanced at rates approaching breast enlargement surgery. The female butt, tush, culo, or derrière has always inspired awe, fantasy, and slavish devotion. Curiously, its primary purpose is functional rather than aesthetic: butts balance our bodies while running, according to biologists. But ask any pygophiliac—as fundament fans are clinically termed—and you’ll get the same answer: female hindquarters exist to please the eye, the hands, and parts south. Sir Mix-a-Lot said it all when he proclaimed, “My anaconda don’t want none, unless you’ve got buns, hun.” All of this valuable insight, as well as some 400 photos from 1900 to 2008, were included in TASCHEN’s original The Big Butt Book, released in 2010. Now, that same content is compressed and reconfigured into TASCHEN’s popular Bibliotheca Universalis format, with some new photos thrown in just for fun. You’ll still find works by Elmer Batters, Jean-Paul Goude, Ralph Gibson, Richard Kern, Jan Saudek, Ed Fox, Guido Argentini, and Sante D’Orazio, of butts ranging from petite Pam Anderson’s to sumptuous Serena Williams’s, all contextualized by interviews with porn icon John (Buttman) Stagliano, filmmaker Tinto Brass, and butt queens Buffie the Body, Coco Austin, and Brazil’s Watermelon Woman, but in a portable size, at an affordable price. What could be more bootylicious?
The Big Book of Pussy, not to be confused with a book of big pussies, closed out the popular “body part” series with an offering just as controversial as it was popular back in 2011. As in previous volumes, editor Dian Hanson explored the historical significance of her subject, explaining how the female genitalia have been coveted, feared, reviled, and worshipped by civilizations worldwide, from New Guinea to old Ireland. Her text was supported by playfully positive photographs of women exposing their vulvas, from 1910 to today. And with more than 400 photos, the point was made emphatically, in images both naturally furry and stylishly groomed. Now, this fresh edition reframes not just the subject, but the format and design of this popular volume in the portable and affordable Bibliotheca Universalis size, to meet the needs of consumers like the gentleman who commented on Amazon, “Who wants a two-ton Pussy Book being ‘exposed’ for the mailman?” Relax, my finicky friend! Your pussy now arrives in a discreet 14 x 19.5 cm (5.5 x 7.7 in.) size! Included are interviews with the auteur known as Pussyman, the ex-cop who turned masturbation into millions with a toy called the Fleshlight, clit queen Vanessa del Rio, squirter Flower Tucci, and vaginal performance artist Mouse. Contemporary photographers Richard Kern, Ralph Gibson, Jan Saudek, Guido Argentini, Ed Fox, and others share their favorite pussy photos, urging even the shyest reader to call, “Here, kitty, kitty!”
In 2007 TASCHEN released The New Erotic Photography, followed in 2012 by The New Erotic Photography 2. Each book featured hundreds of fresh and provocative images from the world’s most intriguing erotic talents. Now the best of both books is available in The New Erotic Photography, featuring 62 photographers from 10 countries, exploring the global variations of erotic photography, as well as the evolution of photographic media over the last decade. We see film give way to digital, while those who persist with film are as likely to use Polaroids and primitive cameras like the Lomo and Holga as traditional SLRs.
The featured photographers include new names Gregory Bojorquez, Jo Schwab, Tomohide Ikeya, Frédéric Fontenoy, Andrew Pashis, and Jan Hronsky, as well as established artists Guido Argentini, Bruno Bisang, Eric Kroll, and the late Bob Carlos Clarke. Several outstanding women are also featured in this edition, including erotic film star Kimberly Kane, digital pioneer Natacha Merritt, heavy metal skateboarder Magdalena Wosinska, self-portraitist Jody Frost, and cover artist April-Lea Hutchinson. It all adds up to an awful lot of nudes for a tantalizingly low price.
Eric Stanton (1926–1999) was America’s premier fetish artist, a man of very particular tastes, as all fetishists are. Most keep their work and sex preferences separate, but Stanton made his desires the center of his art, pouring his passions onto the page. These preferences included, in no particular order, female dominance, female fighting, mixed gender wrestling, and face sitting.
Perhaps if the man born Ernest Stanzoni in New York City in 1926 had grown taller, all would have been different. As it happened, he topped out around 5’5” (165 cm), making him smaller and weaker than many women, and rather than bemoan this shortcoming, he chose to eroticize it. Then, like Robert Crumb and Tom of Finland to follow, he put his fantasies on paper.
Stanton produced paperback book covers, magazine illustrations, comics and even wrestling and smother videos, but what he is best known for is his Stantoons: self-published 16- to 28-page booklets produced between 1982 and his death in 1999. These booklets best represent Stanton’s rich and complex fantasy life, as well as the lives of his fans, whose fantasies he also incorporated. This new edition of The Dominant Wives & Other Stories, brings together the finest of the Stantoons,along with Stanton’s most famous series for Irving Klaw: Bound in Leather, parts 1 and 2. Done in pencil, pen and ink, gouache and mixed media, these 20 stories represent the best of Stanton, who himself represents the best of fetish.
About the series
Bibliotheca Universalis — Compact cultural companions celebrating the eclectic TASCHEN universe!
In 1965, Tom of Finland began flirting with the idea of an ongoing character for his panel stories, the ultimate Tom’s Man. He tried out a blond named Vicky—a common male name in Finland—followed by a Tarzan-inspired Jack. Then in 1968 Tom settled on Kake, a dark-haired, mustached leatherman who often wore a tight white T-shirt bearing the motto “Fucker.” Kake lived up to this moniker, a sort of post-Stonewall, hyper-masculine Johnny Appleseed traveling the world on his motorcycle to spread the seeds of liberated, mutually satisfying, ecstatically explicit gay sex. Tom lived out many of his most personal fantasies through Kake, and Kake’s international fans made him the template for what came to be known as the gay clone look of the 1970s. Between 1968 and 1986, Tom published 26 episodes of Kake adventures, most as 20-page booklets.
Tom of Finland – The Complete Kake Comics collects all of these stories in one volume. Return with Kake to the days when men were men, sex was carefree, and everyone wore a big thick mustache.