Its peoples harnessed the waters of the Andes to create a sophisticated culture with a highly stratified urban society centered on ceremonial pyramid complexes called huacas. The Moche civilization dominated the arid north coast of Peru from around the first to the eighth century AD. Image courtesy of the Art Insitute of Chicago Handle Spout Vessel in the Form of a Female and Skeletal Figure in an Erotic Embrace Take a peek, and if you're at work, make sure your boss isn’t standing over your shoulder! But what about those works whose subjects slid right past first base (and sometimes even second and third)? These ten head-scratching artworks, excerpted from Phaidon’s new The Art of the Erotic are salacious and outrageous, sure to even make the most open-minded Casanova blush. The idealized nude is a trope in Western art, with works like Michaelangelo’s David or Titan’s Venus of Urbino hardly raising eyebrows these days.
