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Reverie (2022)

“Cette beauté dont je parle provoque une érection de l’âme.” 

(“This beauty of which I speak causes an erection of the soul.”)— Jean Cocteau

My discovery of George Barbier’s Art Deco drawing of a reclining blue Eros inspired me to go further with the feeling by adding an erection, and creating a new environment meant to suggest erotic energy pervading his reverie. Of whom, or what, does this erotic angel dream?

His arousal seems as much of the spirit as of the body, calling to mind Cocteau’s insistence that beauty and art must incite a “secret” passion to be more than a merely intellectual experience. (“The work of art is then capable of awakening a psychic desire… a realm, rather, where love begins with an irresistible attraction, a positive force requiring no previous reflection.”)