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NOTE: Not the Book; Removed Images from the Book. Eleven stunning, professionally-matted black and white images by Alexander King, originally illustrating C.J. Bulliet's Venus Castina, first published as a limited edition by Covici Friede in 1928, and subsequently reprinted several times. .Bulliet, a journalist, theatrical promoter and later well-known art critic for the Chicago Daily News was an art-savvy proponent of the Modernist movement, and fascinated by the concept of one particular aspect of the Roman goddess Venus (Castina, or chaste Venus. But that single term, encountered alone, can be misleading if or it representes only the gates to the temple; just beyond the portals of this general concept of "Chastity", resides the "Sacred Virgin", the undefeated AND undefeatable sublime "Diana" aspect of Venus, powerful, one unto themselves, who embodied "the yearnings of feminine souls locked up in male bodies.Bulliet's fascinating account included a rich assortment of figures across time: 'kings and princes and heroes of old days and modern.soft-eyed dreamers of a forbidden ineffable, warriors and poets, artists, statesmen, quacks, hoodlums and harlequins.". To this prodigious and scholarly history of famous female impersonators, came Vienna-born artist Alexander King (1899-1965). "Described as a thief, morphine addict, failing playwright and painter, Alexander King was a man of "iconoclastic observations and caustic humor who began his career as a painter of human figures, focused primarily on the face. Then he became an art thief, stealing fifty prints from the Metropolitan Museum. He was jailed twice, and married four times. He wrote a book, "Rich Man, Poor Man, Freud and Fruit," and died one day after appearing on "The Today Show" to publicize it." (Wikipedia). "To you who laugh in the Theater when a Male Moron puts on a Grass Skirt and dances a burlesque Spring Song in front of a Jazz Band; To you who giggle when the handsome young Preacher pitches high his voice and mimics a hoydenish Maiden at a Picnic Chicken Dinner; To you who find delight in the Girlish Pranks our College Boys are playing on each other and on their Girl Chums; To you who applauded in the World War the efforts of our War Department to guard our Young Soldiers from Female Contamination, leaving them to Other Devices; To you have closed our Houses of Prostitution and bade Young Men forget Sexual Desire in Athletic Friendship; To you who view with Equanimity the rapid spread of the 'Scythian madness; in America since the World War To you, all and individually, is dedicated VENUS CASTINA" (Dedication Page).
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