Erotic Drawings

The drawing occupies a central place in Western erotic artpaintings were long considered too ""public'' for fantasies of this nature. The book opens with an ``after Michelangelo'' Rape of Ganymede, and proceeds from this brief homosexual note to heterosexual play. There is Thomas Rowlandson's Susannah, who is skirt-flippingly open with the elders. Parmigianino portrays a witches' sabbath with everyone and everything atop a giant phallus. Titles are revealing: Fuseli's Three Women and a Man, Daumier's In the Kitchen, Rodin's Two Women. The stakes are raised, of course, with the expressionists, whose works are outstanding among the 32 color plates. Tilly, an 18th century scholar, writes prose that is just professorially titilating enough to save this work from utter prurience. (July)