About the Artist Elucie

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THE EROTIC ART OF ELUCIE

By Daniel Patrick

I first encountered the graphic works of E Lucie by chance while surfing on the Net. I was initially fascinated by two images in particular, showing a naked sailor on his knees, bound to a metal bed, devoutly receiving punishment from his mistress. It was not simply a representation of sado-masochism; it was a surprising evocation of Marseille, the city where I was born. Placed above the couple of the mistress and her submissive sailor were banners, inscriptions and a model boat, all of which lent to this scene the charm of a prayer, an ex-voto (1).

I was surprised that Lucie, who had spent little time in Marseille (as I was to learn later) had managed to seize with such precision the spirit of this paradoxical city which is at once gloomy and full of light. The schematic, almost abstract surroundings, to me evoked a hotel room, walls painted with livid colour, but rendered sacred by the grace of the sado-masochistic ceremony. My mind turned to the dirty, narrow streets where aimless city dwellers traipse; common drifters, uprooted, ready for the slightest adventure. I thought of the light, the wind, the sea of cut up islands and the limitless blue that shocks every traveller who disembarks in Marseille to buy up all the accumulated sordidness of the old town. And where else would one best live the mysticism of such an experience other than in this spartan place, this extrovert town void of all mystery and seduction, of inner beauty and illusion.

But Marseille was only my point of entry into Lucie’s art. Her works of fantasy are grouped into categories that are clearly autobiographical, with no apparent link between them. I have mentioned that the small series of sailors - which in a way is the transcendence of the accompanying cartoons, themselves conveying the raw realism of the E Lucie-Marseille-experience – possess the naive freshness of ex-votos. However, Lucie is anything but a naive artist; her paintings and drawings are brute representations, freely provoking the feeling of the moment, of an experience, a desire, a vision. And if at times the bodies are curiously ugly and deformed, almost emaciated, and, with that, imitating the clumsiness and rigidity of those who draw without technique, in the case of E Lucie it is an intentional, second-degree naivety. But whether she is representing graceless bodies in drawings inspired by cartoons or using an almost classical technique such as in the ‘Tied-Up’ series, the thread running through all of these images is sex.

It is an eroticism that is at once aesthetic, morbid and pathological. For example, the ‘Dickheads’, where gigantic phalluses, at times in pairs and shaped like serpentine creepers, emerge from the head of a woman, transformed into a monstrous unicorn and perhaps originating from – along with the salsa series – a Caribbean island of protuberant vegetation where Lucie once lived for a time.

It is rare to encounter a woman artist who focuses upon the male body in a way that freely explores such diverse representations - visions that lend themselves to neither feminist nor anti-feminist ideals. These are not conventional images of men; no seducers, no Greek gods, no Chippendales and no promotion of a TV-commercial virility or even that stereotype’s counterpart, the fragile male, fatigued with his role as the ever-controlling, confident seducer. Lucie spares us the prejudice and caricature with drawings of men that adhere to her own desires: bodies that are bound and shackled, men kneeling before their mistresses, dressed as transvestites, sometimes even dominant, but always sexually aroused.

These diverse representations make one forget that a woman produced them - such is the natural familiarity that they exert upon the masculine mind.

Sexual themes of this nature are rare amongst women artists whose images more frequently lean towards the conventional fantasies of men. With a few exceptions, particularly in literature, such as Anais Nin and Catherine Millet, it is difficult to forget the unilateral expression of the omnipresent male fantasy.

It has been repeated so often that male sexuality is more visual and that a woman’s desire is about ephemeral sensations that there seems little room for anything else. While there may be a certain encouragement for the female artist to depict lesbians, it is uncommon for her to draw sexually explicit images containing tied up men and erect penises.

If it is true that for men the visual is primordial, why is it not so, in the case of women, that they should be aroused by the sight of a man’s body, or fascinated by an explicitly sexual image of a man? Why is visual representation, image, not expected to equally provoke erotic feelings in a woman?

Where does historical prejudice and social pressure enter into this? And what of the tyranny of public opinion and the media?

If so few women have yet to express, through images or words, a sexuality that is truly theirs, E Lucie leads us into an erotic kaleidoscope of acts upon the male body that she strips, binds, submits to her will and delivers - and at any time the roles may reverse. There is an audacity in this erotic representation of men: she renders manifold the status of his body, strips it of its social rigidity and satisfies – to our pleasure – the desire of the feminine imagination.

In the case of E Lucie, sex is free of aesthetic preoccupations, is never pretty, shown in all its powerful, invasive and disquieting expression, not void of humour, seeing as even extra-terrestrials can have sado-masochistic relationships. This pan-sexuality is contemporary, in other words anything can be said and every variation is expressed without limit: bondage, SM, transvestites and so on. But the hidden face of this emancipation is a certain anxiety.

An undeniable charm emanates from these drawings, enhanced by flat and acid colours. Even those that aim the least to seduce us emit a freshness and poetry which no doubt resides in spontaneity, Lucie’s disturbing freedom, one that has seen the world, travelled much, seen flying saucers and now lives in a valley in the Cevennes, decidedly a land of experimentation and of ‘planetary dreams’.

Lucie, young English woman, relaxed, forthright, determined, overflowing with imagination, takes part in that dream.

(1) Ex – voto : Picture, object or engraving (generally naive in style) that is hung in a church or sacred place when a wish has been granted or a prayer has been answered.