This is a Glossary of words and phrases that will be found in my writing about various art-related subjects. In many cases the entries define a truth unnoticed by other writers on art.

Art (as in: But Is it Art?) For something to be considered to be Art it has to be a) able to be hung the right way up without being told which way; and b) to the standard of work by a 12 year-old child on display in a school corridor on a parent-teachers night.

Artspeak
An impenetrable form of Gobbledegook employed by curators and other writers on art. Similar in its opaqueness to Mandarin Chinese.

Atrium Bookshop of Blessed Memory
An exceptionally fine bookshop run by women located in Cork Street, Mayfair. It was put down shortly after my research into erotic art commenced. (Notes and illustrations here.)

Badge Engineering
An expression borrowed from the motor industry to identify the practice of enhancing the market value of a work of art (or purported work of art) with a name calculated to appeal to collectors and curators and other art insiders.

Decima Ratings
Erotic features of works in the National Gallery (eg breasts, buttocks, genitalia, etc.) rated on a 1 to 5 basis, tabulated and placed in order of merit.

Decima Four
A group of four young recent art graduates who had set up a small gallery in Decima Street, Bermondsey. In 1998 they were commissioned by me to evaluate and provide comparative ratings for the erotic content of pictures in the National Gallery. (Notes and illustrations here.)

Decima/Samuelson Combined Ratings
(Sometimes referred to as “the combined ratings”) Based on the original Decima ratings as revised and extended by the author to include additional pictures of interest.

Dirty Diderot
Denis Diderot (1713-84), French author and art critic and one of a pair with his contemporary the Egregious Greuze. Author of a novel featuring a talking vagina.

Doc Martin
The late Dr Ernest Martin (died 2002), sometime head of the Theology Department at the World Church of God’s Ambassador College in Pasadena. Dr Martin identified the erotic elements introduced by Satan into Church architecture.

Dwork, The
Andrea Dworkin (1946-2005) arch feminist, who is famously misquoted as saying that all intercourse is rape. What she said was that it was territorial occupation, even if the woman cried “More! More!”

Egregious Greuze, The
Jean Baptiste Greuze (1725-1805) a French artist specialising in portraying the loss of virginity by pubescent girls. He brought upon his own comeuppance by marrying his pretty young model who later degenerated into a sleazy drab.

Erotic literature index
A statistic generated by relative sightings of individual works in books about erotic art.

Fematudery
A shorthand expression for a mindset acquired by female artists and writers which typically leads them to oppose male intervention in the process of procreation. As regards art, a favourite topic is “the male gaze”.

Finger story
A shorthand expression for what was really in the artist’s mind as compared with what went on to the canvas. An example of this would be Degas’s pusillanimous treatment of boys wrestling girls. Could his mind possibly have failed to make the leap to the erotic potential of near naked girls in hand-to-hand combat with totally naked boys? A detail from Ian Tovey’s re-interpretation of the National Gallery’s famous painting here.
National Gallery’s original here.

Fruitscapes, Flowerscapes and Facescapes
Still life pictures and portraits which, like landscapes and seascapes, are devoid of interest unless seeded with nude figures or erotic artefacts - a fact often recognised by the artists themselves.

Gallery politics
The machinations of the art gallery (aka museum) industry resulting, inter alia, in the transfer of cash taken from the pay-checks of shop assistants to deserving artists, likewise art critics, art collectors, art dealers, auctioneers and curators.

Gombrich, EH, The All Knowing
The Story of Art, for which he is most famous, was written in the course of few months, dictated from memory without consulting reference books to a typist at breakneck speed. Has gone through edition upon edition and has been translated into most languages used in the civilized world. In his book the All Knowing Gombrich omits any reference to the French painter Gerome, probably the most erotic artist in history, so there is still a place for other writers.

Google index
A method utilising the Google search engine for assessing the relative popularity or significance of an artist. It can be used to establish relative trends and applied to a range of issues relevant to erotic art.

Googlewhack
An Internet game played by a small number of Googlers
in which the object is to find two nouns which, when searched, achieve just one hit. The nouns must be defined in the online dictionary. The expression “constructive Googlewhack” is unique to this guide and means one hit, or no hits at all, for words not defined in the dictionary such as an artist’s name. A “near constructive Googlewhack” refers to just a few hits.

Hall’s Dictionary, The Indispensable
Hall’s Dictionary of Subjects and Symbols in Art is a one stop guide to deciphering the coded language used in paintings of religious and mythological subjects.

Happy Porker Syndrome
A compulsive condition which led artists to portray martyred saints along with the instruments of their torture and death. Named for the display models of pigs standing on their hind legs holding a plate of pork sausages sometimes seen in butchers shops. (Notes and illustrations here.)

Horrible Hogarth, The
A good painter with humbugging ways. (A wide ranging discussion of the artist’s six part workMarriage a La Mode in the National Gallery will be found here.)

Island of Rockall Amendment Bill
A novel parliamentary procedure for effecting a needed change in the law quickly. Could be used to reform the art industry before it knows what is afoot.

Juxtapositional Art
A process whereby key elements from one or more paintings are re-positioned for comparative purposes or to enhance the erotic message.

Lechers of Leiden, The
A group of 17th century painters living in the Dutch university city of Leiden who got an erotic fix from portraying young women in sexual crises.

Loon, Guru Hendrick Willem van
Author of a best selling book about art, The Arts, which although not as successful in the long run as that by the All Knowing Gombrich, is more entertaining and more in touch with reality.

Lost opportunities
Stories from the Bible, Mythology, Legend and History with erotic potential which have not been rendered in art and are going begging.

Murray, Peter and Linda, The Always Dependable
Their Dictionary of Art and Artists is one of the best reference books on the subject.

National Gallery, The
Always refers to the National Gallery in London, founded in 1824 with a collection cut-off point of 1900. Unfortunately the works of most British artists, including those of an erotic nature, are in the Tate Gallery. There are national galleries in other parts of the world including Scotland, Wales, Ireland, Washington DC, Canada, Australia and South Africa. For these and other galleries special editions of my projected A to Z of T & A will be required. Some galleries are called museums, but they are still galleries.

Nick the Fish
A mediocre painter called Nicholas Poussin whose elevation to the pantheon of immortals by art historians and critics who should know better is a betrayal of the gallery-going public.

Nude, The
Title of a seminal work describing the evolution of the Nude in painting and in sculpture by Kenneth Clark (1903-83) of blessed memory, sometime Director of the National Gallery and creator of the legendary Civilisation series on TV. The book is so beautifully written as to discourage anyone else from writing about the subject. Or about anything. (Notes and Illustration here)

Panofsky, The Great
Institutionally revered author of many books on iconology and noted for his Teutonic opaque text abounding with turgid footnotes which have induced daytime sleeping and night time insomnia for generations of students of art history.

Penile and Vaginal response index
A proposed standard for grading the erotic content of works of art.

Pepysian Moment
A term used to describe any event or a set of circumstances almost invariably referred to in passing by writers of academic works. It originates with a passage in Samuel Pepys diary recording that he had purchased an erotic book, L’Ecole des Filles - “A mighty lewd book, but yet not amiss for a sober man once to read over to inform himself in the villainy of the world” – adding that he had stayed up all night masturbating himself as he read it. No author of a learned treatise on autoerotic stimulation (and there are many) fails to refer to the incident.

Pepysian Graduation System for Life-changing Experiences
A system that allows the multiple use of absolute superlatives originating with many passages in Samuel Pepys diary in which he describes a performance of music or a play as being the best or worst “in all the world” or “I ever heard” or “I ever saw”.

Picture within a Picture
Paintings, carvings, reliefs and various objects of art depicted within a larger painting.

Pictures of Interest
Works perceived as likely to have erotic content and earmarked for futher study. By analogy with the phrase “person of interest” used by police as a euphemism for an uncharged suspect.

Re-interpretative Art
The re-working of iconic pictures by other artists.

Royal Marines, The
Seaborne soldiers who combine qualities of loyalty, courage and tenacity of purpose of the highest order with an innate capacity to believe whatever they are told. Statements of fact that raise doubts, eg stories in the Bible, are referred to them for verification. (Notes and illustrations here.)

Ruskin the Turner Burner
An art critic who, by promoting the painter JMW Turner, exposed future generations to wall-fulls of dreary daubs and then burned Turner’s worthwhile pornographic drawings.

Samuelson’s First Law
A law that states that the cost of implementation exceeds what was expected by a factor of four. This is because it is known at the outset that what is to be undertaken will end-up costing twice as much or taking twice as long as anticipated. And it does. Applies particularly to public expenditure.

Samuelson’s Second Law
A law that states that “the good old days” are any old days prior to one’s self coming on the scene. In art the good old days were when it was possible to know what a work of art was supposed to be about without being told.

Samuelson’s Third Law
A law that states that there is no problem that arises in the course of a working life that cannot be turned to advantage. The real problem is figuring out how to do it. First propounded by the late RJ, a friend. (An example of the application of this law will be found here.)

Scam art
Art which depends for its value on the identity of the artist but which could have been done by a child or hung upside down without anyone being the wiser.

Score, The, and the Situation
A term applied to narrative paintings to distinguish between the moment in the story captured by the artist and the surrounding reality. By analogy with the game of cricket.

Skip quotient
An indicator of the value of a work of art in an art institution’s collection on a scale of 1 = worth keeping for people to look at for the painting’s erotic content to 100 = needs to be put in a skip if it can not be sold.

Snow Knight
Shorthand for a single phenomenal achievement from an unlikely source never to be repeated. (Snow Knight, a race horse, was a rank outsider who won the Derby leading from start to finish and then faded into obscurity. The Rokeby Venus was Velazquez’s Snow Knight.

Stendhalisation
A procedure recommended for adoption by the National Gallery to enhance the viewing experience of visitors. The word derives from a medical condition known as the Stendhal Syndrome where victims become confused, delusional and overwhelmed in the presence of art. As proposed here, the procedure would be wholly beneficial.

Stitch-up effect, The
A term used with reference to the malign influence exerted on the national art collection by the failure of young aristocrats to secure worthwhile paintings while on their Grand Tour. When the National Gallery can only offer inferior, tedious and uninspired works by an artist known to have been capable of better things, the Stitch-up is said to be “in”. By analogy with “The Fix” as used in relation to horse-racing and baseball betting scams and local elections in Chicago.

Strip Art
Paintings and sculptures in which an erotic charge is generated by the depiction of the act of uncovering of a female’s person. (As opposed to stationary nudity or partial nudity.)

Tovey Twelve
A portfolio of twelve illustrations re-interpreting pictures in the National Gallery in a way which exploits their erotic potential and which are intended to be reproduced in the centre pages of the proposed Guide to Erotic Art in London’s National Gallery.Notes and Illustration here)

Transpositional Art
A process whereby elements of a painting are transposed with other elements so as to enhance the degree of titillation – eg by switching genders.

Wah Wah Gobbitoff
A member of the chattering classes from an upper class background incapable of original thought when it comes to anything to do with culture.