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HARD TO FIGURE: A PORTFOLIO
(Various Years)

The paintings below have been segregated onto this page due to their sexual imagery. Having said that, they really have less (or little) to do with sex than with politics, ageing and sexuality in general -- of anyone. Within a long history of artists using explicit imagery to delve into sexual politics, (for example Manet, Picasso, Egon Schiele, David Wojnarowicz, and Lynda Benglis), not to mention the many contemporary artists borrowing on pornography or simple erotica (eg. Tom Wesselman, Jeff Koons, John Currin), these paintings present the figure as everyman, and recontextualize youthful and idealized bodies into situations all of us share to varying degrees in our daily lives -- having to do with thoughts not only about sexual gratification, but how we feel about ourselves, and how sexuality of any kind figures into a society where religious taboos continually try to douse the subject with cold water.

Amid the explosion of online pornography these days, I'm interested in asking if you can de-porn pornography? The texts on some of these drawings come from pompous-sounding reviews and articles in current art magazines, raising issues (in my mind) about what "art" in its many guises, is trying to accomplish today. Does some of what we see in museums and galleries amount to little more than a type of sexual gratification for the artists (and the viewers)? More pointedly, does art that claims efficacy towards political and social goals or awareness amount to anything more than pornography? Hard to figure indeed.

Some images here borrow on appropriated imagery or the imagination. But at this point I do need to add that any depiction of sexual activity does not necessarily reflect a person's sexual identity. The models here whom I've hired to pose are, to my knowledge, heterosexual and happily so. But they have all been good sports about this project, and reflect not only changing times, but also their openess about sexual identity either way, and their complicity not only in its depiction but also in our gaze.

 

 

JOHN CURRIN

 

LYNDA BENGLIS

 

FRANCIS PICABIA

       
 

 

DAVID SALLE

JEFF KOONS

 

PLEASE CLICK HERE FOR THE IMAGES

 

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