While researching images on commission, something went by in Google Search that caught my eye. In The Lives And Legends Of The Great Hermits And Fathers Of The Church (1902) there’s a curiously-modest painting by Sir Edward Burne-Jones depicting the 4th-century martyrdom of St. Dorothea after page 88. It’s good that the painting is modest, even shamefaced; a bunch of darkly-seen people bent over a mostly-unseen torture victim, which is all to the good given that the martyrdom was by all accounts a pointless, stupid, squalid, and bloody affair, as all such were. What caught my eye was an architectural detail. There’s this cupola, see, for keeping the rain off what I take to be a statue of Aphrodite (if that’s an apple clutched to her breast) who is looking down over all the grim festivities:

My point? No point. Just that art, and art history, is sometimes deeply weird.

Update: I woke up seized of the need to go deeper. So I looked up the artwork beneath this photographic plate. Reader, this did not help. There were two versions of the watercolor made, according to Sotheby’s, and it’s not clear whether the one I’m about to show you is the same one photographed above or whether that one is the one destroyed by German bombing in 1942. Either way, why is naked Aphrodite rendered in blue? (Or it could be purple, I have a red/green color vision deficiency, so purple is a thing I never identify when it exists.) Yeah, “deeply weird” got weirder:

(Detail is linked to uncropped artwork.)

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I have to say that the scratch force of amphibious maritime assault troops assembled for “Operation Ocean” is more lightly equipped than is considered acceptable by most modern naval doctrines, but morale in the force is quite high:

Artwork is signed “Gi. Torj” and is from the cover of Chacal No. 6.

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Via Bondage Blog comes word that in 1921 they were jailing flappers for not rolling up their stockings properly:

The full story, of course, is more complicated and interesting. The clippings above appeared in The Jacksonian in Cimerron, Kansas, but according to additional press accounts summarized in Posing A Threat: Flappers, Chorus Girls, and Other Brazen Performers by Angela J. Latham, the woman in question was a resident of Los Angeles, arrested in Atlantic City after wrangling physically and by all accounts rather successfully with a beach cop who took issue with (among other things) her bathing attire. Her name was Louise Rosine and she was described as looking “as powerful as Jack Dempsey.” She further expressed her contempt for local attitudes about body nudity by disrobing entirely once she arrived in jail, forcing the jail authorities to defend themselves from her body presence by pinning up sheets in front of her cell.

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Here’s a look at the state of mail-order pornography in the late 1960s, courtesy of the Ted Nelson’s Junk Mail Project via a couple of nudist 8mm film reel brochures (male or female subjects, color films available for 50% more money). Click my lightly-edited crops showing the “good parts” to see the complete brochures:

It’s interesting that the headers on the full brochures emphasizes “Unretouched” as a selling point; this makes me think that in an effort to avoid postal censorship and obscenity prosecutions, mail-order nudist films (and possibly nudist publications generally) must have passed through a phase where genitalia were airbrushed or otherwise obscured on the negatives with darkroom shenanigans before reproduction, publication, and distribution. There’s a lot I don’t know about the history of censorship; these little hints are tantalizing.

Also please note: I have it on good authority (via @textfiles) that the totally awesome Ted Nelson Junk Mail Project is currently in the red and could use donations, if that’s the sort of thing that floats your charitable boat.

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It’s not entirely clear how to parse this illustration, but my personal gloss is that the man of the house summoned the maid for a little professional help with his hard-on, and she’s pushing aside the hapless new wife, who is alarmed and displeased by the development:

The art is by an unknown artist (thought to be Berthommé Saint-André) appearing in an edition of Pibrac: Quatrains érotiques de Pierre Louys.

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This Art Deco bit of devil-worshiping comes from the cover of the vintage Mexican pulp magazine Detectives:

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I’ve had just about nothing whatsoever to say about #MeToo because I’m firmly of the belief that the smartest thing I can do is keep my mouth fucking shut. Do I have opinions? You betcha. Does anybody want to hear them? Maybe a few other old fat white guys; if so, they can email me. The smartest Mitch “The Turtle” McConnell has looked in years was when he said, in response to a direct question, “I believe the women” before scuttling away down a hallway, but the smart part was that he declined to elaborate.

That said, I’ve got nothing in my heart but dark hilarious mockery for men who bring complaints about witch hunts to the conversation. Tone deaf, history-ignorant idiots, apparently, with no idea who witches were or why they were hunted. So I laughed when I saw this Norm Saunders pulp art detail from the cover of the December 1973 Man’s Story magazine. It’s the witch hunt, boys, and it’s coming for you! You better run!

Illustration is for a story called “The Wild Raid Of The Lace Panty Commandos” which only makes it better.