* Explicit Imagery has Become the Norm at Art Galleries and Museums
* Phalluses Are Outnumbering Female Nudes in Contemporary Art
* Pornography has Become Increasingly Popular as a Source Material
* And Correggio's Jupiter and Io (ca. 1530) Is Considered the Most Erotic Art Work
click to view image
NEW YORK, Jan. 5 /PRNewswire/ -- Not since the Renaissance have so many phalluses been exposed in art, finds Linda Yablonsky in the lead article of ARTnews magazine's new special issue on sex in art, which hits newsstands today. While female nudes were the favorite of artists for centuries, Yablonsky instead found male nudes at a surprising number of today's leading contemporary art galleries. Yablonsky points to feminism as a possible explanation, because it liberated both male and female artists to use explicit personal and confrontational images. "I see a phallus as a part of who I am," says painter Carroll Dunham. "And I have a right to make it as an image."
An article on the market for sexually explicit artwork finds such works fetching five to six figures at galleries and auction blocks. Among the highest prices ever paid are $369,000 for Jeff Koons' Red Butt (Distance); $94,000 for one of Cindy Sherman's Sex Pictures; $85,000 for a Picasso drawing titled Pipo, which depicts a small dog with a protruding tongue under a woman's vulva; and $50,050 for Thomas Ruff's Nudes pi 08, an image of blurry figures in a sex act.
The special issue also includes:
* A survey of noted artists, curators, and other experts on what they
consider the most erotic artwork.
* An article by acclaimed author and critic Francine Prose exploring the
erotic mystery of Bonnard's 1899 painting Indolence. She writes,
"Bonnard's painting performs the nearly impossible feat of reminding us
how sex, or at least its aftermath, not only looks, but feels."
* A thoughtful interpretation of the controversial female nudes of
Francois Boucher, the first painter to Louis XV, whose drawings are on
exhibition at the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas, January 17
through April 18, 2004.
All newsstand copies of the special issue will be enclosed in clear polybags.
Founded in 1902, ARTnews has the largest circulation of any fine-art magazine in the world.
Threaded Mode