Two Artists’ Divergent Roads to Eros
Daphne Merkin, The New York Times
June 2021
The erotic, or what we think of as the erotic, is a slippery concept, partaking of everything and nothing; it can be nebulous and atmospheric or granularly specific, depending on its historical and cultural context. In the 19th century, a glimpse of a woman’s ankle could send the cad Rodolphe’s heart fluttering in Flaubert’s “Madame Bovary.” In the post-1960s, we required stronger stuff, like the blatant, sustained nudity of the two main characters, played by Marlon Brando and Maria Schneider, that marked Bernardo Bertolucci’s groundbreaking “Last Tango in Paris.” […]