Silk and Suggestion: The Erotic World of George Barbier

In some artworks elegance is so refined and so immaculately poised that it becomes erotic by implication. Such is the case in the illustrations of the artist George Barbier, the French master of the Art Deco sensuality, in which we find bodies not overwhelmed, burning with desire, but desire contained, filtered through brocade, masquerade, and moonlit restraint. Barbier, born in 1882 and often called ‘the aristocrat of art’ precisely because of this elegance I mentioned, was a French illustrator, costume designer and an aesthete whose works graced many fashion journals, stage sets, and rare books. The figures in Barbier’s illustrations, mostly women, are often seen gliding across the setting in gauzy robes, feather headdresses and embroidered silks, caught in eternally perfumed moments of anticipation. Still, to call Barbier’s artworks simply decorative would be doing them an injustice and it would mean missing out on their deeper undercurrents.

Fig.1  ‘Les Chansons de Bilitis (’The Songs of Bilitis), 1922

Fig.2  ‘Les Chansons de Bilitis (’The Songs of Bilitis), 1922 

The Songs of Bilitis

His illustrations for ‘Vies imaginaries’ or ‘Imaginary Lives’ by Marcel Schwob and ‘The Songs of Bilitis’ by Pierre Louys are not mere adornments to text, but incarnations of longings, dreams, and divine sensuality. They inhabit the golden in-between; between ancient and modern, clothed and naked, sacred and profane. There is something nocturnal and perfumed in these illustrations, as if Barbier captured a world woven from chiffon, mythology and a decadent hush of an eternal twilight.

Marcel Schwob’s ‘Imaginary Lives’ is a collection of twenty-two semi-biographical short stories. It’s a work that fictionalises the lives of forgotten or imaginary figures; from Luzretia Borgia to Empedocles. In these illustrations, made in 1929, Barbier cloaks each figure in exquisite theatricality. Not every single illustration in this collection is erotic, in fact most are not, but those which are of erotic nature I have included here and they are simply marvellous. The figures are stylised, almost hieratic, yet intimate in their stillness. The line is precise, almost Art Deco, yet it curves like smoke or a whisper. Barbier seems to understand the romantic appeal of the unreachable past; the past as perfume, as costume, as faint memory. His people do not live in time; they live in mood.

Fig.3   ‘Les Chansons de Bilitis (’The Songs of Bilitis), 1922

Fig.4  Vies Imaginaires, 1929

Caught Spooning

Some of Barbier’s most dazzling erotic illustrations are found in the book ‘Les Chansons de Bilitis’ or ‘The Songs of Bilitis’; this was a collection of erotic poetry, mostly lesbian themes, written by Pierre Louys and published in Paris at the height of the fin de siècle, in 1894. Louys had claimed that he was merely a translator, that the songs were originally written on the walls of a tomb in Cyprus by a woman in Ancient Greece called Bilitis. In Louys’ imagination Bilitis was both a lesbian and a prostitute, also a contemporary of Sappho, but of course it was Louys who wrote the poems and this story was made up only to heighten their allure. In 1922 Barbier made a series of illustrations for ‘The Songs of Bilitis’ and they can be seen from Fig.1. to Fig.3. One of my particular favourites is the one in Fig.5. where two women are caught spooning and kissing each other. I love the elegance of their bodies together, drawn in a sinuous line, in contrasting skin tones.

Fig.5  Fetes Galantes, 1928

Fig.5a

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Click HERE for an earlier article on George Barbier's appreciation of shunga and other influences.

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