Press release 27/02/07

"Cane and eroticism"

"The poets have the floor", the last room completed.

Between Eros, Aphrodite and Sade, the cane as a support for the representations of the desire: at the borders of the psyche, the love discourse, the phallic symbol, the history of the "p'tites femmes de Paris", eroticism, art and poetry meet. The poets have the floor!

Paris, February 27 2007 - The virtual exhibition "Cane and eroticism" was initially launched in October 2006 and was created by iSkiv Ltd from the archives of the Segas Gallery and a recent préface by Gilbert Segas

The last room, "The poets have the floor" has now been completed with the translation from Italian to English of an excerpt from "Love verses", Spring Sonnets, a poem by Gabriele D'annunzio.

The Segas Gallery specializes in antique and rare canes for collecting. Antique canes dealer in Paris since 1975, Gilbert Segas is a history lover and the archives of the gallery are an inexhaustible source of images and documents.

This original exhibition tells us the course of the Cane, the walking stick, in the complexity of the erotic representations. The exhibition narrates how, from the Seventieth Century to the Twentieth Century, the cane gave free rein to the cleverness and the imagination of the artists. Some of the works that came down to us are today particularly rare. The exhibition also gives us to see how the cane had been in turn severe, saucy, suggestive, licentious, how the cane curiosa, the secrets cane, was used in the age of European brothels as the instrument of the perversions of some or as a hiding-place by the wealthy going on spree. But it tell us also how the imagination of the goldsmiths and the sculptors produced canes with handles and pommels delicately sculpted, of which some were true jewels.

The erotic cane is developed in XIX themes and the very last words are taken from "Love verses", Spring Sonnets, a poem by Gabriele D'annunzio.

- Symbols and phallophoria, from ancient world to middle-age
- Authority symbol, the cane become present at the King Court
- The cane have great presence, at the Court of King Louis XIII
- The Grand Siecle, the cane becomes liberated
- The feasts in Versailles, the cane becomes richer
- Feasts at the Palais Royal, the cane becomes licentious
- Eighteenth century, the French revolution passes
- Nineteenth century, imagination, the cane gets suggestive
- Sculpted women, erotic and lascivious
- Sculpted handles, languid women
- The Belle Epoque, multiple facets of eroticism. 
- Casque d'Or, Amélie Hélie prostitute. 
- Erotic cane curiosa, nothing visible
- Erotic cane curiosa, delights for amateurs
- Erotic cane curiosa, crop canes
- The scourge cane, stirrup style
- The chabanais became a touristic centre. 
- Token-case or hide-token, the lupanar cane
- By way of postface, the poets have the floor.

Your contact at the Segas Gallery:

Mr Gilbert Segas

Phone: +33 (0)1 47 70 89 65

Galerie 34, - 34, Passage Jouffroy - 75009 PARIS

Close to the Musée Grévin

Your contact for the Website:

Mme Irene Silberstein

Phone: +44 (0)701-702-6816

For those who use filters for the benefit of the young public, the pages of this exhibition have been carefully labelled following both the rules specific to the ICRA scheme, and the rules of the Weburia scheme.