Art Nouveau and the Erotic

The swirling sensuous forms of the Art Nouveau style are synonymous with the erotic. This provocative book, bursting with groundbreaking sensual images, shows how artists and designers from Aubrey Beardsley to Gustav Klimt explored and exploited the idea of the erotic in their creative endeavors.

Ghislaine Wood uses a wide range of paintings, sculpture, ceramics, jewelry, photographs, and more-many from the superb collections of London's Victoria & Albert Museum-to illustrate the risqu, often shockingly explicit content of many works from a time of sexual license and decadent extravagance. Visually arresting and well-priced, this complement to the main exhibition catalogue is not only for lovers of Art Nouveau but also for the vast audience for books on erotic art.

GHISLAINE WOOD is assistant curator of the major exhibition on Art Nouveau at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, and the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., and a contributor to the book Art Nouveau, 1890-1914. She lives in London.

80 illustrations, 60 in full color, 73/8 x 81/4