One of the first things I judge about sexually explicit art is whether it is at all gross. Maybe only a little. But maybe a lot! Good art about sex requires bodily fluids, subverted gender roles, kink, something weird and/or icky.
The second thing that goes a long way with me in love and art is a good joke. A sense of humor is highly rated by both men and women as a seductive quality, and moreover, making someone laugh is arguably more difficult to do than making someone cry – and is just as revealing as what turns someone on.
Finally, what I like about the aesthetic of these projects in particular is their distinctly Gen X flavor of grungy, too-cool, low-key ragey femininity – both in gaze and object – that is celebrated as sexy.
One time when I was giving a tour at the Dikeou Collection to a college class, a young woman burst out laughing when we got to the Tracy Nakayama exhibit and pointed at the flaccid penis of a naked man on foot leading an enormous horse. Nakayama’s paintings sourced from vintage porn often provoked this kind of delighted, giggly reaction from young women who visited the Dikeou Collection, and that is one of the best things there is about the work of Tracy Nakayama.
No stranger to the subject of erotica, gallerist Mark Sink curated this series of close-cropped detail images from a Victoria’s Secret ad by artist David Brady. Instead of an entire woman in her underwear, there’s an eyebrow, the divot of a throat, silky blonde hair, fruit-like cleavage in a bright pink bra. The hyper-close framing makes the images feel more intimate and even erotic though less explicitly sexual than the source material.
Why is that rabbit performing oral sex on that woman?
Why is the other rabbit watching?
Why are they smoking?
I don’t know! I don’t care!
Because it’s so effortlessly cool – bizarrely sexy, even – and would look great on a t-shirt or a tote.
In this project, the female form appears in strip clubs and abandoned places as a broken doll or partially completed graffiti, proving that even the creepiest alley can instantly become creepier – but also sexier – with the addition of the naked female form. In her curator’s note, Kereszi writes, “I noticed all the abused, tortured and mutilated, sexy female mannequins in the various haunts I visited. I’m not sure what I’m trying to say here about sex and violence and horror and voyeurism.”
In Cronin’s art historical resurrection of the sculptor Harriet Hosmer, I learned many things. For example, one dead guy whose name doesn’t matter that much criticized Hosmer for “casts of the entire female model made and exhibited in a shockingly indecent manner” – which sounds pretty hot. And he wasn’t wrong of Hosmer, given the undeniable sensuality of the subject at hand, her masterpiece of female-on-female gaze, Zenobia in Chains.
When I think about defining the difference between pornography and art, two quotes come to mind:
When the Honorable Supreme Court Justice Stewart Potter famously said of pornography, “I know it when I see it.”
And when 2010s YouTube personality Hennessy Youngman said that the litmus test of any work of contemporary art is if it, “doesn’t serve an actual function in society.”
Obscene for the sake of considering the obscene, Gomez’s paintings are lyrical and crude, somehow satisfying the conditions of both.