3 hours ago
5
Here comes Waldemar Januszczak, thundering towards us in his rumpled leisure suit as he gestures frantically at the explicit sculptures between which he finds himself rudely sandwiched.
“I mean,” he gasps, “look at that.” We look at that. It is a stone carving depicting a man and three women engaged in a sexual act that one could confidently describe as “confusing”. The art critic is impressed. “Imagine twisting yourself into that position,” he murmurs, as the camera takes in the skewwhiff limbs, oscillating breasts and, in the middle of it all, a scrotum stretched like so much ninth-century bubblegum. “You should get an Olympic medal for doing that.” As, indeed, should Januszczak, whose ability to survey said vision without a) fainting or b) bursting into tears is an achievement in itself.
The veteran critic and broadcaster is in India – specifically, he is visiting the extraordinary “love temples” of Khajuraho – for the first episode of a three-part documentary in which he explores art’s most controversial topics (later episodes focus on horror and – zoinks – Satan).
This, clearly, is no place for prudes or shrinking violets, or those who insist on covering up the legs of their piano lest a passing dowager spot them and immediately fall pregnant. Art’s Most Erotic is, unequivocally, filth. From the aforementioned Indian temples our host travels to Japan, where a look at the blisteringly explicit Shunga pornography of the 18th and 19th centuries ensures there’s no letup on the bum front. There is a visit to Pompeii, with its overendowed clay statuettes (ancient Romans apparently found large penises “funny”). And then we’re off to Vienna, Naples, France and, finally, Cookham in Berkshire, where an analysis of the “edgy, nervy eroticism” of Stanley Spencer provides this multi-buttocked package tour with a very British send-off.
Art’s Most Erotic is not, mercifully, one of those celebrity “journeys” in which, after a succession of tiresome set-pieces, our guide finally emerges, blinking, from the steamy pink tumult and declares himself a better man. There are no personal anecdotes, cameos from famous friends, or bits where Januszczak shoehorns himself into the nipple-studded narrative. Nor is this a place for embarrassment or jokes of the phwoar variety. At no point does the critic puff out his cheeks like bagpipes while perusing, say, the bulbously breasted fertility figurines of Upper Palaeolithic France, and proceed to make the sort of noise Sid James made whenever Barbara Windsor’s bra twanged off in a Carry On film.
Instead, it’s an unapologetically serious affair, with Januszczak searching for deeper meanings, noble(r) intentions and, ultimately, the historical and cultural significance of all this bygone business.
Not that the results are dry or inaccessible. Far from it. They are frequently an absolute hoot, with our guide’s gift for conversational pizzazz ensuring even the scenes in which he horses around feel fresh and imaginative rather than laboured or gimmicky.
And so we get Januszczak galumphing across a beach, trousers rolled up and ankles glinting pinkly as he tells us about history’s various depictions of Zeus (“the Harvey Weinstein of Olympus”). We get an impassioned analysis of the Kama Sutra while the critic plays poker with a couple of thoroughly tickled Indian volunteers (“these days it’s thought of as a sex manual, but that’s just our dirty minds. It’s about love!”). A brief ode to Toulouse-Lautrec’s depictions of the lives of Parisian brothel workers, meanwhile, is delivered from a fittingly rumpled bed, with Januszczak peering anxiously at us from the depths of the quilt like an elderly aunt too timid to inquire as to the whereabouts of le chamber pot.
Really, he says, the depiction of sex has always been more interesting and rewarding when its bum cheeks are garnished with a sprig of empathy. With Art’s Most Erotic, Januszczak has once again succeeded in crocheting the cerebral into something on which you could place a cupcake.
“Yes,” you think, as you watch the septuagenarian bumble past a succession of enormously balled Shunga copulators. “This sort of faintly comforting erudition is just the ticket in these days of veneered celebrity yahoos, intellectually marooned Love Islanders and the like.” Ultimately, no amount of jackhammering antique buttocks can muffle your gasps of gratitude that there is still, in 2025, a place where Januszczak’s brand of factual entertainment – considered, accessible, unapologetically adult – is allowed to exist. Three cheers, then, for Sky Arts, whose own enormous-balled MO must be protected at all costs.
