Exposing a Little Skin with Erotic Art by Tina Butcher

Exposing a Little Skin with Erotic Art by Tina Butcher

Erotic and sexual art in America is coming out of the closet. Well known erotic artists who lived in the underground for years are now finally receiving the respect and recognition they have worked so hard for with exhibitions such as the Seattle Erotic Art Festival and The Traveling Erotic Art Show. Galleries and museums solely dedicated to sexually explicit art are also popping up across the country such as The World Erotic Art Museum in Miami, Museum of Sex in New York City, The Erotic Art Museum in Hollywood and the Erotic Heritage Museum in Las Vegas.

Why the sudden burst of popularity in erotic art? Why is the puritanical, right-wing-conservative US of A finally ready to show a little skin? The country that has declared a war on porn and lived in the sex-negative closet for so long is now admitting to an appreciation of and validity in artistic exploration of what is sexual in nature beyond breeding in order to have someone to keep inside their white picket fences.

Are we now ready for erotic art or are the artists working with sexually explicit and erotic images just pushing the envelope with more vigor and determination than ever? Maybe it is due to the sexually repressed conditions of our country and the fundamental war on our freedom of expression that has lead to the organization of safe havens in which sexually-explicit artists are put on a pedestal to be respected and celebrated. Regardless of why—it is happening. Now more than ever there is a heightened sense of awareness of sex and sexual imagery.

Why are we drawn to sexual imagery? Stripped naked these objects of the artist's affection represent something vulnerable and exposed. Sexual imagery captures a person or persons in the throws of passion—lost in pleasure and sensation—touch sight, smell and taste all heightened. These images represent the embodiment of both life and art.

The Traveling Erotic Art Show is a nationally touring exhibit of 11 visual artists who are exposing themselves to our great country. The touring exhibit includes photography, installation, performance art, sound, and video by such artists as Barbara Nitke, Midori, Steve Diet Goedde, Dave Naz, and Charles Gatewood. The art work pushes and explores different aspects of eroticism.

For example, Steve Diet Goedde and James Mogul both explore a similar theme of female objectification with large prints of faceless women, focusing in on body parts such as legs, torso, heels, or bottom. One print of Steve Diet Goedde's shows a woman's face blurred out of focus to the point in which it is unrecognizable. Our gaze falls to her corset and her breasts. This photographic beheading of women erases their identity and fetishizes their fragmented bodies. The lens diverts the viewer's eyes from any connection with the subject as a person and offers instead a cutlet of the human form fit for consumption, very much in the same manner in which American's have distanced themselves from the meat they consume. Just as the hamburger and the cow are no longer related in our eyes, so too are these stockinged legs and the woman who wears them. But my mind wonders what came before this moment—what is the context of these shots? Was this woman, whose legs are jutting out from around the corner of the wall, pushed to the ground? Was this woman ordered into the corner to await pleasure or punishment? Can a woman erase her own identity until she no longer recognizes the face that bounces back at her from the mirror? These photographs leave blanks, untold stories, a sense of hidden identity that questions the way in which we identify ourselves and others.

Barbara Nitke comes at her work from the ultimate voyeur's perspective. Her camera captures the raw and vulnerable moments in BDSM scenes, from the eyes of the woman in the corner who likes to watch. Her work is beautiful and intimate. She exposes that intimacy onto large format silver gelatin prints so that the world might have a window into true vulnerability.

World famous fetish photographer, Charles Gatewood, was not so subtle in his approach. His blatantly unsophisticated and humorous collaged mixed media pieces include photographs of him receiving oral sex from a woman, cut and pasted next to a half-eaten hot dog. His grossly obvious approaches at capturing the erotic have the honesty and pungency of cheap sex. Something about this new collage work of Gatewood's recalls my senses of raw meat and cum stained sheets. I can smell the heat coming off the work. His work is unapologetic and straightforward in true Bukowskian fashion. I always look forward to seeing what buttons Gatewood will push next.

Julie Simone, who is best known for her fetish and bondage productions (both as a performer and director) shows that she is much more than a model in this exhibit. She has several photographs on display all dealing with masculinity. Her three photographs on display showcase men in compromising and emasculating positions, in which their male power and privilege have been taken away.

Other works include video of artist and TEAS exhibit curator, Madison Young, tweezing her pubic hair in a piece called Pubic Display of Affection. Also by Young is a sound piece involving a conversation with her mother, a cacophony of bird noises and a photo of a woman bound and weighted to the bottom of a swimming pool. Her work explores the appropriation of art into pornographic contexts and what is private vs. public.

As a whole, the exhibition challenged the many ideas of eroticism, confronting it from feminist, fetishist and objectifying view points. The show has drawn out such performing artists to participate as Twincest (www.twincest.net) and Lochai (who is also an exhibiting visual artist for the show). It seems that these performances and visual displays are growing in popularity rapidly. Maybe we are finally ready to expose a little skin and delve into what that does to us and our environment physically, economically, socially, and emotionally.

You can find out more about it at www.travelingeroticartshow.com.

Article by Tina Butcher.