Carolee Schneemann and cat, image from the artist's slide presentation.

Schneemann’s “Infinity Kisses – the Movie” (2008) is a silent slide show of photos of the artist being kissed by her pet cat, Vesper.  The photos are blurry, close-cropped and somewhat garish, echoing the low aesthetic appeal of pornographic images.  They’re also sensual — the artist, seen close-up, her mouth open and eyes closed, receives what are obviously pleasurable kisses from her pet.  But beyond the erotic intent, these documentary photos — taken over a number of years — raise issues about solitary practices in general.  Schneemann is dignifying what’s done in private and suggesting a human need for secret rituals and practices.   No matter what you think — Is it cute to kiss your cat or is it sickening? — what’s shocking here is the thought that this solitary pleasure, and others as well, might be ok or even an important part of the human experience.

EXPORT’s black and white video in the vault, “ Man, Woman, Animal” likewise suggests there’s something almost holy in human private practices. The film, made with her then-partner Peter Weibel, is an almost clinical portrayal of a woman masturbating.  The artist, nude, seen from the waist down, sits in a bathtub with a stream of water directed at her private parts which she displays for the camera.  The camera zooms in on the water and the private parts, and the sound of moaning in the background suggests the pleasure of the experience.  The full-frontal and accurate portray is shocking.  Yet, as in the Schneemann piece, there’s a level of dignity suggested.  There’s nothing to snicker at here.

Steven and Billy Blaise Dufala, Free Wall, drawing

Additional EXPORT and Weibel videos, and photos, drawings, sculpture, videos and installations by younger artists round out the show.  Notable are Gabe Martinez’s photo series of heterosexual men’s feet curled up at moment of climax after masturbating.  The pictures rise to the level of Schneemann and EXPORT in intent and sheer documentary impact, although there’s a Charlie Chaplin-esque mischief about the curled toes, too.  A selection of erotic drawings by Stephen and Billy Blaise Dufala, available as giveaways, suggest how art, being itself a solitary pleasure, has always sought to actively engage the viewer.

image: Gabriel Martinez, "Self-Portraits by Heterosexual Men/2007 (Rocco)" chromogenic print 20” x 30” 2007

Above the serious art, the walls are peppered with photocopies of antique porn images and quotable quotes about masturbation that are hand-written on torn spiral notebook pages.  The higgledy-piggledy wall ensembles are kitsch comic relief from the seriousness elsewhere.

Things done in alone have often resulted in great leaps forward for mankind.  Shakespeare didn’t write with a team; Einstein didn’t think up his equation brainstorming with math buddies.  Leonardo created Mona Lisa in private, with himself and the sitter alone together in the presumably silent studio.

In his essay for the show, curator Kevin Richards talks about the demonization of solitary pleasures — especially masturbation — characterized to this day as unhealthy addictive behavior.  But really, as Freud said (quoting from the show’s wall text) “The only thing about masturbation to be ashamed of is doing it badly.”

Two wonderful podcasts on the Slought website bring you lectures by Carolee Schneemann and curator Keith Richards, recorded at the opening.  Both are important to understand the broader intent of the show.

Solitary Pleasures, to April 21. Slought Foundation, 4017 Walnut St. 215 701 4627

Read this story at PW.

Rubens, Peter Paul The Rape of the Daughters of Leucippus c. 1618 Oil on canvas 88 x 82 7/8 in (224 x 210.5 cm) Alte Pinakothek, Munich

Nowadays, erotic art is more of a niche player and the art market (the closest thing to a royal court that we have) prefers its sexy in air quotes. Marilyn Minter uses hard core porn photographs and transforms them into glittering, wet-and-wild bauble-fests. They are not so erotic when she’s done with them but way “sexy,” hip and commercially viable.

Marilyn Minter, Split, 2003, C-print

When I emailed a bunch of Philadelphia artists recently to ask what was the most erotic art they’d seen and why, mostly I got no responses. One artist, Christopher Davison, demurred. Davison makes pretty darned sexy works himself, (his drawings of male and female nudes interacting in dark, eerie forest settings were a staple at the former Jenny Jaskey gallery). “While it would seem like I would have something meaningful to contribute on this topic I am actually not the best person to provide feedback,” he said, adding “Strange but true!”

They're On Their Way Flashe, watercolor, acrylic ink, gouache on Rives BFK 22" x 30" 2009

Gabriel Martinez, a mischievous artist known for his autobiographical works — and for a recent series of sexually-charged masturbation photos featuring anonymous men’s legs and feet at moment of orgasm — wrote back “I will think (hard) about this one…” Then he slipped away into the ether never answering the question. But Proximity Gallery owner and artist Janel Frey responded immediately and directly naming Philadelphia artist, Pete Checchia who, she says, “captures women in a very sensual and complex way.”

Gabriel Martinex, Self Portraits by Heterosexual Men (Anonymous), 2007. c-print

Artist and FLUXspace co-founder, Chris Golas, sent in an anecdote from his own life. While a student at Tyler he did a performance that was arguably erotic. He stood behind a shower curtain half-naked while a woman slapped him after her hands in different colored paints. Golas said “My intent was not to make erotic work but as I reflect on the experience it clearly had meaning that bridged into a certain eroticism for me. This particular performance could border on fetishism as well.”

Pete Checcia, Photo collage

Chris Golas, photo from a performance

Artists now don’t seek to titillate per se, but still the erotic will out especially in work by those who court the unconscious mind, like Louise Bourgeois, Lisa Yuskavage, Pipilotti Rist, Patty Chang, R. Crumb, Paul McCarthy, Philadelphia artist Tony Ward, Andy Warhol (films) and Marcel Duchamp (Etant Donnes) for starters. There are more of course.

Louise Bourgeois, photo by Robert Mapplethorpe, 1982

These artists all work in a narrative tradition and use figures or figure fragments (Bourgeois) and their works might give off a pleasurable erotic charge along with whatever other message is there. Warhol is in a class all his own with experimental movies that are sensual (Blow Job, Sleep) and those that are sexually explicit and close to porn (Blue Movie).

Andy Warhol, Blowjob

But postmodern erotic art usually has a conflicted sexuality. Pleasure is subsumed under oozing gooey messes (Paul McCarthy, Santa’s Cholocate Shop); or it’s accompanied by embarrassment (R. Crumb). In the case of Duchamp’s Etant Donnes — on view in the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s permanent collection — the erotic is tempered by a dose of pure weirdness as you look through a peephole at the work and what’s portrayed — the lower half of a nude woman on the ground, her legs splayed, one hand holding aloft a lantern and an eerie waterfall in the background — is creepy and inexplicable.

R. Crumb drawing

Artists now might deny the erotic in their art. Louise Bourgeois said “I wouldn’t say my work is erotic, even though this side of it seems obvious to many people.” Tony Ward, on the other hand, in an interview with Corey Armpriester on artblog, embraces sexual imagery as a way to put human sexuality into the art history canon. But even this artist — who shows with Sande Webster Gallery — seems to waffle on the erotic charge of his works saying he’s “looking for a means to express the art of it (human sexuality) not the sex of it.”

Photo by Tony Ward

Feminism took some of the sexy out of art by attacking the male gaze and by empowering women to make works about their own sexuality. Many early feminist works are angry, and while graphic, not sexy. The Visible Vagina at Francis Naumann Gallery which Andrea told you about recently, exposes many feminist works focused on the female sex organ. But as with much feminist work eroticism wasn’t the point of it and it doesn’t seem to be the byproduct.

Marcel Duchamp, Etant Donnes

But even before feminism, abstract expressionism and minimalism — both about as sexy as Benjamin Moore paint chips — put eros on the shelf.

Lust Caution, Ang Lee's movie about the Japanese occupation of China has scenes that feel like they're based on Japanese Shunga drawings

Photography went where painting and sculpture wouldn’t go and nude photography is our latter day erotic art. But more than that, today’s erotic art is the movies. Films may be the closest thing we have to Rubens, Boucher, Caravaggio, Bronzino. Movies use narrative– often extremely over the top dramatic — and add romance and the erotic scene or two. Art house movies are full of that mixture. These movies deliver erotic content without irony. It’s seriously sensual stuff, just like the old masters used to provide.

So if movies are how we get our erotic art it’s not a bad thing. It’s just another example of pop culture taking over what used to be in art’s domain — or art ceding something it didn’t want to deal with to pop culture, which very much wants to deal.  Hollywood sells sex because sex sells.

>>Etant Donnes, on view at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Gallery 183, Modern and Contemporary Art, first floor. 26th Street and the Benjamin Franklin Parkway Adults: $16 Seniors (ages 65 & over): $14 Students (with valid ID): $12 Children (excluding groups) ages 13–18: $12 ages 12 & under: Free First Sunday of each month: Pay what you wish all day.

>>The Visible Vagina, to Mar 20. Francis Naumann Gallery, 24 W. 57th St., Suite 305. NY NY 10019. 212 582 3201.

Ribas’ choices for the Arcadia Works on Paper exhibit raise issues of sharing, reproducibility and loss of copyright control. They raise disturbing questions about the value of all art at a time when works on paper have never been more highly valued.

James Johnson, 14K Sentences on Conceptual Art, 2009, framed silkscreen print on letter-sized sheet of 14 K gold on acid-free board, 14.75 x 12.5 inches

Ribas first shots across the bow, the first pieces in front of you as you walk into the gallery, are Michael Davis Carter’s gator, a tissue paper piece that appropriates the LaCoste alligator logo, and James Johnson’s 14K Sentences on Conceptual Art, a 14K gold sheet of paper on which is silkscreened an appropriation of Sol Lewitt’s Sentences on Contemporary Art. The reflective quality of the material and the art historical appropriation serve as a conceptual treatise on material value and creative value–Lewitt’s creative capital, Johnson’s creative capital, the means of production that crosses lines between the handmade and machine (computer) made and printed.

Gabriel Boyce and Preston Link, Health Care Bill, 2009 printed paper 11 x 8.5 x 3 inches

In that same front room, Gabriel Boyce and Preston Link offer on a pedestal another conceptual work–Health Care Bill, three inches of Congressional bureaucratese downloaded from the internet and stacked on a pedestal, the work representing value beyond the ability of most of us to calculate. I found it especially amusing that the gallery needed a young woman to stand guard over this particular piece, to make sure no one commandeered a piece of paper from the bill, a piece of paper of questionable value without the context! And

Bruce Campbell, Directional drawing, 2008, graphite on cut paper on board, 43.25 x 65 inches. This is the largest piece in the show.

Bruce Campbell’s Directional Drawing, with words scrawled over a paper incised with a Frank Stella geometric shape–another art-historical appropriation–brings into question 1968 aesthetics and value at the same time that Campbell appropriates and incorporates into his own value system a piece of Stella’s creative capital!

Robert T. Pannell, Revision, 2006, photo etching, 11.25 x 24 inches

Robert T. Pannell and Pernot Hudson pull the rug out from the assumptions of our common culture–oy, those Indians got such a bad deal, speaking of value. Hudson’s print/drawing of a sheriff’s badge, Samburg’s Finest, drips with irony.

Mia Rosenthal, Breakfast cereals of this great nation, 2009, detail, ink and graphite on paper, 32 x 22.5 inches

The counterpoise to all these rather cynical meditations on value is a wall of five drawings that range from contemporary deadpan to doodly to an old-fashioned elegance of line–all of them raising questions of aesthetics. In this group, Mia Rosenthal’s cereal box grid drawing, an obsessive Roz Chast-like reuse and filtering of mass produced advertising, most pointedly continues the conversation about authorship and value (this and Leah Bailis’ Corner were the only works in the show I had seen before, but I was happy to revisit both of them).

Andrea Beizer, Three In bed, 2009, graphite on Arches, 22.5 x 31 inches

The others in that group on the wall with Cereal… suggest that cultural fashion and value are fickle, from Andrea Beizer’s Three in Bed, which passes for a contemporary cartoon, to John Costanza’s What did you do to the Booze Hickey? #2, which passes for a mid-20th-century one. In the mix of shifting tastes–Erika Mayer’s Knapsack Nation and Dino Vasquez Gargas Positivas.

Erika Mayer, Knapsack Nation, 2008-9, etching, 11 x 14.75 inches

Turns out there’s nothing in this show that doesn’t raise these questions about value and aesthetics. But the conversation about value is the more interesting and edgy of the two.

Mark Stockton, Composition 3, 2009, grphite of BFK Rives, 29 x 22.75 inches

As the show moves into the back room, a number of works copy popular culture images, using hand-reproduction methods that reinterpret the original values. I especially loved Fay Stanford’s Indigenous Princess, a highly unlikely image that turns the sentimentality of kitsch into a wild thing. Closer to my point about copying are Kristina Martin’s movie still and Mark Stockton’s Composition 3, the latter a drawn clipboard of media-celeb images. Matt Neff’s prints may valorize or criticize the Wu Tang Clan. He doesn’t give enough away for me to guess, but he’s playing in the same pond of appropriated pop culture.

That art work appropriating manufactured imagery is so widespread surely shows how far behind the courts are in handling the phenomenon of Shepard Fairey’s reuse of an AP photographer’s Obama portrait. The contentiousness about Fairey’s authorship, ironically, raises the value of the hand work, cheaply reproduced and sold over the internet, and the value of the photo, even more cheaply reproduced and sold over the wire services.

Gabriel Martinez, Untitled (Peking Ducks),"Pink" 2009, archival pigment print, 31 x 59 inches

Gabriel Martinez Untitled (Peking Ducks), “Pink” photo raises so many issues of identity, ownership, advertising, beauty, cultural hegemony, gender, duplication, yadda yadda yadda that it leaves me breathless. Martinez took the photo with a Holga camera in a gay pick-up park in Peking. He asked the subject to pose for him with pink Peeps ducks serving as a mask, but the subject, afraid of being recognized, tore out a magazine ad and covered his face with the advertising image of a woman’s face, and covered her unseeing eyes with the Peeps. The clash of cultures  is played out here in numerous ways, especially with the Western photographer and his Western Peeps and the Western influenced Eastern advertising image. Not to mention, on the love front, that peeps will be peeps. Amazing!!!

Quentin Morris, Untitled (Dec. 2008), 2008, December 2008, black gesso and polymer acrylic, 28 inches in diameter, courtesy Larry Becker Contemporary Art

Quentin Morris, who is a perennial presence in the Works on Paper show, expressed disappointment during the opening because his black circle was hung high on the wall like on ominous moon threatening the art cosmos. In a way he’s right. His work’s meaning got highjacked by the curator for his own purposes! But even when hanging at the normal height, the piece serves as an elegant question mark. Is it reproducible? Depends on who you ask. It is a philosophical conundrum for its refusal to behave like an ordinary drawing or declare its value in quantifiable terms.

Hannah Heffner, Baby Bubble, 2009, cut paper and bubble wrap, 14 x 11 inches

Speaking of drawings, Hannah Heffner’s Baby Bubble is also slippery. The baby bump is bubble wrap and any sense of transcendent birth is completely undermined by the deliberate crappiness of the material inserted in the cut (old-fashioned) image, a page from a magazine. When I was in the gallery, I was sure the page was a hand-made reproduction. Now, as I look at the picture, I am not so sure. The action of the man’s hand becomes a giant question with the intervention of the bubblewrap. This was arguably the riskiest piece in the exhibit!

On the surface, the show had a tremendous respect for small work and for drawing and draftsmanship and craftsmanship and art history.  Although gray, black and white and conservative on the surface, underneath, the show is slippery.If it really is ushering the end of originality and the end of handmade in a world of infinite reproduction, all of this writing is about a bunch of wildly overvalued work–except for that sheet of gold. I don’t buy it–yet.

Here’s the complete list of who’s in the show:

Leah Bailis, Andrea Beizer, Gabriel Boyce & Preston Link, Bruce Campbell, John Costanza, Michael Davis Carter, Hannah Heffner, Pernot Hudson, James Johnson, Sebastien Leclercq, Erika Mayer, Gabriel Martinez, Kristina Martino, Quentin Morris, Matt Neff, Robert T. Pannell, Mia Rosenthal, Fay Stanford, Mark Stockton, Judith Taylor, and Dino Vasquez.

The Arcadia Works on Paper 2009 show runs to Dec. 21.

My favorite bit of Philly-on-the-road news is from Rah Crawford. Rah, who is possibly the commercial genius of the Philadelphia art world, created the spotlight image for the Amsterdam Affordable Art Fair!

Like most of his paintings, the image is a cross between my old black light Jimi Hendrix poster and Elizabeth Peyton!

I suppose it’s unreasonable to claim him for Philadelphia since he’s pretty much an ex-pat, having decamped for the Netherlands; but Philadelphia, the city that hates change, refuses to drop its claim on those who flee.

He’s doing the sort of things lots of artists do to survive–designing t-shirts and giant beanbags imprinted with Warhol images. The Stedelijk Museum is carrying the giant beanbags! But I don’t get the sense that doing this sort of thing makes him unhappy. He’s just got a business streak, a nose for pop culture, and unbridled creative energy!

Other things going on out of town:

Another Philly ex-pat, Brooklynite Adam Parker Smith, has his first solo exhibition in New York City will open Nov. 8 at Priska C. Juschka Fine Art. explores consumerist addiction to violence and the infatuation with the high school crush. Smith collaborated with seven teenage assistants from the Blue Sky Project during the fabrication of Bold as Love.

Prints Gone Wild poster

And Space 1026, many of them Rhode Island expats now in Philly, will participates in Prints Gone Wild 2, at Supreme Trading Company in Brooklyn, Friday and Sat., Nov. 2nd and 3rd.

The show will feature plenty of affordable art plus music of course. Here’s who else is participating in the print-off, which is being presented by Cannonball Press:

Tugboat Press Pittsburgh, PA
The Amazing Hancock Brothers McGregor, TX
Paping Brooklyn, NY
Sean Star Wars Laurel, MS
Howling Print Studios Brooklyn, NY
Yeehaw Industries Knoxville, TN
Triangle Poster Pittsburgh, PA
Team Lump Raleigh, NC
Drive By Press Madison, WI
Isle of Printing Nashville, TN
DRock Press Lexington, KY

Gabriel Martinez, from the series Self Portraits of Heterosexual Men

And finally, Gabe Martinez, who came here from Miami, will be having his first commercial solo show in Boston, opening Oct. 26 (reception Nov. 2). Honestly, this is long overdue! He is showing his Self Portraits of Heterosexual Men, which he showed earlier this year at University of the Arts (Roberta’s post here). The photos are from-the-knees-down shots of men at the moment they climax while masturbating. Martinez was not in the room, but he set up the tripod, etc. for the shoots. The results are sly, raising lots of issues about privacy, sexuality, gender, and romanticism. He found the men through word of mouth, Craig’s List, fliers, etc. I don’t know if that makes me more frightened for Gabe or for his subjects.