Erich von Götha

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Erich von Götha (* 1924 in London ) is the pseudonym of the British illustrator and comic artist Robin Ray . Robin Ray has also worked under the Janssens , Baldur Grimm and Robbins pseudonyms , under which he published in the 1980s. He is best known for his comic books with erotic and sadomasochistic content . His best-known work is the comic book The Sorrows of Young Janice, now in four volumes .

plant

Von Götha, who studied drawing at an art school for four years, first published for the English comic magazine Torrid in the 1980s . There he met and worked with Paula Meadows , among others . The strips published in Torrid were later published in the French magazines YES and Bédé Adult . Göthas' first independent publications were Contes a rebor (for YES ) and Crimes et delits (the last work in the successor of Georges Levis ).

International recognition, first of all in French and German-speaking countries, he achieved through a series of comic stories about the suffering of the young Janice , whose first volume was published in 1987 in France. A first German translation was published in 1990 by the Dutch Hofman Verlag under the title Janice vom Pech sucht .

The demonic Count Viscount Vauxhall of Nether Wallop takes the "education" of Janice to be a sex slave into his hands, whereby the girl gets into a vortex of lust, desire, humiliation and cruelty. The artist translates the mixture of sex and horror in texts by Bernard Joubert, loosely based on the philosophy in the boudoir of the Marquis de Sade, into luxurious images. The beautiful, at first almost innocent Janice shares the fate of other protagonists in BDSM comics: She is tied up like Gwendoline by John Willie , tormented and tormented like O or Justine with Guido Crepax , kidnapped like Phoebe with Frank Springer and tortured like Marie Gabrielle with Georges Pichard .

The book Journal de Sartine , published in 2007, is also set against a historical background , a graphic implementation of the notes of the inspector Antoine de Sartine , who had the task of informing Louis XV daily about the amorous events of the previous evening.

The plot of the later as well as the very early works, however, is set in an imaginary present. Few stories - such as Sophie's insatiable curiosity - are specifically provided with a time and place of the event: the adventures of the red-haired student Sophie take place in London at St. Hilary's College in 1958.

Unlike Janice, the series of comic books about the title heroine Twenty is more oriented towards the erotic mainstream. The utopian story takes place in 2018. Twenty was 18 years old when she appeared one day in August at a school in Clifford , an institute for the special education of young women. The author named her Twenty because she will finish her education by the early twenties; According to the author, 2020 is the beginning of a new era of sex. Twenty likes the libertarian education and she quickly turns out to be a particularly talented student, who over time internalizes the teaching of sexual permissiveness with great passion. Twenty is perfectly prepared for the sexual revolution of 2019, when diseases are eliminated and everyone strives for sexual pleasure with the aim of attaining eternal youth full of vigor through sex.

Twenty meets Gilbert, the man of her life - a producer and director from the porn industry. She falls in love with him, but before marrying him she has to go through a series of tests. It is filmed without their knowledge, and falls into the hands of men who drive perverted debauchery in a club specially founded for this purpose. Twenty is a hip porn star and host of a weekly adult show on the Internet. However, the producer is murdered, which complicates everything, and her cousin Sally and husband Tony play an increasingly important role in their lives. In the third volume appears the author himself, who is making a film version of “The Sorrows of Young Janice” - a series on which he had worked for six long years. With the dialogues of the old accomplice Bernard Joubert, he connects the strands of the two series and thus creates an epilogue to the “Sorrows of Young Janice”.

Despite the scenes of violence and the reification of the body, love plays an important role. Twenty loves her chosen one dearly and asks herself questions about their relationship, the mixing of sex and promiscuity with deep feelings. In fact, the author succeeds in showing a human side of the characters in search of an ideal, extreme form of libertinage .

Von Götha also worked as a book illustrator, for example for the novel Fanny Hill by John Cleland , published in The Scarlet Library in England, or for Le Sentiment da la Famille based on a story by Pierre Louÿs .

style

Von Götha's detailed comic pictures are characterized by a high degree of recognizability, to which both the great physical resemblance of the various female protagonists to one another and the technique of watercolored drawing he developed, often highlighting with colored pencil or pastel chalk and so on the effect of great plasticity, especially of the female curves, is achieved.

The content of his works is often sadomasochistically colored and can be seen either as pornography or as a representation of a realistic, grotesquely oversexualized world that appears realistic due to the realism of the drawing (women are always ready, men always potent, all penises are at least 35 cm long Etc.). Central themes are lust, innocence, dominance, abuse, rape and submission, which are circled in a sequence of explicit, almost continuous, sexual activities.

The focus of his stories is always a young woman ("Janice", "Emma McAlistair" in Feuerblume , "Twenty", "Sophie") who is exposed to the most diverse sexual practices. For example, when Emma McAlistair is sentenced in the story The Fire Flower to be rehabilitated in a bizarre prison for the experimental treatment of delinquent girls, she discovers that the disciplinary methods used are not what she expected - they are indeed decided perverse: The young woman finds herself exposed to constant sexual abuse. While your mind is horrified by this chain of sexual scandals, your body reacts to what is happening with excitement. She begins to accept her fate and enjoy everything that happens to her in prison.

censorship

For a long time, British censorship prevented Göthas comics from appearing in his home country. The first edition of his works came on the market in France in the 1990s (for example the albums Les malheurs de Janice , Prison tres speciale , Les curiosites perverses de Sophie , Le reve de Cecile ). German-language versions of the comics were also made in France and published by Editions International Presse Magazine (the publisher of the comic magazines Bédé Adult , Bédé X and Bédé X SM ); From there, sales for the German-speaking area run. English-language editions first appeared in the US with Last Gasp Books and only in 2006 in the UK with the Erotic Print Society .

Several works by Göthas are indexed in Germany: Leiden der young Janice No. 4 was indexed with its publication in Federal Gazette No. 204 of October 31, 2002 and Sophie's insatiable curiosity with its publication in Federal Gazette No. 224 of November 30, 2002.

Exhibitions

  • 2001 Sweat, Tears & Reflections , Bologna
  • 2002 Erotic Drawings , Bologna
  • 2006 Salon de l'Art Erotique (as part of the Festival de l'Erotisme de Bruxelles ), Brussels
  • 2007 Twenty Chastis'd , Rome
  • 2007 Les Larmes d'Eros , Paris
  • 2014 Torrid - Let's Talk About Sex (in the exhibition Comics Unmasked at the British Library ), London

Works

  • Torrid Magazine (16 issues self-published from 1979 to 1986 by the author)
  • Contes a rebour (Yes Company 1987)
  • The sufferings of the young Janice 1-4 (Les Malheurs de Janice; with Bernard Joubert; comic, part 1 1987, part 2 1990, parts 3 and 4 1996; first episode 1987 in Bédé Adult )
  • Crimes et delits (with Georges Levis; Yes Company 1988)
  • Fire flower (Prison trés spéciale; Comic, International Presse Magazine 1992)
  • Sophie's insatiable curiosity (Curiosités Perverses de Sophie; Comic, International Presse Magazine 2002)
  • Le Sentiment de la Famille (illustrations for a short story by Pierre Louÿs ; Éditions Astarté 1996)
  • Les carnets secrets de Janice (with Bernard Joubert; drawings, La Musardine 1999)
  • Sweat, Tears & Reflections (exhibition catalog, Mondo Bizzarro Press 2001)
  • Cecil's dream (Le Rêve de Cécile; Comic, International Presse Magazine 2003)
  • Fanny Hill or Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure (book illustrations for the novel by John Cleland; The Scarlet Library 2003, 2 vols.)
  • Twenty 1–3 (scenario by Paula Meadows; comic, International Press Magazine Part 1 2004, Part 2 2005, Part 3 2008)
  • Journal des inspecteurs de M. de Sartine extraits choisis (drawings, Éditions Astarté 2007)

literature

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Götha, Erich von
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Gotha, Erich von (pseudonym); Gotha de la Rosière, Erich von (pseudonym); Ray, Robin (real name); Janssens (pseudonym); Grimm, Baldur (pseudonym); Robbins (pseudonym)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British illustrator and comic book artist
DATE OF BIRTH 1924
PLACE OF BIRTH London