Sergei Eisenstein’s Erotic Drawings (NSFW)

Sergei Eisenstein (10 January 1898 – 11 February 1948) is best known for his films, including Strike (1925), the surreal and savage October (1928), Ivan the Terrible (1944) and his stunning paean to revolution Battleship Potemkin (1925).he also left behind a cache of his erotic art.

 

 

Eisenstein was gay and bursting to get out of the closet and out of the Soviet Union. He dreamed of going to California. Looking to experience more, in the autumn of 1928 Eisenstein left Moscow for a tour of Europe. After a period touring and lecturing in Berlin, Zürich, London and Paris, America called.

In April 1930 the film producer Jesse Lasky, on behalf of Paramount Pictures, offered Eisenstein the opportunity to make a film in the United States. He arrived in Hollywood in May 1930. There was talk of various projects that all came to nothing, and things turned sour when Frank Pease, president of the Hollywood Technical Director’s Institute and an ardent anti-communist, mounted a public campaign against Eisenstein. The Fish Committee (predecessor to the House Un-American Activities Committee) investigated Eisenstein for contaminating American cinema with communist propaganda. Paramount declared their contract with Eisenstein void, and the Eisenstein party were treated to return tickets to Moscow at the company’s expense.

Then came an invitation from American socialist millionaire and author Upton Sinclair (September 20, 1878 – November 25, 1968). Sinclair’s works were widely read in the USSR, and were known to Eisenstein. The two admired each other, and by October 1930 Sinclair had secured permission for Eisenstein to travel to Mexico to make a film there. After much discussion the title for the project, ¡Que viva México!, was decided on. Whilst in Mexico, he mixed socially with Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera; Eisenstein admired these artists and Mexican culture in general, and they inspired him to call his films ‘moving frescoes’.

 

 

Resulting from Eisenstein’s prolonged absence, Joseph Stalin sent a telegram expressing concern that Eisenstein had become a deserter. Sergei entreated Upton Sinclair and his wife Mary to negotiate with Stalin, which led to a major row between the film-maker and his sponsors, and forced the production to close down.

Eisenstein now headed for the American border, where a customs search of his trunk revealed a cache of his erotic sketches and drawings. His visa had expired, and Sinclair’s contacts in Washington were unable to secure him an additional extension, so after a month’s stay at the border outside Laredo, the group was issued with a 30-day pass to allow them to travel to New York and thence depart for Moscow.

 

 

In a strictly-regulated society, where life follows strictly-defined canons, the urge to escape from the chains of things “established once and for all” must be felt particularly strongly.”

― Serguei Eisenstein, Reflexões De Um Cineasta

 

 

Life is largely compulsion. But in play we are free! We do what we please.. Apparently there is no dearer human wish than to be free.

But this is not simply a wish to be free from; it is also, and more deeply, a wish to be free to. What, galls us is that the binding necessities do not permit us to shape our world as we please. . . . What we most deeply desire, however, is to create our world for ourselves. Whenever we can do that, even in the slightest degree, we are happy. Now in play we create our own world. . …

To imply, therefore, that a person has a fine sense of humour is to imply that he has still in him the spirit of play, which implies even more deeply the spirit of freedom and of creative spontaneity.

― Serguei Eisenstein, Reflexões De Um Cineasta

 

Images via: Honest Erotica