The Provocative Legacy of Courbet's The Origin of the World

The text below is the excerpt from the book The Origin of the World (ISBN: 9781783101702), written by Jp. A. Calosse and Hans-Jürgen Döpp, published by Parkstone International.

Unlike a man, a woman can sustain this state of orgasm for a long period of time. A strong and accelerated heartbeat – described as a “vaginal pulse” – is often an apparent effect of sexual climax.

Sexual desire, and its satisfying, may be accompanied by various feelings and emotions. But in order to study how sexual stimulation really works, we must stop looking at the matter from a coldly scientific, analytical point of view and bring in the scope of the imagination.

The Woman with White Stockings, 1830, sexual — The Woman with White Stockings, Eugène Delacroix, 1830. Oil on canvas, 26 x 33 cm. Musée du Louvre, Paris.

In her book The Sexual Fantasies of Women (1973), Nancy Friday notes that many of the longer fantasies are in fact made up of lots of little fantasies, which all contribute to the build-up of excitement. At the same time she rejects the notion that the fantasies themselves represent a sublimated form of frustration.

Some women who are perfectly happy and sexually fulfilled nonetheless enjoy fantasies. And the fantasies may even afford them more satisfaction than do their sexual partners. … It is not only a lack of sex that may inspire such fantasies, but the sex itself. For certain women there is even a sort of chain reaction between real-life sex and the fantasies they create for themselves. One fosters the other.

It would seem that the imagination can attribute a sort of “extra interest” to even the most banal objects of everyday life. It is not only dildos that are used as phallic substitutes for masturbation, according to Nancy Friday, but cucumbers, vacuum-cleaner tubes, electric toothbrushes, the silver-plated handles of hairbrushes, or no more or less than running water.

Bather with Long Hair, c. 1895-1896, sexual — Bather with Long Hair, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, c. 1895-1896. Oil on canvas, 82 x 65 cm. Musée de l’Orangerie, Paris.

Total unfamiliarity with a sexual partner would seem to constitute a stimulus of comparable potency. How significant violence in fantasies is for evoking excitement is demonstrated in a study by Isabelle Azoulay called Abîmes fantastiques: La violence dans l’imaginaire sexuel féminin (“The Abysses of Fantasy: Violence in the Sexual Imaginations of Women”). Desire can be associated with pain, and so increase the intensity of the sexual act. But remember – violence in fantasy need have nothing to do with violence in real life.

Specific scenes tend to be integrated into such fantasies. Every depiction of a sexual act tells a story, and every sexual act has its own dynamic. Every woman sees the sexual act in an entirely personal context that also naturally involves her own problems and aspirations. (Mind you, men do that too.) The central focus for this introspection is the orgasm. All the fantasies that have led up to it pale beside this “paradisal” instant. The entire fantasy-construction built up so carefully with different tools and techniques, gradually putting together a unique assemblage of factors for excitement and tension, abruptly unravels at the moment of the “petit-mal seizure”.

Rosa Meissner at the Hotel Rohn, Warnemünde, 1907, sexual — Rosa Meissner at the Hotel Rohn, Warnemünde. Photo by Edvard Munch, 1907. Gelatin silver print, 8.7 x 7.3 cm.

To some, sex may seem a means to combine intimacy with an easy-going familiarity in relation to the sexual partner. Skin-on-skin contact is an experience that has calming propensities, reducing fears about coming together more closely still.

For most people, it is above all the orgasm that is the premier experience – and an almost hallucinatory one at that. Together with the momentary sensation of unbeing, of losing one’s personality and one’s identity, it may even feel like a religious or mystical experience.

Leaning Nude, sexual — Leaning Nude. Anonymous, Photograph.

The inability of language to keep pace with understanding, however, prompts us to turn again to reference sources in literature. There is a delightful passage in the works of the ancient Greek poetess Sappho (c. 612–550 BCE):

I love a pretty girl.

She knows nothing of it yet,

and I strongly want to tell her;

but when I see her

and I want to go and talk to her,

looking at her face

I feel a tautening of my senses

that I have no control over.

A blazing fire lights under my skin.

My eyes no longer see anything.

There is a buzzing in my ears.

From my heart to my arms and legs