Grotesque obscenity ...

[Johnyxxx]

Hello,

Can anybody help me with the bold text? I am at a loss what the author means ...

"On His right stood a plaster Muse, with a lyre, the effect being decidedly improved by some one who had affixed a comic mask with a grinning mouth and a long pink nose; on His left a stone plaque of Lakshmi, the Hindu Venus, a really very fine piece of work, clean and dignified, in a way the one sanity in the room, except an exquisite pencil sketch of a child, done with all the delicacy and strength of Whistler. The rest of the decoration was a delicious mixture of the grotesque and the obscene. Sketches, pastels, cuts, cartoons, oils, all the media of art, had been exhausted in a noble attempt to flagellate impurity-- impurity of thought, line, colour, all we symbolise by womanhood. Hence the grotesque obscenity in nowise suggested Jewry; but gave a wholesome reaction of life and youth against artificiality and money-lust. As it chanced, there was nobody of importance in the "Lapin."

Aleister Crowley, The Dream Circean, 1909

The full text:
https://100thmonkeypress.com/biblio/acrowley/downloads/equinox 1_ 2/dream/dream.pdf


Thanks a lot.

 

[Tarheel]

By "grotesque obscenity" he seems to be referring to the artwork, specifically the plaster Muse, although I can't be sure about that.

 

[Tdol]

I guess that he means that the art, though decadent, had no connection with Jewishness, which was presumably seen as a feature of a lot of pornographic art in that time. It is pure porn without the greed that Mr Crowley associates with Jews. A hundred years later and it is hard to know what he is banging on about or why he thinks he is making a point.