About

logo imaginesWe are a cross-disciplinary and international research network interested in the dialogues between the Ancient and the Modern worlds. Our focus of attention is the reception of Antiquity in the visual and performing arts and more generally in visual culture and media in all its renderings and representations.

 

 

 

Imagines 8

 Pagan Pornotopias?

The Reception of Antiquity in Eroticism and Pornography

 Madrid, 27-29 September 2023

Programme

PAGAN PORNOTOPIAS Poster

 

 Wednesday, September 27

Place: Centro Cultural La Corrala (Salón de Actos). C/ Carlos Arniches, 3-5

 

14.00 Registration - Coffee

15.00 Conference Opening – Greetings of the Authorities

Filippo Carlà-Uhink (Potsdam) & Luis Unceta Gómez (Madrid), Introduction

 

Panel 1: What Aroused Our Forefathers and Foremothers? Antiquity in 18th and 19th Century Eroticism

Chair: Filippo Carlà-Uhink (Potsdam)

15.30 Katherine Harloe (London), Practical Enlightenment: Pagan Pornotopia in Casanova’s Encounter With Winckelmann

15.55 Athena Leoussi (Reading), ‘La joie de vivre’: Modern Hellenism and the Revival of the Life of the Senses

 

16.20 Discussion

16.45 Coffee Break

17.15 Nikolai Endres (Bowling Green), A Pornotopia in Sicily? The Baron von Gloeden’s Reception of Antiquity

17.40 Stefania Arcara (Catania), “Dark, Virulent, Divine”: the Fin-de-Siècle invention of Sapphic Eroticism in Britain

 

18.05 Discussion

18.30 Imagines Group Meeting – only for members of Imagines

 

Thursday, September 28

Place: Facultad de Filosofía y Letras (Salón de Actos). Universidad Autónoma de Madrid

 

Panel 2: Ancient Models for Modern Sex

Chair: Irene Berti (Heidelberg)

09.00 Anastasia Bakogianni (Auckland), Can Greek Tragic Heroines Ever be Sexy? Eroticism vs. Female Revenge

09.25 Thomas E. Jenkins (San Antonio), Getting to the Bottom of Rufus Wainwright’s Hadrian: Identity and Bravery in Contemporary Opera

09.50 Anise Strong (Kalamazoo), Ancient Sexuality and Modern Video Games

 

10.15 Discussion

10.45 Coffee Break

 

Panel 3: So We Dare Speak Its Name: Antiquity in (and for) Homosexual and Queer Desire

Chair: Luis Unceta Gómez (Madrid)

11.15 Filippo Carlà-Uhink (Potsdam), Performing Doric and Ionic Love: Ancient Greece in Gay Male Pornography

11.40 Patricia A. Gwozdz & Markus Lenz (Potsdam), Subversive Hercules. How to Fashion Queer Desire in Popular Culture and Instagram

12.05 David Delbar (Chicago), Domination and the Minotaur

 

12.30 Discussion

13.00 Lunch

 

Panel 4: Spatialisations of Lust: Sexualised Antiquity in Architecture and Decoration

Chair: Marta García Morcillo (Durham)

14.30 Jean-Noël Castorio & Stephanie Ferrand (Le Havre), The Monuments of the «Captain Storm» and the Neoclassical Erotism

15.00 Sanja Vucetic (Sheffield), Classical Greek Images of Sex as Modern ‘Adults Only’ Souvenir Art

15.25 Jorge Elices Ocón (Madrid), Marble Breasts and Phalli of Stone: Classical Statues as Erotic Reference and Pornographic Transgression in the Islamic World

 

15.55 Discussion

16.15 Coffee Break

16.45 Ricardo del Molino (Bogotá), El clasicismo de burdel en América Latina. La antigüedad egipcia, griega y romana en prostíbulos, moteles y hoteles de tránsito hispanoamericanos

17.10 Tanja Kilzer (Siegen), “Sexy Goddesses and Handsome Gladiators” – Eroticized Stereotypes of the Antiquity in the US-American Hotel Business of Jay Sarno in the 1960s

 

17.35 Discussion

18.00 Coffee Break

18.30 Carmelo Blázquez Jiménez (Barcelona), De héroes y efebos. Referencias clásicas en mi fotografía

 

Friday, September 29

 Place: Facultad de Filosofía y Letras (Salón de Actos). Universidad Autónoma de Madrid

 

Panel 5: Antiquity Goes Hard: Greece, Rome and the Pornography Debate

Chair: Anja Wieber (Dortmund)

09.00 Martin Lindner (Göttingen), X-Rated Classics – Cinematic Antiquity and the Impossibility to Classify Pornography

09.25 Alastair Blanshard (Brisbane), But Is It Pornography? Locating Obscenity in the Classicising Photographs and Films of Mid-Century Physique Culture

09.50 Florian Freitag (Essen), Traditions Revisited and Continued: Antiquity in the new Physique Pictorial

 

10.15 Discussion

10.45 Coffee Break

11.15 Charlotte Gregory (London), The Dynamics of Interracial Pornography in Troy: Fall of a City (2018)

11.40 Anna Socha (Liverpool), The Iliad 2: A (Very) Dirty Story. Sexualised Retelling of the Iliad and Odyssey

12.05 Luis Unceta Gómez (Madrid), Pagan Pornotropes. Ancient Rome and the Erotics of Power in Pornographic Comic Books

 

12.30 Discussion

13.00 Final Discussion and Conclusions

13.30 Lunch

....

To attend in presence or online, please register by sending an email to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

 

 Carmelo Gómez 3

© Carmelo Blázquez

Pagan Pornotopias?

The Reception of Antiquity in Eroticism and Pornography

Madrid, 27.-29 September 2023

 

 Carmelo Gómez 1

© Carmelo Blázquez

 

The eighth conference of the Imagines group, which will take place at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (Spain) on September 27th-29th, 2023, will be dedicated to the reception of ancient cultures, especially Greece and Rome, in eroticism and pornography from the 19th century to the present. Consistently with the main research aim of the Imagines group (https://www.imagines-project.org/), the focus will be on the reception of the ancient world in visual and performative erotic and pornographic productions (a discussion at theoretical level of characters of and differences between eroticism and pornography is also welcome, within the conference’s main topic, the reception of Antiquity).

 
It has been recently pointed out that ancient Rome indeed can be defined in the modern Western popular culture as a “pornotopia”, in which the most diverse and deviant form of sexual practice and desire can be located. An important aspect of this eroticised characterisation of ancient Rome is its implicit opposition to Christian morality (and sexual repression), which derives from the narratives of Christian chastity and martyrdom that have been so widespread and relevant in Western cultural memory since the Middle Ages. Yet this is not the only reason that has fostered a markedly erotic relationship between the modern times and the ancient world. At the same time, indeed, ancient Greece has played a crucial role in constructing and legitimating same-sex attraction – and Plato (and in particular Aristophanes’ speech in the Symposium) has been deployed since the 19th century to provide the – particularly male – gay community with a legitimating narrative within the frame of European philhellenism. As formulated in 1961 by ONE magazine for example, “almost the first thing that any [male] homosexual does, when called upon to offer any serious defense of homosexuality, is to draw upon the glorious example of the manly Greek warriors and athletes who apparently practiced homosexual love openly and without shame”. Similarly, ancient historical or mythological figures such as Sappho or the Amazons have been deployed to shape and legitimise female homosexual identity. Other ancient peoples – the Persians, the Egyptians, the Etruscans, just to name some examples – have been portrayed since Antiquity and through typical mechanisms of Othering as sexually deviant from the assumed “norm”; this has also filtered into modern receptions, which often replicate, translate and modify the Orientalist stereotypes already widespread in the ancient world (one can think of the representation of the Persians as “sexually deviant” in the blockbusters 300 and 300: Rise of an Empire).

The aim of this conference is to investigate the role played by the ancient world in shaping erotic and pornographic representations, and thus in representing and structuring attraction and desire. This analysis will help in understanding how references to Antiquity play, at a more or less conscious level, a crucial role in defining, stereotyping, constructing in discourse and legitimating sexual identities, sexual orientations, gender belonging and performance.

Confirmed speakers include, together with the organisers and editors of the volume, Luis Unceta Gómez (UAM) and Filippo Carlà-Uhink (Universität Potsdam): Anastasia Bakogianni (Massey University), Alastair Blanshard (The University of Queensland), Thomas Jenkins (Trinity University), Athena Leoussi (University of Reading), Martin Lindner (Universität Göttingen), Anise K. Strong (Western Michigan University).

See conference programme and abstracts.

The conference programme will also include a meeting and public discussion with Carmelo Blázquez, an internationally renowned photographer specializing in male nude photography (https://www.carmeloblazquez.com/).

 

PAGAN PORNOTOPIAS Poster

 

Díptico 1

 

Díptico 2

© Carmelo Blázquez

The Imagines logo integrates in one single design the interaction between different artistic expressions that shapes our project. A logo is an image that synthesises a concept. In this case, the challenge was to create a recognising concept that could transmit the idea of the dynamic dialogue between the ancient and the modern mediated by the arts. The logo is the outcome of the creative research and design work of our collaborators from Barcelona Ainize González and Nacho García, both art historians.

 

Making of: The starting point that triggered the design was to find an element that through movement could express and link transversality and intermediality, both key concepts that define the work and aims of our research network. Figure 1 shows a still very schematic sketch of a celluloid, a tool that embodies both movement and image.

On the next image (Fig. 2) we see a prototypical Greek amphora surrounded by celluloid that includes several ancient motives. Painting, theatre, dance and mythology are represented in this proto-design.

 

 

The next illustration (Fig. 3) expands this idea and displays the definitive proportions of the celluloid. Some geometric motives have been added on the amphora. The choice of the amphora is explained by its double functionality both as a pictorial support and as an artistic object per se.

Fig. 4 brings together the concepts that had been considered in previous phases, but still does not whow a coherent narrative.

On the following illustration (Fig. 5), proportion and symmetry are aligned and one of the frames is removed in order to improve the geometric harmony of the design.

Figure 6 displays the definitive design. At both ends of the celluloid we see two static motives while those depicting dynamic elements occupy the centre of the composition, which aims to enhance movement to the object. The choice of these motives took into consideration the research interest of members and collaborators of Imagines.

Performing arts and sculpture are represented by a theatrical mask; the Arch of Titus features monumental and urban architecture; the Hadrianic coin stands out as a symbol of the Roman Empire; it epitomises “official art” and the iconographies of power; the ship symbolises the ancient Mediterranean as a place of cultural encounters, travelling and dialogue; the inscription is the testimony of the memory of the past, while the painting and the mosaic perform not only as ornaments, but also as narrative elements that mirror society and everyday life.

 

 

© Ainize González and Nacho García. All rights reserved.

Finally, the red- and black-figure motives, which are inspired by the iconography of real Greek kraters, exemplify the central place that mythology plays both in Antiquity and in Classical Reception.

The image below is a diagram that comprehends all these ideas and displays the specific iconographic sources that inspired the figures.

The logo fits into a frame that also includes a new typography. This element found its inspiration in the revolutionary designs of the Wiener Werkstätte, a strand of the famous fin-de-siècle Secessionist movement that aimed to unify the practical and the aesthetical. The typography, which is called Archeologicaps, has been created by the designer Manfred Klein, and presents reminiscences of Roman monumental epigraphy.

 

 

 

The Imagines logo features also now very nicely on the beautiful covers of the Imagines book series volumes, published by Bloomsbury (link to the series):