# 1
In a Psych Ward on Suicide Watch: A True Story
#2
How Misogynists Think: Confessions of a Former Misogynist
#3
Eroticism
Eat the Meat in My Bone Soup
by
Daulton Dickey.
Daulton Dickey is a novelist, poet, and content creator currently living in Indiana with his wife and kids. He’s the author of A Peculiar Arrangement of Atoms: Stories, Still Life with Chattering Teeth and People-Shaped Things, and other stories, Elegiac Machinations: an experimental novella, and Bastard Virtues, a novel. Rooster Republic Press will publish his latest novel, Flesh Made World, later this year. Contact him at lostitfunhouse [at] gmail [dot] com
18th Century Illustrations from the Works of Marquis de Sade
by
Daulton Dickey.
Psychopath, madman, degenerate, depraved, rapist, monster—you can find dozens of adjectives to describe Marquis de Sade, and most fit. The man responsible for the words “sadism” and “sadist” lived a deplorable live filled with violence and depravity. As a consequence of his actions—and writings—he spent a bulk of his life in prison.
His books manage to shock readers even today. They’re appalling, disgusting, philosophical, tedious, interesting, thought-provoking, and grotesque. But they’re not without merit and they’ve found a peculiar place in the western canon.
Earlier editions of his books, hidden in libraries and owned by elite members with certain sexual proclivities, included fascinating and grotesque illustrations. Below are a few examples. Enjoy. Or not. (more…)
Broken Teeth: A Thesis on Morality and the Categorical Imperative
by
Daulton Dickey.
Daulton Dickey is a novelist, poet, and content creator currently living in Indiana with his wife and kids. He’s the author of A Peculiar Arrangement of Atoms: Stories, Still Life with Chattering Teeth and People-Shaped Things, and other stories, Elegiac Machinations: an experimental novella, and Bastard Virtues, a novel. Rooster Republic Press will publish his latest novel, Flesh Made World, later this year. Contact him at daultondickey[at]yahoo[dot]com.
Perversion and the Arts, A Historical Overview
by
Daulton Dickey.
What is Perversion?
When we hear the words “pervert” or “perversion,” we tend to think of them in terms of sexual deviancy. As with most words, “pervert” and “perversion” can convey a variety of senses. You can pervert meaning, for example. In this sense, you’re altering the meaning of a word or phrase to fit your agenda. Or you can pervert the system, changing it to achieve your goals.
Perversion as a concept isn’t limited to sex and sexuality. It can also mean actors or behavior outside cultural norms. We’ll focus on these two meanings of the word and how they’re sometimes, but not always, interconnected.
Institutional Control
You could argue that every art movement since the mid-to-late nineteenth century is either predicated on or incorporates some sense of perversion. If we use “perversion” is the sense of an unorthodox approach, then modern art is explicitly founded on it. Institutions dictated what constituted art—and they did so with an iron fist: you could only paint in a studio, not outdoors; you had to hide your brushstrokes; you could only depict historical or didactic scenes or imagery, and so on. Institutions dictated style and form and, to a degree, content. (more…)
Hans Bellmer and the Perversion of Form
by
Daulton Dickey.
Surrealism encompassed a variety of media and artists of all kinds, many of whom found a place in the Modern Art canon. Some artists, such as Dali and Magritte, produced imagery we still encounter. Melting clocks and apples obscuring faces represent the kind of imagery surrealists excelled at producing. It unsettled you, disoriented you, confused you.
Few surrealists managed to match Hans Bellmer in the ability to confound and disturb. His pieces simultaneously deconstruct and fetishize the human form, the sum of which stirs a sense of disquiet—and occasional eroticism—in the viewer. By perverting the human form, he managed to express his own tortured mind while allowing the viewers to glimpse something inside themselves—something perhaps not altogether pleasant. (more…)
Gustave Courbet and The Origin of the World (L’Origine du monde)
by
Daulton Dickey.
Courbet and the Academy
In France in the nineteenth century, an elite group dictated art. The Academy, as it’s known in English, held strict ideas about art–all of them derived from the classical world, the Renaissance, and the baroque era. The men who ran the Academy dictated artistic tastes by preserving the past. New artists didn’t stand a chance if the Academy refused to exhibit their work.
Titian, Venus of Urbino, 1538Their power constituted a form of cultural totalitarianism–and few people challenged them. If you were an artist in the nineteenth century and you wanted them to consider your work, then you had to follow their rules. Paintings could only depict mythological, historic, or religious scenes or stories. Artists had to conceal brushstrokes. They couldn’t depict modernity. They could stage models or paint modern landscapes, but they had to present them as ancient or historic stories or allegories.
An artist violating these and other rules didn’t stand a chance with the Academy. And if the Academy rejected you, you’d probably never make it. (more…)
