It’s been about a year since I stopped reviewing sex books and videos for Good Vibes, but I was there long enough to watch the world of sex and art coffee table books go through a revolution. And Taschen, publisher of all kinds of those glossy, tasteful and gorgeous books, was one of the biggest players in the edgy art and sex book scene. They weren’t the only ones, but they published sensational, very hot and wildy popular (and then-groundbreaking) books like Digital Diaries, Forbidden Erotica, Vlastimil Kula, Chas Ray Krider’s Motel Fetish and Roy Stuart‘s collections. These explicit gems were of course after Taschen published Eric Kroll’s Fetish Girls, which when it came out in 1996 (before my time at GV), heralded the first wave of new fetish photo, perhaps even unintentionally grandfathering the altporn genre.
I was thinking about all this last night, where at the Kink Ink event (to which I dragged captives Sean Bonner, Jason DeFillippo, Simone and David and Hornboy) I got to meet Carlos Batts and April Flores, in person for the first time. I sat with Carlos and April and while he showed me his new and upcoming work, we bonded over the anicient, dinosaur-era attitudes toward sex and erotica (and gender, body, race and art) a la Hugh Hefner and his contemporaries, which still seems to inform today’s erotic photography and perceptions of truly, authentically erotic sexuality. Batts couldn’t put down his cameras the entire time I saw him last night; his vibe was gentle and cool but it seemed to me like his eyes were seeing and somehow wildly consuming things the rest of us couldn’t, and he had to catch it all quick, before it got away. Of course, Carlos is published by one of many upstart publishers who like to take risks with young, exciting artists like Batts (pictured), but it still made me wonder, whatever happened to Taschen?
A visit to Taschen’s site makes me think that I was GV’s book reviewer during Tashen’s heyday. I remember meeting with the Taschen rep right before I quit and seeing a dismal selection of (then-new) erotic books — many of the same books that sit in Taschen’s current stock. To me, the most exciting erotic books combine the right amount of visual innovation (color, sex acts that shock and arouse) with authenticity and rawness, and a feeling that combines hot sex that looks like a delicious fantasy you want to reach in and touch, through the page, and that little bit of surprise that flips the little arousal switch you didn’t know was connected to one particular wire (or synapse) into a startling “on” position. Somehow, these books always live in the moment. To me, a hot erotic art book doesn’t age; like Motel Fetish, anything by Siege or Wild Skin, you look at it and the images are iconic and fresh (unlike so many of the fetish books of ten years ago, apologies and all due respect). Look how Playboy has aged — really, really badly, so badly in fact that if you pick up the current newsstand copy it looks like it’s 20 years old already. This isn’t news to anyone, but it makes a point about how things have changed in erotic visual culture, while the moneyed media that makes it, is stuck in rewind. Same goes for all the new porn from Los Angeles. Is Taschen just another cautionary tale?
The edgiest thing Taschen had going when I met with the rep was Terryworld, which was full of fun and shocking images, but didn’t have the erotic legs to turn anyone on except ironic Hollywood photograpers. Other than that their stock consisted of yet more tired rehashings of old men’s magazines, which had already been done to death and had such a limited appeal to erotic consumers that it was a little depressing.
I’m leaving out all of the other erotic art and photo book publishers in this musing — many of which are doing hot, amazing and exciting stuff — because Taschen used to represent something to me, but now I’m realizing that their flagship sex books are ten years old and it almost looks like they’re letting go, gracefully, of their market. What’s new at Taschen? More retro men’s magazines (yawn), and the only upcoming thing to get my attention (sadly, among only three upcoming titles) is a collection of Bill Ward comics that looks like a Fantagraphics reissue— and likely consists only of the really *safe* stuff Ward did. I can only hope it would include his really crazy fem-dom, huge-boobed babes who joyfully did outrageous things to well-hung male submissives’ bottoms with strap-ons and mechanical apparati that would make guys like Hef roll in his grave — ooops, my bad, he’s not dead yet (even if his erotic stereotypes are). I still have a tattered copy of Ward’s *real deal*, Chevrotine, bought years ago at a Parisian market.
Anyway, I just read the interview with Eric Kroll over at Eros Zine, where he talks about his new job as editor at Taschen and it got me wondering whatever happened to the former erotic art powerhouse. I’ll never know what happened over the past few years, but there’s no shortage of eager publishers and new talent to fill in the gaps.
Of course, a really important part of this conversation is whether the erotic art book is still a relevant medium. Most of the exciting and hot visual erotica I’ve seen lately is online. Putting these books together isn’t cheap, and something like the Siege blog at Nerve seems to be the way to create a cost and compensation compromise — and of course, having someone like Siege, and the sexuality he shows us. Personally, I still love collecting erotic art books and giving them as gifts; they’re even more precious and sexy than sending someone a link because they’re tactile, like sex itself. But it’s really interesitng to see where it’s all going and to watch it change.
Update: friend and fellow blogger Bacchus from ErosBlog emails to remind me that I’m jaded, and I’ll bow to his call of “shennaigans!” Bacchus sayeth thusly:
“I’m gonna call ‘jaded San Francisco sexerati’ on your dis of the Taschen
mens magazine compilations, though. Out here in the big-box-bookstore world
of red-state America, I haven’t heard whisper or rumor of anything like the
sort of huge loving men’s mag compilations Taschen has been doing lately,
and so my jaw dropped to my knees when I saw your ‘tired rehashings … done
to death’ comments. I don’t have these Taschen titles yet — but from where I sit
they look exciting and appealing. Whoever did that to death already, I wish
I had ’em in my collection, but I haven’t even heard of ’em. I’d have said
Taschen was the only modern player in that market — knowing, of course,
that I miss a lot by not living in the Mecca of kinky culture. ;-)”
