I planned to see two exhibitions when I got to Paris. I got there on the train Thursday last week. On Friday I went to Love Songs at the Maison Européenne de la Photographie and All Together, a group show of erotic art curated by The Tom of Finland Foundation, at The Community Centre. I was waiting around the corner from the Maison for it to open, sitting out front of a cafe pretending to be cool, speaking in broken French and applying CeraVe facial moisturiser to my arms because I forgot to pack sunscreen. I finished my cool cigarette and went inside, bought my ticket and went upstairs.
The show, Love Songs, features the work of fourteen photographers ranging in period from the mid-20th century to the present day. Spread between four galleries, across two floors; Nan Goldins face Larry Clarks; Lin Zhipeng (aka No.223) has a room their own. Earlier photographs by René Groebli and Emmet Gowin, black and white silver gelatine prints, feature early-feeling displays of intimacy. The napes of necks, exposed chests, finger-viced cigarettes and depictions of languid cohabitation. The exhibition follows a linear chronology, the next rooms show works from Goldin’s The Ballad of Sexual Dependency (1973-1986) and Clark’s Tulsa (1963-1971). Both iconic and infamous. Among easier images, there are depictions of domestic abuse, Goldin’s eye bloodshot and bruised, and substance abuse, the long end of a needle in the straightened fold of an arm. Leigh Ledare, a former assistant to Clark, has work upstairs. Double Bind (2010) is a display of two shoots, both orchestrated with his ex-wife Meghan Ledare-Fedderly over three days in a cabin in New York. The first shoot took place two months from the next, first with Ledare, the artist, the ex-husband, and the other with Adam Fedderly, her current husband. Like the rest of them, the photographs hope to be interpreted by the audience, here more overtly. Seeking some secret out, something obvious in the way Meghan Ledare-Fedderly is holding herself or looking at the machine that’s captured her image. Both shoots, largely arranged in diptychs around the room, are neither romantic nor feelingless; oscillating along the axis, whizzing past apathy.
Though the show was enjoyable and the photographs beautifully manufactured, and though it is an obvious criticism, the voyeuristic nature of the exhibition is a detraction. It’s an impossible show to curate. The majority of the subjects are women, are white, and the majority of the artists are men. The majority of the photographs depict heterosexual intimacy. This isn’t to say no exhibition can be complete or good without perfect diversity. It’s that in the context of an erotic show, a show about romance and sex, the viewer is more conscious of the curator than the artworks in the exhibition. I wasn’t trying to get off, I went elsewhere in Paris for that. I felt like someone might have been trying to. The viewing of these arrangements of images, here deemed intimate, are akin to leafing through the intimates of a porno stash or a stranger’s camera roll. Sex is not romance. The MEP’s show first deals in affection, established as a love song in photographs. The exhibition is normative and merely beautiful. Proficient photographs are arranged around famously erotic artefacts.
I bought two postcards before I left. One of Sienne (1979) by Hervé Guibert and the other Green Light (2010) by Lin Zhipeng (aka No.223). The pictures are still nice, I’m allowed to be a hypocrite. I then took the train up to The Community Centre.
The following is a brief aside to aesthetically categorise erotic art. First, before I start drooling over graphite renderings of inflated pecs and bulging cocks, I have a diagram. Constructed, bored, in the waiting lounge of the Charles de Gaulle airport.
My issue upon seeing the work at the MEP was the difficulty in assessing the disparate qualities of each series in the show. Some work, Guibert’s, is proficiently produced, romantic and slightly sexual. His lover lies in a bath, exposed to silver gelatine, the light refracting on spots of water in gentle movement. Other’s, Zhipeng’s, is more naively produced, less romantic, and more sexual. A white-filled condom hangs from the stems in a vase of flowers. Assessing the two simultaneously hurts my brain, hence the diagram. Two horizontal axes show the space between sex and chastity and between romance and unfeeling, a vertical axis of proficiency crosses both at their centre and divides the space between professionalism and naivety. At the centre of all axes, is a sphere somewhat resembling neutrality. It is the amateurism between naivety and professionalism, the apathy between romance and unfeeling, and the abstinence between sex and chastity. Zhipeng’s flowers are a little naive, somewhat romantic (not much) and pretty sexually explicit. The photograph’s placement can be seen below.
All Together is another erotic group show, featuring the works of Tom of Finland, Nigel Kent, TANK, Bob Mizer, Annie Sprinkle, Al Urban and many others. After a lap of the circuit, I had two pressing thoughts. Pressing Thought No. 1: How expensive can wall decals be? How hard is it to label an artwork? And they’re not the only ones. Instead of a sticker beneath each work, the curators decide to put up a cryptic map either on the wall or in a pamphlet. I’m not here to do orienteering. I don’t want to have to stop and think, ok so two right from the second one down but past the one that’s in the circular frame, just to find the title or material of a piccy. Sort it out.
Pressing Thought No. 2: Is there a relationship between exceptional technical rendering and lewd acceptability? In all those black and white photographs taken on honeymoons at the MEP, the subtext is that they were fucking, right? Obviously. It isn’t explicit, but the aesthetic is there. There’s more space in The Community Centre to feel your eyes change. From those receiving a respectable nude, a naked image, an explicit artwork, or a piece of pornography. In some works by Tom of Finland, TANK, and The Hun, the technical proficiency in graphite and coloured pencil, for a moment, renders the explicit invisible. TANK’s pencil drawing, The Barn, is one such example. A drawing of cowboys, one in the door of a barn—ass to the audience—and the other spread-eagle in denim on a hay bail, hand on crotch.
Too careful as to be lewd. Taught denim drawn on thick thighs and wet-highlighted skin demand a museum gaze. Close to the picture, nose to crotch. The images aren’t passed in a classroom. It’s obvious to write, but the drawings are in frames. Mike Kuchar’s 1992 untitled caricature sits in an amateur aesthetic, curb-side to the street, depicting two ginger pirates with enlarged nipples, huge bellybuttons and streaming white dicks barely contained by knotted fabric underwear. Popeye-impossible muscles erupt from every circumferential line. The images are kitschy, throw-away, and ostensibly offensive. I’m not about pitting those works against each other, they’re different and call for different eyes. The latter highly sexual, void of romance and completed with competent, caricature amateurism.
Both shows are a pic ‘n’ mix really. The kinds of shows where you go in for what you want to see. A museum experience, you don’t have to look at everything. If I’m not interested in 18th-century British art, I’m not going to the room in the National Galleries. Give it a miss. I was on holiday, that’s exactly the kind of experience I want. I’m not about to give myself a hard time, only to indulge in endless pleasure. I do think there are fun and exciting ways to treat the reception of erotic art in museums and galleries, outside of mere beauty. Plotting those aesthetic categories in a diagram is only my little psycho way of doing it.
—Andy x
Erotic Orienteering in Paris, a Diary Entry