From Egon Schiele to Titian and Robert Mapplethorpe, these artists have celebrated erotic pleasure in unique and thought-provoking waysEgon Schiele – Woman with Black Stockings
1913
There is no sexier artist than Egon Schiele. The reason his nude and semi-nude portrayals of his models and lovers are so beguiling is quite simple – they have a filthy quality. Schiele, who got arrested for what he was up to, depicts women with not only lust and adoration but a dirty-minded frankness that transports his art from the merely beautiful to the wildly erotic.
Pablo Picasso – La Douleur
1902 or 1903
Picasso was obsessed with women and sex, and this passion could not be entirely fulfilled by the modernist masterpieces into which he poured so much love and sometimes loathing. From his youth to his old age – when he created a series of pornographic prints featuring the Renaissance master Raphael – he made erotica as well as his more public art. This early work records the day-to-day life of the young artist and brothel hound.
Hokusai – The Dream of the Fisherman’s Wife
1814
In Hokusai’s masterpiece of the Japanese erotic art genre known as Shunga, a woman diving for pearls is being pleaured by two octopuses. The larger of them enfolds her pale, naked body in its tentacles as it performs cunnilingus, its subtle attentions releasing rapture.
AC 
