The Tears of Eros

A late work of art history by Georges Bataille, The Tears of Eros follows eroticism and death through the history of image-making. It was first published in French as Les larmes d'Éros in 1961, the year before his death.

The book is an illustrated essay, with notes and an index. It treats erotic art as a record of transgression, and it reproduces historical photographs of lingchi, the Chinese torture execution, which Bataille had written about since L'expérience intérieure (1943). Peter Connor translated it for City Lights Books in 1989, 213 pages in a 21 cm paperback.

Bataille (1897-1962) was a French thinker who worked across philosophy, literature, sociology and art history. He broke with the Surrealists and founded the journal Critique. His other books on these themes include Erotism and The Accursed Share, and the novel Story of the Eye.