Philobiblon

Over on My London Your London I’ve a review of Seduced: Art and Sex from Antiquity to Now at the Barbican. What struck me is in how many images, across ages and cultures, it is clearly the women who are working in these images – physically and mentally – while it is the men, both the subjects in the image, and those gazing at them, who are enjoying the fruits of those labours.

What is also clear is how the claim for universal meanings for sex, made by the curators at the start, is utterly not supported. I was taken by a collection from Persia of horoscopes for 28 Qajar princes and princesses, including images of sexual postures. Not quite a Daily Mail idea of royalty.