Mechanical Venus...

[Mark David Tristan Brenchley]

Know I missed the window, and that this may be completely irrelevant, but
I came across it yesterday so here you go:

"From the eighteenth century onwards a class of mechanical models entered
into circulation in Europe for educational purposes, and for display
in museums. In the ones used in Florence at the end of the 18th century,
female figures were given accessories such as necklaces and allowed to
sport luxurious growths of hair. Whilst they could be 'opened' to reveal
their internal organs and thus subjected to the passionate probings of
science, they also bore elevated iconographic meanings. They were called 
'Venuses' - although as Jordanova points out, they correspond more to the
type of Bernin's St Theresa with their ecstatic facial expressions - and
were often arranged in sexually inviting positions. They therefore helped
to elucidate what Jordanova referred to  as, 'the mixture of eroticism,
violence and idealisation in the desire to know more of female nature"
	- marcel Duchamp and Max Ernst: The Bride Shared; David Hopkins;
		Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1998 p20.

regrads,
Mark