Venus in Furs

The first phase of my body anagrams began in the mid-1960s with photographs. The second phase of body anagrams involved the superimposition of two live images (Switcher Sex, 1972), the third phase superimposed a live image with an art historical painting (Tritität, 1974/1975), the fourth phase involved the superimposition of only art historical images. On the occasion of an exhibition in 2003 at the Neue Galerie in Graz entitled Phantasma der Lust, I took the famous book by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch Venus im Pelz (1870) as an inducement to use a digital technique known as morphing to unite all important representations of Venus in art history – as well as some contemporary photography – into an atlas of female nudes. The morphing was employed as a narrative, not to expose the women but to lay bare the desire of the painter and the viewer. The compositions of the transitions reported a morphology of male desire; the position of the models conveyed the distortions of sexual aggression. (Peter Weibel)