BDSM Exposed - Society’s Secret Subculture

BDSM is typically defined as a subculture or alternative lifestyle choices for people with particular tastes toward bondage, discipline, fetish, kink, and sado masochism culminating in consensual power play, pain and pleasure by its participants to enhance an erotic relationship. The term BDSM literally means: bondage and discipline, sadism and masochism.

The dynamics of a BDSM relationship are characterised by its participants adopting the consensual roles of slave or submissive, and surrendering themselves to the domination of a Mistress or Master for erotic gratification between both parties. It is important to emphasise however, that there is a widely recognised and respected code of behaviour for activities undertaken within the scope of BDSM and sado masochistic play which is “safe, sane and consensual” at all times during a scene. The basic principles of BDSM require that it be performed by responsible partners, of their own free will and in a safe way which means that everything is based on safe, sane and consensual behaviour of all parties. This mutual consent highlights a clear legal and ethical distinction between BDSM and crimes such as sexual assault or domestic violence.

BDSM encompasses a broad spectrum of activities such as bondage, discipline, slave training, spanking, CBT, nipple torture, electro torture, anal play, strapon, fisting, humiliation, spanking, corporal punishment, slapping, spitting, needle play, hot wax, forced feminisation, sissy slut training, water sports, foot worship, stiletto worship, boot worship, trampling, mummification, to name a few.

Classically, some of the tools of the performance are gags, whips, crops, paddles, ropes, cuffs, collars, straight jackets, straps and hoods, and indeed the Dominatrix or Master being the ultimate tool and controller of the kinky scenario.

Until the mid-nineties, the BDSM and fetish subcultures were still largely underground communities, however social acceptance swiftly escalated due to the prevalence of material available via the internet. It seems the internet has revolutionized our sex lives and provided us the luxury of exploring our darkest desires in the privacy of our own homes with downloadable BDSM, fetish and femdom movies at our fingertips.

These domination and femdom themed movies are likely to portray men and women experiencing various forms of bondage, discipline, punishment and torture and being consensually “forced” to endure submission, humiliation or sexual slavery by a femdom or master applying various methods of torture, punishment and discipline. Oh and yes, if you’re wondering, statistics show that a lot of people like it. Whether they are physically on the receiving end from their adored masochist or satisfying their individual fetish and kinks by watching BDSM, femdom and fetish movies, chances are there are a lot more people aroused by this secret world than they would openly admit.

The internet also paved the way for like-minded people to communicate not only locally, but world wide which in turn triggered an explosion of interest and knowledge of BDSM, kink, fetish and S & M. In addition, there has also been an explosive demand for traditional sex shops and online adult toy companies to stock fetish toys and fetish fashion, offering leather, latex, rubber and PVC.

Fortunately, the blossoming of websites offering BDSM movies has been a godsend for those curious, shy little creatures with no means of fulfilling their desire for slave training and servitude in the real world enabling them to explore their inner slave. Now they can download a session with an international BDSM Mistress and take all the punishment their little heart desires at a safe distance without those little telltale torture marks that tell their partner they have a penchant for a Femdom Mistress.

What is Abstract Art?

Abstract Art is a broad movement in American painting that was first seen around the late 1940s and then turned into a popular trend in Western painting in the fifties. The premier American Abstract Expressionist painters were Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline, and Mark Rothko. Contemporaries were Clyfford Still, Philip Guston, Helen Frankenthaler, Barnett Newman, Adolph Gottlieb, Robert Motherwell, Lee Krasner, Bradley Walker Tomlin, William Baziotes, Ad Reinhardt, Richard Pousette-Dart, Elaine de Kooning, and Jack Tworkov. Several of these artists worked, lived, or exhibited their work in New York City.

Although it is the generally accepted designation, Abstract Expressionism is not a proper title of the art created by the artists. Actually, the movement had several different painterly styles varying in both skill and quality of method. Despite this variety, Abstract Expressionist paintings share a number of broad characteristics. They are fundamentally abstract — meaning, they display forms not drawn from the visible world.

They furthermore master open, spontaneous, and personal emotional expression, and they exercise wide freedom of skill and execution to attain this result, with a special emphasis pushed on the manipulation of the variable physical characteristic of paint to call up expressive qualities (for example, sensuousness, dynamism, violence, mystery, lyricism). They show the same kind of emphasis on the unstudied and intuitive application of paint in a sort of artistic improvisation in the trend of the automatism of the Surrealists, with the similar intent of showing the force of the creative unconscious in art. They display the conscious rejection of commonly structured composition formed with discrete and segregable aspects and their replacement with a sole unified, unvaried field, network, or other image that exists in unstructured space. Finally, the paintings fill sizeable canvases to give these aforementioned visual aspects both monumentality and engrossing power.

The premier Abstract Expressionists had two particular forerunners: Arshile Gorky, who painted suggestive biomorphic images using a free, intricately linear and liquid paint application; and Hans Hofmann, who created dynamic and powerfully textured brushwork in his abstract but conventionally constructed pieces. Another particular influence on nascent Abstract Expressionism was the arrival on the American shores in the late 30s and early 40s of a host of Surrealists and other such European avant-garde artists migrating from the Nazis in Europe. The avant-garde artists quickly influenced the native New York City painters and granted them a more detailed perspective of the vanguard of European paintings. The Abstract Expressionist movement itself is usually considered as having commenced with the painting created by Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning throughout the late 1940s and early 1950s.

Remembering the variety of techniques of the Abstract Expressionist movement, three common approaches can be isolated. First was action painting which is indicated by a loose, rapidfire, dynamic, or forceful handling of paint in sweeping or slashing brushstrokes, and in application in large part dictated by chance, i.e. dripping or spilling the paint right onto the canvas. Pollock first practiced action painting by dripping commercial paints on the raw canvas to build up intricate and tangled skeins of paint into thrilling and suggestive linear patterns. De Kooning had extremely vigorous and expressive brushstrokes to create richly coloured and textured images. Kline was known for dynamic, sweeping black strokes on white canvas to build starkly monumental forms.

The second area within Abstract Expressionism is represented by a host of varied styles beginning with the more lyrical, delicate imagery and fluid shapes in paintings by Guston and Frankenthaler to the clearly structured, forceful, almost calligraphic artworks of Motherwell and Gottlieb.

The last and least emotionally expressive approach was that of Rothko, Newman, and Reinhardt. These painters had large spaces or fields of flat colour and thin diaphanous paint to find quiet, subtle, almost meditative results. The top colour-field painter was Rothko; most of his works consist of vast combinations of soft-edged, solidly coloured rectangular spaces that tend to shimmer and resonate.

Abstract Expressionism made a important influence on both the American and European art scenes throughout the 1950s. Indeed, the movement initiated the change of the creative centre of modern day painting from Paris to New York City throughout the postwar decades. During the course of the 1950s, the the movement’s youth increasingly came to the lead of the colour-field painters. By the 1960s, the movement’s practitioners had generally moved away from the heated expressiveness of the action painters.

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