The biggest project we have ever attempted is finally done. It took over 15 years to create, and countless hours. At many times it seemed like we would never finish, and often when we thought we were close, we realized that a whole lot more had to be done. It turns out that creating the greatest collection of nude and erotic art ever assembled is a lot of work.
This project deals with art, specifically nude and erotic art from the past 500 years up to 1940. There were several parts to each phase of the project. Part 1 was the acquisition of nude and erotic art, which began years ago even before this project was a concept. Part 2 was the digital restoration, removing yellowing, color shifts, cracked and chipped paint, and any other damage the art had sustained over time.
The original version of William Etty’s The Sirens and Ulysses 1837
The cleaned version
The concept was to make the pictures better, not perfect. An actual digital restoration can take a lot of research and several days and even weeks. For a collection this large, fast techniques and shortcuts had to be developed in order for this to be finished before my nieces and nephews attend the weddings of their grandchildren. As you can see here, though, what we did do to the images makes a big difference.
Part 3 is where I put in a lot more time than anticipated- the writing of the catalog for the collection, which could only be completed when we had the collection finalized. Over the course of writing it the collection was reorganized and expanded, requiring a lot of additional writing. I thought I was close but it took two more years to actually get to done. At times I felt like neurologist Oliver Sacks on his first book where it always seemed to need more to make it complete.
Lagrenée – Louis (1725-1805) Daphnis and Chloe – Scratch removal
The catalog is in ebook format and will be available for purchase in July 2019 on Amazon. It is titled Passion! Artists and Their Nudes by Jeff Booth (that’s me). It includes 850 biographies on the artists, their art, and their models. Whenever possible, the biographies focus on whatever is known about their sex lives, and many artists had quite adventurous and interesting sex lives as it turns out. It also focuses on the models, which often intersects with the stories of the artist’s sex lives. It lists every single work in the collection.
The book also includes information on the complexities of attribution, why certain themes were popular for depicting nudity, the many different ways that art deteriorates, and a bit about the technology and techniques used to restore the art.
It is an extensive book. While page numbers are meaningless for eBooks, if this were a print hardback with 40 lines per page with an average of 75 characters per line, we are looking at close to a 1,000 pages.
Lambert Sustris (1510-1560) Woman with a Pitcher – Repairing discoloration
If you would like to be notified when it is available, go to our Passion Notification page. Your email will be used only to send you a notice when the book is available and will not be used for any other purpose.
Otto Pilny (1866-1936) Odalisque – Repairing physical damage
Hans von Achen (1552-1615) Judith 1600 Fixing yellowing
How expensive will this book be? We have our resident MBA finance person trying to figure that out, but the goal is to keep the price down to something reasonable- an impulse purchase rather than a major investment.
Also coming is access to the actual art itself. This will be available separately from CernterSEE.org (Center for Sexual Expression and Education). The art cataloged in Passion! is broken down into three collections. The first two are all in HD resolution (1080×1920). The last, Unacceptable Nudity, is in a lower resolution and is available for free.
William Etty (1787-1849) Two Standing Nudes – Foxing removal
Unacceptable Nudity Collection
There were a number of images that we just could not acquire a high resolution version of. While not meeting our high standards, and thus, unacceptable, we felt these images were important historically and to make the collections more complete. The versions here are in a lower resolution of 500 pixels high. In addition to including the “unacceptable” art from the corresponding artists in the other two collections as a bonus, we also make them available for free online at Unacceptable Nudity. There are 5,000 works of art intended for the Unacceptable Nudity site. While there is quite a bit there now, we still have a lot more to add, and the site does need updating, one of our next tasks.
Masters of Western Nude and Erotic Art
21,500 HD resolution works of art
500 artists
This collection focuses on Western artists for whom nude and erotic art was a significant part of their output. To be included, we need to have ten or more HD works of art for that artist. Most have many more than that, some as many as 200, although a very few squeaked in with just ten because they were especially interesting. In addition, you get a bonus 4200 pictures from the Unacceptable Nudity collection.
World Nude and Erotic Art Survey
5,000 HD resolution works of art total
200 artists
25 Etchers – 1,000 HD resolution works of art
25 Asian Artist collections plus many anonymous with art from countries including Japan, China, India, Mongolia, Persia, and Turkey – 1,000 HD resolution works of art
750 individual or double HD resolution works by 700 artists
This collection includes the Western artists who did nudes rarely or for whom the majority of their nudes or erotic art has been lost. We also do a survey of Eastern art, although with the exception of Japanese artists, most are anonymous. We include a number of etchers, and in the catalog we cross reference the etchings to the original works in the other artist collections. Most of the works are original etchings, though. A total of 1,000 artists are represented (Passion! includes 225 biographies of the most significant ones). In addition, you get a bonus 800 pictures from the Unacceptable Nudity collection.
There is a lot that had to be done for a project like this. Just establishing ways to catalog, organize, and eliminate duplicate art was a huge task. This project shows off the finished art, but we have archives of over 500,000 works of art that will eventually become part of one of our galleries, including expanded Eastern art and etchers collections). We also translated all of the titles into English.
George Washington Lambert (1873-1930) Chesham Street Combining two poor quality images to make a third better image
This is just phase 1 of our even larger Sexual Heritage Preservation Project, which you can learn more about at the link. It is the most ambitious of our many CenterSEE projects, digitally preserving and restoring tens of thousands of books, cultural artifacts and works of art related to human sexuality. Definitely check out our online museum, The Museum of Sexual History. It does require Flash in your browser so it will not work on a tablet or phone, but we are raising funds to do a conversion of it and our Erotic University project.