What’s new
More of Roland Topor’s wicked wit
17th March 2021
New today, Roland Topor’s L’amour à voix haute (Love at Full Volume) is an interesting anthology on two counts, both for his distinctive artwork and for he extended poem, a compilation of all the things that he has experienced lovers saying in bed: you can see the whole portfolio here.
Where to put Cupid’s arrow
16th March 2021
Powerfully spiritual or scarily Aryan? Today’s new artist is the German Carl Schwalbach, with his larger-than-life Amazons. See his work here and ponder …
Sex as it really is …
15th March 2021
American artist Jim Herbert says ‘For me making erotic art is a sensual, playful experience – but with the possibility of a wreck on every turn.’ Which is maybe a really helpful way of thinking about sex in general! See his work here.
Edith Thiercelin’s powerful erotic imagery
13th March 2021
The Parisian artist Edith Thiercelin came late to erotic art, but when she did she used all her artistic training and her vivid imagination to burst on the scene with her powerful no-holds-barred sexually-charged images. See them now by clicking here!
Sex sells (but is it worth it?)
12th March 2021
Brilliant $12 million avant garde artist or opportunist kitsch charlatan? That's today’s new artist, American John Currin, whose explicit sex paintings you can see here. Look, read, let us know what you think ... looking forward to that.
A little French frisson
11th March 2021
A lot of good intimacy is as much about frisson (a wonderful French word) as it is about full-on sex. Today’s new artist, the Hungarian artist Miklós Vadász, knew the feeling well, and illustrated it in a 1920 portfolio of prints. Now you can see it here. Enjoy the frisson!
Mature musings on la vie erotique
10th March 2021
Who says you don’t think about sex so much when you’re older? Now approaching 90, Lisa Zirner still does! Her remarkable, colourful and mature illustrations for Batailles and Sade are now on the website for you all to be inspired by – see them here. Enjoy!
How to see through clothes
9th March 2021
Have you ever wondered how to draw people clothed and naked at the same time? Let Sylvain Vigny show you how in today’s new portfolio, his 1937 drawings for Georges Faillet’s La danse macabre. Mortality, sex, death – those universal themes, see the whole portfolio here.
A thought-provoking surrealist
8th March 2021
Today’s new artist, Roland Topor, was a truly original genius, using his surrealist imagination to expose the absurdities of social convention. We have just added his 1973 commentary on pornographic imagery, l’Epikon, which you can see here. More Topor soon …
Vertès and Louÿs, a perfect pairing
7th March 2021
Today’s new portfolio is literally unique – the only hand-coloured set of Vertès illustrations for the 1938 edition of Pierre Louÿs’ erotic poetry, which itself was printed in an edition of only 135 copies. A true and precious gem, click here and enjoy its rich delights.
Important recent updates
✨ Illustrator and portfolio lists
One of the most common requests we get (and the responses to the recent questionnaire confirm this) is that it would be really useful to have complete listings of all the artists and portfolios on the website – as of May 2026 728 artists and 2,003 portfolios!
So we’ve listened and heard … and by following this link you will find files with these listings in alphabetical order (and where there are several portfolios with the same name their artists will be in order too). The lists are in PDF format, so you can download, save and search them. They duplicate what you can already find in the artist and portfolio listings on the website, but if you’re really into erotic art and illustration and would like a quick ready reference, you should find these invaluable. Enjoy!
✨ Helping you to find your way around
You asked for it, we’ve done it – all the artists on the site now have a set of ‘Similar artists’ links at the end of their biography, so whether it’s bookplate artists, spanking artists, gay artists, whatever, you can cruise easily from artist to similar artist. Have fun!
✨ Hans-Jürgen Döpp, 1940–2025
Few people have shared their wisdom, experience – and wonderful collection of erotic art – more than Hans-Jürgen Döpp, who sadly died last year at the age of 84. For more than half a century Hans-Jürgen devoted himself to the study and collection of erotic art, not as a marginal curiosity or a private indulgence, but as an essential part of human culture. Through his work as a scholar, teacher, curator, author and collector, he helped establish erotic art as a serious field of artistic and historical enquiry. He was an enthusiastic supporter of honesterotica, sharing more than 200 of his portfolios with us, helping to make the website a unique resource of erotic art that would otherwise have been lost to the world. Read our tribute to Hans-Jürgen here.
✨ The difficult mirror
Artists, childhood, and the challenge of looking
At a time of growing concern about online child safety, we are very aware of how we handle the sensitive subject of depictions of children in art, especially ‘erotic art’. We have added an important Themes and Topics article here, which helps explore how artists over time have depicted naked children, and why it is as important to think seriously about what art is for and how we look at and experience it as about what is actually being depicted. Read the piece and see what you think.