morbeedo's hot and bothered art challenge by morbeedo

Venus and Cupid get kind of intimate in an allegorical scene depicted by what Italian Mannerist painter (not to be confused with a certain Mediterranean fish)?

Name the American realist painter whose fascination with the male derriere (Eek!) is on full display in works such as The Gross Clinic, Salutat and The Swimming Hole.

Name the shimmering gold painting by Gustav Klimt depicting a couple locked in such tight embrace that you can’t really tell where he ends and she begins.

In 2008, this painter’s nude, flesh-toned portrait of Big Sue Tilley (entitled Benefits Supervisor Sleeping) sold for $33.6 million – the highest price ever paid at the time for a work by a living artist (who happens to be the grandson of a famous Austrian).

In 1991, a SoHo gallery attracted mobs of art (?) lovers to ogle this provocateur engaged in explicit sex with the Italian porn star, Cicciolina (his wife at the time), in a series of giant photographs lovingly titled “Made in Heaven”.

“She’s hot in the ass!” is a literal translation of L.H.O.O.Q., the French pun scribbled on a postcard of Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa found and embellished by what artist? (I must say, I find her even more beguiling with the beard and moustache).

Name the pair of French artists and life partners who have been collaborating on painted photographs of gay icons and beautiful boys (among other subjects) since 1976. The duo raised a bit of controversy in 2012 with Vive La France, their full-frontal street poster depicting three French footballers in the nude: one black, one Arab/Muslim and one white, to represent the multi-ethnic make-up of modern French society.

What two-word Latin term describes a classic figural pose in Western art in which a nude female (not necessarily at the moment of birth) covers her lower anatomy with one hand, paradoxically drawing the viewer’s gaze to the hidden spot. The second part of the term comes from a Latin word meaning external genitals, or thing to be ashamed of (same thing, right?).

Name the artist who exploded onto the scene in 1994 with a series of cut-out figures in silhouette called Gone: An Historical Romance of a Civil War as it occurred b’tween the Dusky Thighs of One Young Negress and Her Heart, a powerful work depicting rape and dismemberment of African American women and children by cheerful white masters and black men lynched and dangling from tree branches.

Named the 18th century French artist whose Rococo masterpiece, The Swing, depicts a fancy young lady, leg in the air yet blissfully unaware of the pervy man hiding in the shadows, who happens to be looking right up her billowy skirt.

Who conceived this piece of performance art: Instructions: There are 72 objects on the table that one can use on me as desired. Performance: I am the object. During this period I take full responsibility. Duration: 6 hours (8 pm – 2 am). (The items on the table, described as "objects of pleasure" and "objects of destruction," included a rose, feather, perfume, honey, bread, grapes, wine, scissors, a scalpel, nails, a metal bar, and a gun loaded with one bullet.)

What French term refers to representations of a female slave or concubine in a harem, a frequent subject of nineteenth century painters such as Ingres and Delacroix.