The Strange, Sordid History of the World's First Nude Female Statue | Artnet News

But in the Roman imagination the Cloaca was always a wonder of Rome that was owed to its final kings: ‘an amazing work and more than words can describe’ enthused Dionysius, who presumably had in mind what was visible in his day, in the first century BCE. Yet it also had a darker side: it was not just a wonder but also a reminder of the cruel tyrann

In its early days, pornography was a self-consciously political and philosophical genre.

As the church lost its role as the dominant commissioner of images, it also lost its grip on the cultural narratives around breasts—a loss registered as artists depict breasts other than Mary’s.

we had long admired photographs of Nanita Kalaschnikoff among the world's most wicked and wonderful; we would read about her husband's origins in the Russian nobility, his connection with that awful gun so beloved by terrorists. She was a Princess, a Spanish beauty with an uncanny resemblance to the Bourban monarchs and, in the Court of Salvador Da