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SEXUALITY
IN
POP
ART
Joe
A.
Thomas
Erotic
art
has
long
comprised
the
secret
museum
of
art
history
because
societal
taboos
and
restrictive
cultural
mors
have
created
an
awkward
and
embarrassing
atmosphere
around
human
sexuality,
at
least
in
the
west.
Similarly,
some
writers
and
viewers
have
considered
Pop
Art
as
something
of
an
embarrassment
in
the
history
of
art.
Seen
as
selling
out
modernism,
its
popular
and
economic
success
helped
to
spur
its
general
critical
rejection
in
the
art
world
of
the
early
sixties.
Pop
was
seen
as
thumbing
its
nose
at
serious
modernist
art
for
many
reasons,
but
among
the
least
discussed
of
its
artistic
transgressions
has
been
the
consistent
use
of
sexual
and
erotic
imagery.
In
a
sort
of
artistic
patricide,
the
Pop
artists
used
erotic
images
as
part
of
an
overall
strategy
to
establish
themselves
as
the
new
avant-garde
while
distancing
themselves
from
the
oppressive
weight
of
the
Abstract
Expressionist
art
establishment.
In
1939
Clement
Greenbergs
Avant-Garde
and
Kitsch
codified
the
almost
sacred
separation
of
modernist,
highbrow
culture
and
art
from
popular,
lowbrow
products.
In
Greenbergs
view
whatever
held
popular
appeal
for
the
masses
was
by
definition
lowbrow
kitsch
and
artistically
insignificant.
Kitsch
was
thus
defined
by
its
designated
site
in
popular
culture.
Greenberg
was
not
alone
in
his
opposition
to
mass
culture;
commercial
art
and
popular
media
were
widely
considered
artistically
insignificant.
Bernard
Rosenberg
and
David
Manning
White,
discussing
mass
culture
in
1957,
expressed
the
accepted
opinion
that
art
was
the
counterconcept
to
popular
culture
and
that
a
genuine
esthetic
(or
religious
or
love)
experience
becomes
difficult,
if
not
impossible,
whenever
kitsch
pervades
the
atmosphere.1 When
Pop
artists
began
to
appropriate
popular
culture
by
using
commercial
images
and
styles,
they
defied
Greenbergs
artistic
hierarchies
and
consciously
sought
out
the
abjectrelative
to
their
own
art-historical
context.
While
some
recent
psychoanalytic
theory
projects
many
complex
layers
of
meaning
onto
the
term
abjection,
I
prefer
a
less
labored
definition.
Websters
dictionary
defines
abject
as
miserable;
wretched
or
lacking
self-respect;
degraded.
It
derives
from
the
Latin
verb
abjicere,
which
means
to
throw
away.
The
modernist
imperative
included
an
unspoken
rule
The
Free
Press,
1957),
10.
1 Bernard Rosenberg and David Manning White, eds., Mass Culture: The Popular Arts in America (London:
that
the
radicality
of
the
art
would
produce
an
underlying
sense
of
the
abject,
hence
provoking
negative
reactions
of
shock
from
an
uninformed
public.
Pop
Art,
however,
redoubled
and
redefined
the
modernist
affection
for
the
abject.
Even
the
self-styled
avant-garde
saw
it
as
miserable
and
wretched.
Max
Kozoloffs
famous
1962
article
derided
the
emerging
style
for
its
metaphysical
disgust
practiced
by
new
vulgarians.2
Paradoxically,
Pop
artists
had
turned
to
popular
culture
largely
because
they
felt
such
intense
pressure
to
conform
to
modernist
standards
of
the
avant-garde.
Andy
Warhol
well
illustrated
this
impulse.
As
he
began
to
seek
a
high
profile
in
the
New
York
art
world,
he
visited
the
art-lending
gallery
then
offered
by
the
Museum
of
Modern
Art.
Upon
seeing
a
collage
by
Rauschenberg,
Warhol
remarked
with
disgust,
Thats
a
piece
of
shit.
Anyone
can
do
that.
I
can
do
that.
His
friend
Ted
Carrey
responded,
Well,
why
dont
you
do
it?
Well,
Ive
got
to
think
of
something
different,
was
Warhols
response.3
The
Pop
artists
effectiveness
in
conveying
their
radical
status
was
instantaneous
and
profound.
Thomas
Hess
reported
that
a
leading
modernist
painter,
upon
seeing
the
watershed
exhibition
of
Pop
and
other
art
at
Sidney
Janis
Gallerys
New
Realists
show
in
November
1962,
exclaimed,
I
feel
a
bit
like
a
follower
of
Ingres
looking
at
the
first
Monets.4
In
fact,
the
disgust
of
the
modernist
establishment
was
such
that
Janiss
entire
stable
of
Abstract
Expressionists
(except
Willem
de
Kooning)
left
his
gallery.5
Erotic
and
sexual
contentwhich
could
increase
the
arts
wretched
and
degrading
connotationswere
among
the
Pop
artists
most
effective
tools
in
establishing
their
avant- garde
credentials.
All
of
the
major
Pop
artists
involved
themselves
with
such
imagery
to
some
degree,
particularly
those
whose
work
commented
on
the
mass
media
exploitation
of
female
sexuality:
Tom
Wesselmann
and
Mel
Ramos.
Typical
of
Wesselmanns
work
is
Great
American
2
Max
Kozloff,
Pop
Culture,
Metaphysical
Disgust,
and
the
New
Vulgarians,
Art
International
6
(March
1962):
34-36.
3
Patrick
Smith,
Art
in
Extremis:
Andy
Warhol
and
his
Art
(Ph.D.
diss.,
Northwestern
University,
1932),
468-69.
4
Thomas
Hess,
New
Realists,
Art
News
61
(December
1962):
12.
5
Barbara
Haskell,
Blam!
The
Explosion
of
Pop,
Minimalism,
and
Performance,
1958-1964
(New
York:
Whitney
Museum
of
American
Art
in
association
with
W.
W.
Norton
&
Co.,
1984),
86;
Calvin
Tomkins,
Profiles:
A
Good
Eye
and
a
Good
Ear,
Leo
Castelli,
The
New
Yorker,
26
May
1980,62.
Nude #55 of 1964. All of the elements of the painting are simplified into flat areas of commercial-looking, bright color, except for the tasteless, leopard-print spread on which the nude lies. The artists characteristic emphasis on erogenous zones by the use of contrasting colors is heightened in this work by the use of collaged hair. Interestingly, in explaining his artistic strategy the artist revealed an odd conflation of formalism with a realization of the abject quality of the subject. He stated (not referring specifically to #55) that he found the emphasized pubic areas blatantly erotic and consequently visually aggressive. A shaved vagina had the same vividness and immediacy as a strong red.6 Mel Ramoss most famous works are probably the paintings of 1965-66 in which nude centerfold girls were paired with common commercial products (usually food, but always something consumable). In Val Veeta a nubile sixties sex kitten sprawls on a giant box of Velveeta cheese spread. Ramos customarily played with the title in order to alliteratively connect the womans name with the corresponding product. The painting equates the highly processed and artificial erotic image of the nude woman with the similarly processed and
artificial
food
product.
The
sensual
aspects
of
the
food
parallel
the
sensual
aspects
of
the
nude.
The
extensive
finishing
and
processing
that
such
a
nude
model
would
undergoincluding
later
airbrushingmade
her
a
product
as
far
removed
from
a
real
woman
as
the
rubbery,
glutinous
Velveeta
is
from
real
cheese.
Both
were
meant
to
be
consumedone
by
the
eyes,
the
other
by
the
mouth.
Ramoss
smooth
brushwork
in
Val
Veeta
imitates
the
airbrushed
perfection
of
Playboy
centerfold
models
and
recalls
the
slick
technique
of
advertising
illustration.
Both
in
style
and
subject,
the
painting
embodies
some
of
the
most
reviled
and
abject
features
of
popular
culture:
blatant
consumerism,
the
sexual
sell,
crassness.
Oddly,
Ramos
has
never
acknowledged
any
such
purposeful
strategy,
however,
maintaining
that
he
is
just
a
figure
painter.7
In
contrast,
Claes
Oldenburg
explicitly
related
eroticism
to
the
transformative
nature
of
his
art.
As
he
said,
My
work
is
always
on
its
way
between
one
point
and
another.8
The
points
in
his
particular
artistic
geometry
usually
encompassed
mundane
objects
at
one
end
6
Slim
Stealingworth
[Tom
Wesselman],
Wesselmann
(New
York:
Abbeville,
1980),
23.
7
Mel
Ramos,
interview
by
the
author,
30
May
1991,
Oakland,
California,
Tape
recording.
8
Lawrence
Alloway,
American
Pop
Art
(New
York:
Macmillan,
1974),
101.
and
sexual
organs
or
erotic
symbols
at
the
other.
Falling
Shoestring
Potatoes
(1966)
illustrates
the
fluid
mutations
Oldenburg
saw
in
objects.
Ostensibly
it
is
a
giant
bag
of
French
fries
spilling
onto
the
gallery
floor.
But
as
Lawrence
Alloway
has
explained,
in
a
sketch
for
the
piece
Oldenburg
wrote
that
an
electrical
plug
equals
legs,
which
then
equal
shoestring
potatoes.
The
potatoes
resembled
both
legs
and
the
prongs
of
the
plug,
while
the
sack/skirt
from
which
the
potatoes/legs
protrude
was
the
plug
itself;
the
French
fries
were
thus
a
metaphor
for
legs
under
a
miniskirt
and
an
electrical
plug.9
Oldenburgs
vision
of
a
pansexual
world
correlated
with
contemporaneous
psychoanalytic
theories
that
posited
sexuality
as
being
at
the
root
of
our
perception.
Oldenburg
was
a
fan
of
Norman
O.
Brown,
an
early
sixties
writer
and
thinker
who
believed
in
the
renunciation
and
repression
of
logic
in
a
favor
of
a
return
to
the
polymorphous
perversity
of
infancy
as
described
by
Freud.10
There
is
often
a
grotesque
quality
to
Oldenburgs
transmutations:
for
example,
in
a
musing
written
in
his
notebooks,
ice
cream
=
God
=
sperm.11
Such
polymorphous
perversity
would
have
created
a
sense
of
abjection
in
a
typical
squeamish
1960s
viewer.
Almost
as
soon
as
James
Rosenquist
turned
to
painting
Pop
works,
erotic
elements
began
to
appear.
I
Love
You
With
My
Ford
has
probably
received
more
critical
attention
than
any
other
Rosenquist
painting
except
F-111.
Gene
Swenson
wrote
in
1962:
The
upper
section,
an
obsolescent
49
Ford,
comments
on
things
which
change
(car
models),
or
persist
(making
love
in
cars).
The
progressive
enlargement
of
scale
in
the
three
sections
parallels
the
increasing
loss
of
identity
in
the
sexual
act.12
Or
as
Simon
Wilson
saw
it,
.
.
.
the
Ford
phallic
symbol
looms
over
the
face
of
the
girl,
her
eyes
closed
and
lips
parted
in
ecstasy,
while
below
the
consummation
is
somehow
symbolized
by
the
writhing,
glutinous
masses
of
spaghetti.13
9
Ibid.,
104.
10
Barbara
Rose,
The
Origins,
Life
and
times
of
Ray
Gun,
Artforum
8
(November
1969):
57;
Barbara
Rose,
Claes
Oldenburg
(New
York:
Museum
of
Modern
Art,
1970),
64.
11Ellen
Johnson,
Claes
Oldenburg
(Harmondsworth
and
Baltimore:
Penguin,
1971),
24.
12
Gene
Swenson,
The
New
American
Sign
Painters,
Art
News
61
(September
1962):
60-61.
13
Simon
Wilson,
Pop
(Woodbury,
NY:
Barrrons,
1978),
24.
Rosenquists title perhaps suggests that commodity exchange involving objects such as this
will replace physical affection (and its accompanying messiness and complications). The artist depicted the sexual act on three levels corresponding to the three horizontal bands of imagery. On top is the car itself, a representation of consumerist societys love affair with the automobile. The middle register conveys the romance of the sexual act as immortalized in films and advertisements: the idealized embrace of a white, heterosexual couple, reduced to the acceptable synecdoche of faces pressed together. In the lowest register, the spaghetti refers to the actual, sensual, physical experience of sexual intercourse. The symbolic consummation of the spaghetti refers to the most abject attributes of the sexual act: the friction of mucous membranes and the secretion of bodily fluids. The softly modulated contours of Rosenquists billboard-inspired brushwork increase the sensuality of the spaghetti and the embracing couple above it. As with Oldenburgs work, there is a grotesque aspect to Rosenquists metaphorical conjunction of the most base and physical aspects of love with American commercialism. Andy Warhol went far beyond the teasing, often subliminal sexuality of advertising and mass media by dealing with sex more candidly than any other Pop artist. Among Warhols earliest, widely-noticed works were silkscreened images of Hollywood sex symbols such as Marilyn Monroe and Elizabeth Taylor. However, the very first of these images, made in limited numbers during the summer of 1962, depicted the male actors Troy Donahue and Warren Beatty. Thomas Crow has demeaned these works as dead-end experiments,14 but their erotic content is significant. While the open recognition of male sex symbols was largely taboo in normative straight culture, Donahue and Beatty would have been widely and openly renowned as desirable sexual objects by Warhol and others in New Yorks gay subculture. As Warhol told an interviewer regarding Donahue, He was so great. God!15 In 1963 Warhol first announced his intention to make pornographic pictures using black lights so that the canvas looked blank under normal gallery lights. If the show was
14
Thomas
Crow,
Saturday
Disasters:
trace
and
Reference
in
Early
Warhol,
Art
in
America
75
(May
1987):
134.
15
Smith,
944.
raided by the police, the lights would go on and the evidence would disappear.16 Such a painting finally appeared in October 1966 at Sidney Janis Gallerys Erotic Art 66 show.17 Seemingly derived from a soft-core pornographic nude, in his usual serial fashion Warhol repeated the image of a womans stomach and breasts. Art critic David Bourdon recalled that the image was repeated on many panels that covered a wall, and that a special switch was available for the viewer to turn on the ultraviolet light,18 just as Warhol had earlier planned. Interestingly, the eerie glow of the ultraviolet light in the darkness and the flicking off of the lights before the show starts is also reminiscent of the peep shows and porno arcades of 42nd Street, with which Warhol was certainly familiar. Warhols forays into filmmaking were startlingly sexual almost from the beginning. In
fact,
we
might
even
say
that
Warhols
entire
film
career
was
predicated
on
sexuality.
The
first
film
for
which
he
became
widely
known,
Sleep,
depicted
Warhols
then-crush,
the
poet
John
Giorno,
sleeping
for
hours,
variously
repeated
into
a
six-hour
film.
The
reels
focused
on
Giornos
nude
body
and
created
a
teasing
nudity
and
subtle
eroticism.
Only
a
few
months
later
in
January
1964
Warhol
filmed
another,
more
explicitly
sexual
work,
Blow
Job.
The
camera
never
left
the
face
of
the
still-anonymous
Factory
visitor
who
was
the
films
focus;
it
simply
documents
the
varied
and
sometimes
hilarious
expressions
that
passed
across
his
face.
If
not
for
the
title
the
nature
of
the
activity
would
be
difficult
to
determine.
Such
films,
which
engaged
eroticism
through
allusion,
were
a
far
cry
from
slightly
later
works
such
as
Couch,
explicitly
depicting
random
couplings
on
a
couch
in
the
silver
Factory.
With
connotations
ranging
from
pornography
to
homosexuality,
the
sexuality
of
Warhols
oeuvre
was
probably
the
most
threatening
of
any
Pop
artist
to
the
sixties
establishment.
Pops
obvious
connections
to
quickly
shifting
trends
in
mass
culture
often
resulted
in
the
two
being
directly
confused
with
each
other.
Max
Kozloff
reported
in
1965
that
media
had
started
to
connect
art
with
other
aspects
of
popular
culture
because
of
a
confusion
between
behavior
at
openings
(or
at
independent
film
showings
or
discotheques)
and
works
of
art.19
16
Gene
Swenson,
What
is
Pop
Art?
Part
I,
Art
News
62
(November
1963):
60-61.
17
New
York,
Sidney
Janis
Gallery,
Erotic
Art
66,
Exhibition
3-29
October
1966.
18 David Bourdon, interview by author, Tape recording, New York, 15 May 1991. 19 Max Kozloff, Art: Review of the Season, The Nation, 7 June 1965, 623.
Gallery receptions could be news for the society page. Art became fashionable and hip in a way it had not been before. Pop Art rapidly became connected in the public mind to a variety of simultaneous cultural trends. For instance, the art world and the public often associated Pop with the burgeoning interest in the camp sensibility, exemplified by the publication of Susan Sontags Notes on Camp in late 1964.20 The conflation of the two even resulted in a wave of accusations that Pop Art was a homosexual conspiracy to ruin the art world.21 Warhols importance in this phenomenon cannot be underestimated. Although he was the last of the major New York Pop artists to have a solo exhibition, he quickly became the most famous of the group because of his purposely outrageous lifestyle and his clever manipulation of media. Starting as a commercial artist, then moving to paintings, films, nightclubs, bands, and becoming a semi-professional party-goer, Warhol both epitomized and spearheaded the blending of genres at the time. His undisguised homosexuality added a good deal of verve to his public image as a shocking sexual rebel. His retinue of pill-popping drag queens, gays, lesbians, and others of varied sexual orientations completed the outrageous picture he sought to portray. By promoting a bandthe Velvet Undergroundopening a nightclubThe Exploding Plastic Inevitableand attending (often crashing) society gatherings, he associated Pop Art with everything trendy and fashionable. Sexuality involves an element of pleasure just as popular culture does, and the pleasurable aspects of Pop also played an important role in both its initial critical rejection and its association with the abject. Dick Hebdige pointed out that critics summarily dismissed Pop Art as empty and shallow, but that Pop actually set out to blur the distinctions and overturn the suppositions that provided the very foundations of this critical attitude. By way of explanation Hebdige quoted Pierre Bourdieu, who described the traditional antithesis between culture and corporeal pleasure (or nature if you will) that was expressed by a social relationship: the opposition between a cultivated bourgeoisie and the people. In other words, critics rejected Pop because of its association with the pleasurable, which was by
20
Susan
Sontag,
Notes
on
Camp,
Partisan
Review
31
(Fall
1964):
515-16,
530.
21 Most notably seen in Vivian Gornick, Pop Goes Homosexual: Its a Queer Hand Stoking the Campfire,
definition common and kitsch.22 The Pop artists easygoing personalities and commercial success, their arts obvious humor, and their use of eroticism all emphasized the pleasurable aspects of their art and a consequential association with the non-elite masses that were the intended market of the creators of Pops original sources of imagery. Little had been more reviled, repressed and kitsch in America than the open,
pleasurable enjoyment of sexualitythe reaction to the publication of Kinseys famous works was proof enough of that. Sex was an integral part of popular culture, however. Pinups, pornography, and comic books: all of these utilized eroticism, and all were at the bottom of the kitsch barrel. Pop artists initially sought a variety of kitsch imagery from popular culture as a revolutionary alternative to modernist abstraction. But if an artist really wanted to turn his back on modernist formalism, he could do more than just copy a comic bookhe could copy an erotic comic book. By injecting elements of sexuality, the Pop artists were able to increase the trashy connotations of their work and begin the overturning of modernist dogma that was eventually to create a basis for postmodernism.
22 In Paul Taylor, ed., Post-Pop Art (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press and Flash Art Books, 1989), 94, 104-05.