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Creative Platypus: Femme Fatales

 





Femme Fatales, femme formidable 
What are the differences between the rippling muscles and bulging buttocks of the nude men of Sword and Sorcery and their female counterparts?

Warhammer has attempted to solve the problem in their Age of Sigmar and Warcry lines. It seems as if their goal is to render their War Queens along the exact same lines: equally clothed, muscular, and posed. Their Chaos warriors are equally bulky and armored and their screaming sibarites are androgynous. Dark Elf witches now even dare to be ugly occasionally. 



Artists have been drawn to both the sexual and asexual beauty of the human form since time out of mind. Since the advent of ethical monotheism, society has often sought to censor or control this tendency. As a result, expressions of nudity in art have often found their outlet in ancient myth and the fantastic. Michelangelo turned to Scripture, Titian to Grecco-Roman Myth. The Pre-Raphaelites added Medieval legend. Gauguin and Picasso looked to non-European cultures whose mores had not felt the full force of colonialism. It is against this backdrop that the Post-war United States and Japan developed the pop-cultural fantastic as outlets. Like the erotic pottery of Classical Athens, much of the output was pornographic, but there is, perhaps, in the best of artists like Frazzeta (note the Italian heritage) a sort of riotous exaltation in the sheer power and beauty of the human form. Too Nietzschian? Too Pagan? I leave that for you to decide. The Platypus refuses to weigh in on this subject as he thinks we should all grow fur coats.



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