With Tom Hopper’s successful movie The Danish Girl (2015), many got to know two relevant characters that were forgotten by history. We’re talking of Lili Elbe and Gerda Wegener, two icons of art, eroticism, and the current LGBTTTI movement. We don’t really have to delve into all the facts about their lives that have been constantly repeated since the movie was released. We’ll only focus on those that were left out by the film or that people just assume to be true.
Lili, born as Einar Wegener, didn’t die after her second surgery (as it happens in the movie), but she died on her fifth intervention, after attempting to get a set of ovaries and a uterus, which was kindly donated by a 26-year-old woman. Following her dream of becoming a mother herself, she lost her life. When she passed away, her wife tried to continue her career as an artist in Morocco and Denmark but was ultimately unsuccessful.
Gerda WegenerHowever, failure wasn’t a constant in her life. In fact, Gerda was very important in the artistic scene if we were to compare her with her ex-husband (Einar hadn’t revealed his true self when he was pursuing a career in the arts). She was highly acknowledged by the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, and she even surpassed the work of her husband. When she moved to Paris, her masterful abilities for sketching and illustrating gave her all the glory she’d always dreamed of.
She worked for Vogue Magazine and La Vie Parisienne making their covers. Also, she exhibited her work at several galleries, and is now considered to be a forerunner of contemporary femininity, conscience, personal care, and women’s fashion in the avant-garde artistic movements.
With homoerotic hinges that might have been inspired by Lili’s transsexuality, or her own preferences, and with elements of art decó, romanticism, cubism, and the Parisian lifestyle, she created amazing watercolors that portray the fantastic era she lived in.
“Eroticism and poetry: the first is a metaphor for sexuality, the second is an eroticizing of language.”
–Octavio Paz
“Eroticism is like a dance: one always leads the other.”
–Milan Kundera
“Eroticism is the approval of life unto death.”
–George Bataille
“Eroticism is one of the basic means of self-knowledge, as indispensable as poetry.”
–Anaïs Nin
“Eroticism is close to life, closer than philosophy or anything like that, it’s an animal thing that has many facets and is pleasing to use…”
–Paul Bourget
“In this loveless everyday life eroticism is a substitute for love.”
–Henri Lefebvre
“Of all the sexual aberrations, perhaps the most peculiar is chastity.”
–Remy de Gourmont
“The unique and supreme voluptuousness of love lies in the certainty of committing evil. And men and women know from birth that in evil is found all sensual delight.”
–Charles Baudelaire
“Without prohibition, there would be no eroticism.”
–Georges Bataille
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You might be interested in:
Stockings and Eroticism: The Unrepentant Nudes of Egon Schiele
Sensual Drawings By Gustav Klimt To Experience Ecstasy
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Translated by María Isabel Carrasco Cara Chards
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