What's love? It's an incoherent dream. The chain of charms! And you, embraced by reveries, Would now utter a doleful moan, And now, slumbering in a sweet delight, Would stretch your hands to reach the reverie, And leave your dream With a sick and heavy head.

Indeed, what love in fact is? Is it a spiritual gust, an ascend from the earthly to the celestial, cosmic, as the Ancients believed, and therefore yearning for the eternal? Or is it an unbridled elemental outburst, a violent ecstasy, something like a divine madness? Or is it the temptation of lust, a sensual attraction?

The greatest intellects of mankind sages, philosophers, writers and scholars tried to solve the mystery of Eros. And it seems that "everything has already been said about love". But some nuances always remain. The many-faced Eros reveals now and then ever new facets of his natural being, of that powerful creative force which brings into action the spring of our whole life.

"Love is unfathomable and inexplicable.., it cannot be put into words in the same way as you cannot describe music or draw the Sun. But only one thing is true: the mystery of Love is greater than the mystery of Death."¹

The present exhibition is by no means another attempt at solving the mystery of Eros (the task is as futile as an attempt to solve the mystery of existence). It is merely a light touch of the palpitating charm of Love, its tender smiles and amusements; it is just a glimpse into the places where "precious objects become nothing and nothing becomes an endless world, and people turn into gods and beasts, enter a non-human realm, with their souls beating, raving, shining, burning with frenzy, crying out and for the first time perceiving all loving bodies as Angels once loved the daughters of the Earth."²

We have chosen for the object of our exciting journey the island of Cythera, one of the ritual centres of the beautiful Aphrodite the splendid island of love, where one can "really thirst for those pleasures which you really want to enjoy."³ Aphrodite is inconsistent as a true woman and has a habit of taking different guises appearing now as Aphrodite Urania and now as Aphrodite Pandemos; she tends to reveal a rich array of love appearances, from chastity to outright earthly lust. Therefore our exhibition is arranged as a panorama of thematically and chronologically diverse material. Building up the exhibition we consciously refused from any temporal or national demarcations. The Love Tree of Life is integral in some or other way, and only its deep roots go back deep into history feeding on the juices of different cultures, national peculiarities and various moral values and aesthetic notions. Let the viewer see erotic art as it has existed with all its variations, transitions from the quiet, restrained manifestations of feelings to violent outbursts, with all the changes it underwent in various eras under the pressure of fashions, different ethic notions and established standards of conduct.

We present erotic masterpieces by famous artists and unknown works, both signed and anonymous, sometimes daring and frivolous in the treatment of love motifs. All this is supposed to bring the viewer into contact with the rich world of human passions and probably evoke a response in his or her own feelings. In this sense the exhibition is a truly momentous event in the artistic life of St Petersburg.

These collections began to take shape in due time thanks to the tsars who amassed works of frivolous content for the decoration of their country residences. Among such works were independent paintings, panels intended specially for fitting into walls (the best proof are the interiors of Peter IIIs suburban palace in Oranienbaum), sculpture, various objects of daily use which were decorated with erotic motifs or were sexual representations themselves. The groups of articles lent by these museums are merely small fragments of what had once been an integral and rich collection of erotic art.

The exhibition features works which belong to thirteen St Petersburg museums. It will introduce the viewer to an interesting and little-known aspect of world culture following its historical development and will present many familiar masters from an unusual and unaccustomed side.

Of course the exhibition cannot claim to be exhaustive in its covering of the subject. Some historical periods, some stages in the evolution of the culture of love relations have not been adequately represented either owing to the lack of corresponding material in St Petersburg, or because some unique specimens of erotic art are still kept in the stocks of museums and have yet to wait for their hour to come. For example, the Russian Museum has contributed to the exhibition only several works dating from the Soviet period.

The exhibition is divided into two major sections the retrospective and contemporary ones. This scheme allows one to follow the phenomenon of erotic art in the context of its historical evolution. The retrospective part is based on the material of cultures of different peoples, but the dominant role is played here by Western European art which is amply represented in St Petersburg museums. It is in Western European art that the amorous genre was particularly widespread.

The exhibited specimens of Western European art show an amazingly rich palette of emotional gradations from truly passionate love affairs to a mere flirtation. Pastoral motifs, romantic love scenes with gallant cavaliers and gracious ladies, where love is generally shown as a superfluous flirtation or as a latent desire, are shown side by side with piquant genre scenes in which uncontrolled passions and bursting-out feelings are predominant.

Also displayed are mythological works, a genre which sometimes gave opportunity for depicting erotic sensuality with an unusual degree of frankness. The subjects of this kind were widely used not only in painting and sculpture, but in decorative and applied art as well. All sorts of playing Cupids, the "harmless" amorous amusements of Venuses, various duets of lovers, portraits of society beauties and their delighted admirers such and similar motifs richly adorn porcelain sets, dishes, vases, tobacco-boxes, pipes and even pieces of furniture. Eroticism underlines and often makes up the content of these artistic objects conquering viewers by their elegance of execution, subtlety and refinement in the playful treatment of the subject.

Russian art could not boast of similarly long and rich traditions in erotica as did its Western European counterpart. The hedonistic tendencies per se began to penetrate widely into the cultural life of Russia with works by Western artists. Such pieces were specially commissioned by members of the Russian nobility from foreign masters active in Russia or were purchased abroad. Anyway, upon their arrival in Russia, all these pictures and objets d'art became parts of private collections and thus influenced the Russians'mode of life. The artistic pieces surrounded their owners in their daily life, shaped their pastimes and in this way influenced the formation of not only aesthetic tastes and interests, but of the spiritual demands of Russian people as well. The displayed exhibits from the suburban palaces which belonged to various representatives of the Russian nobility and sometimes to the members of the Imperial family, testify to the fact that Russian culture was by no means puritanical and that it was permeated with the joy of living and was exposed to the perception of erotica.

The direct interest of Russian artists in amorous motifs is traceable to the first half of the nineteenth century. The age of Romanticism, marked by an emphasis on the individual's feelings and a personal character of relations, encouraged the free expression of all kinds of emotions including erotic ones. Such motifs can be found in the work of Karl Briullov, Mihaly Zichy, Alexander Orlovsky and some other artists whose paintings and drawings, now housed in the Russian Museum, are unfortunately not represented at the exhibition.

The exhibition, however, includes many printed graphic works of erotic content which became popular in Russian art towards the middle of the nineteenth century. The original sheets of book illustrations dating from the early twentieth century and produced by Konstantin Somov, Leon Bakst, Dmitry Mitrokhin, Boris Grigoryev and other artists who have treated the innermost mysteries with an air of elegant intimacy characteristic of this period. Most of these works share a light touch of irony and grace notably, grace is present even when an "extreme" erotic ecstasy is conveyed.

A special section of the exhibition is devoted to Oriental culture, where the viewer can see Japanese manuscripts, Chinese scrolls, Tantric sculpture and art works made by the peoples of India. This section demands from the viewer a special approach and a subtler perception because one needs a deeper insight into the complex systems of social standards and religious "codes" characteristic of these peoples. The loving embrace of two creatures had a magic meaning there. Therefore sexuality acquired a sacred sense helping man to approach the cosmic harmony, to link himself with the energy of the Universe.

Every national culture has its own criteria of beauty, its own norms for the admissible exposing of the human body, for sensual expression and for the form of its pictorial demonstration. The exhibition offers a complex mosaic of love standards conditioned by definite religious and philosophical views, moral and aesthetic precepts.

The section of contemporary art is not characterized by the similarly wide geographic scope of the material shown, as is the case with the historical part of the exhibition. It encompasses only works by artists of St Petersburg and Scandinavia. We consciously limited ourselves to the art of the Baltic area. And there is a logical explanation for it. St Petersburg and the Scandinavian countries have since long been connected by the complex history of cultural and economic relations. These relations which began to take shape during Peter the Great's age have been kept to this day as is convincingly shown by contemporary art. The close creative contacts and active international co-operation undoubtedly lead to mutual influences and sometimes to common artistic interests. Therefore, although there are some differences in the creative principles, stylistic trends and means of expression employed by St Petersburg and Scandinavian artists, the understanding of love with peoples of different countries and nationalities can be amazingly similar.

Looking at the examples of contemporary art represented at the exhibition, at the invaluable historical pieces which surrounded man in his daily life, one would involuntarily began to ponder what is Sin is it love of the most forbidden fruit, love without shameful disguises, love pervading the life of the entire mankind with creativity or is it just its false absence?

"Love ascends or throws into a pit, Love allows us to be in Hell or in Paradise."⁴ The question put by the poet in our epigraph has so far remained unanswered. Though, the art works are before you. You can share the feeling of their times and sense their distinctive aroma, their various colouring. So look at them, get acquainted with the morals which reigned in the distant past and learn some more about the astonishing whims of Love and her various ways, about those delights which our forefathers enjoyed when seduced by Eros's temptations and which are not alien to our contemporaries. And it is up to you to make the conclusions.