J'ai publié il y a quelques temps un billet consacré à mes réflexions sur la création d'une artiste purement fantasmatique nommée Julie Delcourt (vous pouvez retrouver ce billet ici).
Une découverte récente permet de préciser la piste dite Gaglemann, un artiste allemand qui aurait travaillé sur commande pour un collectionneur américain. En effet, une série de cartes postales illustrées publiées pendant la Seconde Guerre Mondiale, signées Ga montrant des femmes au travail dans l'Allemagne Nazie donne du corps à cette hypothèse. Les femmes représentées sont très exactement dessinées à la manière de "Julie Delcourt". Le site Frauen Offensive qui documente la place des femmes dans la Seconde Guerre Mondiale publie la série de cartes ici http://www.cartes-postales-jean-geiser.net/frauen-offensive/blitzmadel.htm. Seules celles signées Ga nous intéressent.
À la poursuite de Gaglemann
Le premier indice menant à l'artiste m'a été fourni sur Eroticartrainbow http://eroticartrainbow.tumblr.com/post/113367023977/httperoticartrainbowtumblrcom-heres-just-one avec une des cartes postales montrées. Ce lien, je le tiens d'un commentaire de pillowbookgirl fait sur ce billet http://oliviamravensworth.weebly.com/blog/olivia-opinesjulie-delcourt-art-kink-of-1930s-germany et qui donne le nom de Gert Gagelmann comme artiste possible. Ce nom apparait bien dans les listings des artistes allemands de l'époque concernée: http://www.artnews.de/kuenstler.php?kunst=Gert_Gagelmann.
Le commentaire précise qu'il est impossible de trouver un exemple de l'œuvre de Gaglemann. Mais, magie de l'Internet, le site Pantorijne, spécialisé sur les cartes postales de l'époque hitlériennes, fait un article très précis sur les artistes de la série de cartes précédentes et confirme le nom de Gert Gaglemann: http://pantorijn.blogspot.fr/2014/10/frauen-schaffen-fur-euch-postcards.html.
Fin de l'enquête ?
Je crois maintenant que le mystère est entièrement levé en ce qui concerne l'identité de l'artiste: il n'existe aucune Julie Delcourt et il faut désormais parler de Gert Gaglemann, artiste allemand.
Reste à savoir dans quelles circonstances ces travaux ont été réalisés et, de manière plus anecdotique, à quelle date. Je considère, comme de nombreux amateurs qui ont eu accès à des originaux et qui me l'ont confirmé par message personnel, qu'il faut viser les années 50/60.
Mais maintenant, place aux images !
Cartes postales
Illustrations érotiques
Cartes postales
Ironie du Web
Terminons avec une note amusée : en faisant une recherche sur la provenance de ces cartes postales, j'ai retrouvé ces images sur plusieurs sites parlant des femmes au travail et dont les auteur(e)s des articles ignoraient visiblement leur origine.
Voir aussi :
Excellent !
Superbe travail. Je suis étonné d’être le premier à commenter
PP
Il n’y a plus beaucoup de commentateurs sur le blog depuis que j’ai resserré l’accès au site. On ne peut pas tout avoir :-)
Hello Cammille, please forgive me for addressing you in English, my French isn’t worth a lot and would doubtlessly only annoy with countless errors and misspelled expressions, most of which probably also wouldn’t get across my point.
First of all, let me congratulate you on a splendid piece of work in tying the Delcourt/German pseudonym to Gaglemann/Gagelmann, well done and supported with convincing evidence. However…
Why do we all assume it’s got to be an artist of the – roughly speaking – 40s to 60s period? I can see that in the Gaglemann postcards, of course especially with the Nazi soldiers, though they too could have been drawn later. Working girls and women seem to have been a theme of the war effort and these indeed look like the spitting images of the erotic works.
There are two things that make me wonder:
Firstly, the Gaglemann works seem clearly dated, not just in terms of their themes but also in quality. You can easily imagine them as (mild) propaganda works of the early 40s. Meanwhile nearly the entire œuvre of Delcourt/German is of the highest possible quality. I can at the moment only think of one b/w drawing of two nurses and a boy that is anything less but making the most of the Internet potential. It’s also, if I remember correctly, one of the few or even the sole one to be signed and dated, though that doesn’t prove anything.
Secondly, and this concerns two aspects, there are nearly constantly popping up more of these. Two or three years ago talk was of a small number of commissioned works, between 50 and a 100, mainly – but not solely – enema-fetish-themed. With time, more of it came to light, a focus on clearly underage boys, pegging, sandwich pegging, initiation. More and more images were just slight variations, switched sides, different angles of the same positions. Sissification/feminisation was an added theme, also more lesbian scenes, underage girls thrown into the mix of enemas/threesomes/initiation and spanking. I haven’t counted them all, but I’d say by now there should easily be over 300 images.
To the growing number of images – all of them still of high quality – there is now also a theme added that seems relatively new and niché to me, bestiality. This is not a new fetish in itself, but it used to be so scarce in mainstream erotica/porn that you seldom saw it depicted before the age of the Internet. And here now there is supposedly an artist of the 40s who delved deeply into it. Hum-hum…
The thing is, his other themes, the pegging/sissification/enema scenes, also seem to me strikingly modern. As if the artist had had a glimpse into the naughtier sides of today’s Internet 70 years in the past. Complete with a means to conserve his work for our entertainment.
Frankly, I have my doubts.
My theory would be as follows:
These works were done – and are in all likelihood still done right now as we speak – by a contemporary artist. I doubt they are commissioned as such, probably just ‘suggested’ by like-minded connoisseurs. The ‘historic’ setting serves two purposes, it adds a certain kink to the images – the sexy ‘Arian’ milfs and their daughters having their way with the ‘innocent’ youths – and it prevents them from being judged by today’s standards, where at least the scenes with the boys would be borderline and blogs depicting bestiality are frequently deleted by most services. I suppose we will continue to see new works from this artist, perhaps also new themes.
Now that was a long and winding post. Please let me know what you think of it.
Cheers
Alec
I’m sorry I have to say you are all wrong. Enema, sissy, bestiality are not “modern” themes. They became very “popular” (well, among the amateurs) in the 1930’s. I could give you bunch of examples. And you forget these images were not drawn for publishing but for a collector. I know the Gaglemann work from the 2000’s and there are no “new images”. The themes and images were all known. As I showed it, there is no Julie Delcourt. The few images signed “Julie Delcourt” are copies of Gaglemann work – and another anonym artist – and we never saw other Julie Delcourt’s work.
I communicated with a french erotic art collector who was proposed some Gaglemann original work and he agrees with me.
What I wrote is based on facts: there is a German artist named Gaglemann who worked in the 40’s and his art is the same as the erotic pictures. You can build other theories but without any evidence, it’s just fantasies.
Thanks for the fast response, Cammille!
No, I didn’t think exactly these themes were ‘new’ as such, merely that they are very much en vogue at the moment, and with a certain subset of the present scene.
I still wonder why so many of these works keep appearing. I don’t argue that this Julie Delcourt herself does exist as a person, I just find it curious how there seems to be such a vast topical backlist of works and how well-preserved they seem, compared to the ones ascribed to Gaglemann. There is a site – hosted in Russia and likely bug/spyware riddled like hell! – that has many more of these works, also more b/w pencil drawings that seem distinctly older. I find it curious how this œuvre seems to grow and grow when it seems to have been hardly around a mere ten years ago.
But please don’t mistake this as critique of your work. You are entirely right, without further evidence no other theory about this body of work makes much sense besides the Gaglemann case.
Cheers
Alec
Well, let’s wait and see if new work shows. I need facts :-)