In her series of paintings, “Ablutions,” Fernandez asks the question, “What does it mean to be clean in today’s society?” What is it that we are constantly trying to wash away? Our sexuality, our dirty thoughts, our profane desires, our lustful, violent tendencies? And to what end? To places that all smell the same, people that all look the same, speech that is censored before it is spoken, images that never appear for fear of leaving some permanent stain?

Women are inequitably impacted by the realities imposed by our cultural double standards. I’ve been experiencing it since my mother made me wash my white socks – which I’d been running around the house in, chasing my four year old brother – by hand in the bathroom sink.  Scrub away the dirt(y). White, white, white. Whitewash everything. Brides in white, panties in white, tips of fingers and toes in white. My brother received no such punishment, was taught no such rituals. His dirt – of which there is plenty – when not respected, was at least tolerated and was typically seen as a badge of toughness.

“My work investigates how women identify their strengths and sensuality in performing labor in which there is no visible economic or social value, and which is frequently considered ‘dirty,’” says Fernandez. It’s funny that we are still struggling with these questions, but we’re lucky that they have inspired such lovely paintings.

Check them out at http://anateresafernandez.com

The image should take you right to her site.

Enjoy.

For today’s post, I thought I would add to the Naked compendium by doing the following Google image searches and sharing the totally non-curated, top ten results with you. (As such, these images are not necessarily my favorites, but in the interest of science, I’m keeping my own leanings to myself. For now.)

Search 1: Vagina sculptures

Search 2: Penis sculptures

** Note that the urls listed are taken from the search results and are rarely direct links to the artists or artworks. There are also a number of repeats. If you know the name of any of the missing artists, please let me know.

PENISES – Top ten results as of 1/31/11

1.

ARTIST: unknown

TITLE: Penis Fountain at Casa Rosso

URL: http://www.degeneratepress.com/postmodernlove/act_3_scene_1.html

From the website: This penis sculpture has balls that rotate on a column of water. You’d have a hard time displaying this in a gallery in the US, but in Amsterdam it’s on a public street.

2.

ARTIST: unknown

TITLE: Chinese Sex Relic (c. 3000 BCE)

URL: http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/275063

From the website: The oldest items date back 5,000 years ago. These reddish dildos weren’t used sexually though; they have holes near the testicle area so the Chinese could hang them up near their doors to ward off evil demons. After all, the logic went, demons would be embarrassed to see such blatant phallic symbols.

3.

ARTIST: unknown

TITLE: unknown

URL: http://www.demotiv8.blogspot.com/

From the website: The blog was no longer publicly available. [A cursory search for “‘Got Wood’ penis sculpture” yielded some interesting penises, but no sign of this one.]

4.

ARTIST: unknown

TITLE: *I have no luck*

URL: http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=82953

From the website: Made out of white air drying clay, coloured and varnished. [The rest of the content was removed from the post by ImageShack.]

5.

ARTIST: Paul Vella Critien

TITLE: “Colonna Mediterranea”

URL: http://www.news.com.au/breaking-news/penis-sculpture-in-malta-must-go-before-popes-visit-says-mayor/story-e6frfku0-1225853054030

From the website: The mayor of a town near Malta’s main airport has called for the removal of a sculpture resembling a penis near the road leading to the capital Valletta ahead of a weekend visit by the Pope.

The sculpture, which mayor John Schembri described as “obscene” and “embarrassing”, should be removed “as a sign of respect” for Pope Benedict XVI, he said.

6.

ARTIST: Ron Mueck

TITLE: “Untitled (Big Man)”

URL: http://www.sarahnielson.com/2009/03/the-post-with-a-penis/

From the website: This sculpture was part of the “Strange Bodies” exhibit. The seven-feet-tall piece sits alone in a corner and is absolutely incredible. It’s so lifelike that I kept expecting him stand up and scream at me for calling his junk small.

7.

ARTIST: unknown

TITLE: unknown

URL: http://www.demotiv8.blogspot.com/

From the website: The blog was no longer publicly available. A cursory search for “‘Got Wood’ penis sculpture” yielded some interesting penises, but no sign of this one.

8.

ARTIST: Herman Makkink

TITLE: “Rocking Machine”

URL: http://www.artfagcity.com/2010/02/01/rare-pictures-of-famous-people-artist-edition/

From the website: Stanley Kubrick takes on a penis sculpture

9.

ARTIST: unknown

TITLE: unknown

URL: http://www.themeparkreview.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=288798

From the website: Wow! Today’s penis sculpture really IS a Penis Sculpture!!!

10.

ARTIST: Jo Mann

TITLE: “A Woman’s Perspective”

URL: http://www.banderasnews.com/0709/art-penissculpture.htm

From the website: The huge manhood edifice in her kitchen, which took her four months to sculpt – plaster of Paris, garden hose, vacuum hose (think of veins), and lots of duct tape – was created for the 2006 International AIDS Conference in Toronto.

VAGINAS – Top ten results as of 1/31/11

1.

ARTIST: Jamie McCartney

TITLE: “Great Wall of Vagina”

URL: http://blog.lib.umn.edu/garv0057/myblog/2010/09/the-great-wall-of-vagina.html

From the website: Although sculptures of vaginas are not really a part of my daily life (and probably not many other people’s, either) why should it be shocking to see an explicit portrayal of a vagina? I think this question can in part be tied to Nancy Tuana’s article Coming to Understand: Orgasm and the Epistemology of Ignorance. Although our society is bombarded with sexual images in media, the most blatant references are to the male phallus and the vagina is still a slightly more taboo subject.

2.

ARTIST: unknown

TITLE: unknown

URL: http://www.jimjamzoo.com/vagina-art-and-sculptures/

From the website: Some images of Vagina Art and Sculptures might disturb few viewers, Viewer Discretion Advised. [There was no reference to any of the artists by name.]

3.

ARTIST: ALD [aka QuiteCntrary on Etsy]

TITLE: “Bare Series Kate”

URL: http://www.etsy.com/listing/21378217/vagina-sculpture-bare-series-kate

From the website: This small sculpture is cast in high quality artist’s resin from one of my original clay sculptures. My friend Kate was kind enough to pose as my model for this piece.

4.

ARTIST: unknown

TITLE: unknown

URL:http://www.toymachine.com/newspost/2735/with+thomas+c+and+aaron+r+in+nyc/

From the website: Vagina culptures? Youd expect penis sculptures from a 3 year old.or a teenager. Posted By: Jgonzalez on January 30th, 2007 at 03:36PM PST

5.

ARTIST: Jamie McCartney

TITLE: “Great Wall of Vagina”

URL: http://www.artnewsblog.com/2008/09/vaginas.htm

From the website: I went to the artist’s Brighton Bodycasting website to look at more of his work and found his “Design a Vagina” project. Below is a detail of a wall piece he is creating. The artist is also looking for volunteer vagina models if anyone is interested. He has cast 120 vaginas so far but needs another 40 to finish his study of the female bodypart.

6.

ARTISTS: JessicaDoyle; artbywinona; QuiteCntrary; freckleface [Etsy usernames]

TITLE: violet the vulva; lips no. 6; vagina sculpture; the britney

URL: http://bybelinda.blogspot.com/2009/02/v-g-i-n.html

From the website: this is me and janelle with our ‘we love vagina’ sign that was mentioned in the university paper: the new u! and finally, i also found these lovely vagina inspired creations on etsy.

7.

ARTIST: ALD [aka QuiteCntrary]

TITLE: “Sacred Heart Suzie”

URL: http://www.etsy.com/listing/21415901/vagina-sculpture-sacred-heart-suzie-with

From the website: This small sculpture has been cast in high quality artist’s resin from one of my original clay sculptures. My friend Suzanne was kind enough to pose as my model.

8.

ARTIST: unknown

TITLE: unknown

URL: http://www.thelovesongs.com/scandia/4.htm

From the website: Below the chin is a bona fide chonch. Boobies on TV, chonch on the sides of buildings… Yay Sweden!

9.

ARTIST: unknown

TITLE: unknown

URL: http://www.jimjamzoo.com/vagina-art-and-sculptures/

From the website: Some images of Vagina Art and Sculptures might disturb few viewers, Viewer Discretion Advised. [There was no reference to any of the artists by name.]

10.

ARTIST: Dominique Regnier

TITLE: “Morceau choisi 64”

URL: http://www.thundersnake.com/archives/2008/sept2008.htm

From the website: Atlanta Fetish Works …  …*via unscathed corpse …Nombres Propios : Dominique Regnier… …

Sexual Personae. Completed in 1981, but left unpublished – rejected by 7 major publishers until Yale Press picked it up in 1990 – this book could have and perhaps would have radically transformed my life – in particular, my perceptions about victimhood and sexual abuse. I bought the book from a small used bookstore in Kansas City in 1992. It’s just that I never read it. My copy of Sexual Personae sat, unread, unknown, until the sheer weight of it – during my more minimalist, transient years – simply became too much to carry around. Coulda, shoulda, woulda.

I was raised in a small suburb of eastern Kansas by two lifelong federal employees. The public school system had degenerated enough that when I rejected a continuation of my Catholic  schooling and entered it instead, I was leagues ahead of my classmates. Thus I was subsequently so entirely bored that I turned rather quickly to sex and drugs, and yes, I suppose, rock’n'roll (if we must). There was really no chance that I would read any type of feminist theory – controversial or not – for many, MANY years. It just wasn’t part of the program.

There are many things I disagree with in Paglia’s philosophy. For one, I can’t agree with her, writing in her essay, “The Joy of Presbyterian Sex,” that exclusive adult homosexuality is a “relatively recent phenomenon related to the emergence of the isolated nuclear family…” I also find both solace and stimulation in the post-structuralists, and her critique of those “…parched, pinched, word-drunk Anglo-Saxon [feminists]…” strikes me as particularly hollow, given the fact that she herself chose writing as a primary mode of expression.

But reading her “Rape and Modern Sex War,” as published in Sex, Art, and American Culture, made me stop and ponder more often than I normally would. The topic she touched on that most touches me is “date rape.” I don’t know when exactly this term came into vogue, though the article I’m reading is dated 1992. The importance lies in the fact that this particular turn of phrase defined a part of my life in a way that I had never experienced prior to hearing it.

“Date rape.”

I can almost remember the first time I heard the term. I must have been 16 or 17, actively having sex for three or four years. Some good; some very, very bad. It happened to me more than once. As Paglia says later in “Rape and Modern Sex War,” “Real acquaintance rape…has been a horrible problem for women for all of recorded history.” It was a problem for me and, I imagine, for some of my friends – though it wasn’t something we talked about.

Privilege, I had. Of a limited, Midwestern, middle-class sort. The kind that continues to evoke a type of guilt in me even as I write the words. But awareness? Worldliness? Culture? Of these, I had little. Growing up in my house, there was no mention of anything that was actually happening in intellectual real time. I was pathetically sheltered and under-informed – although I did fancy myself quite sophisticated, mainly because I had sex with a lot of people and did quite a few drugs without restraint or intelligence.

By the time I was 19, I had been involved in an extremely abusive relationship with a boy – yes, a boy, we were 13 when it started – for years. He had been forcing me to have sex with him for many of those years (I was 20 at the time I’m thinking of) but there is no denying that at certain times – not all, but some – I really did deserve it. The forcing, I mean.

But let me explain. I do realize that what I am saying is a total anathema to the prevalent feminist theory of the 1990s, and in most circles today. But at 19, I didn’t know anything about non-normative sexuality – things like fisting and swinging, gangbangs and latex fetishes, sadomasochism – these were all as distant from me as another planet. I’d seen pornography, of course, and I knew about anal sex and homosexuality (in fact, learning that bisexuality wasn’t something that turned everyone on was quite eye-opening).

So…I was starting to learn, but it was slow and secret and embarrassing (my first visit to Good Vibrations – the famous sex shop in San Francisco when I was 20 – was totally, mind-blowingly, life-altering) and the idea of mutually satisfying role playing of the BDSM variety was still far outside of my experience. And so, I teased. And said no when I meant yes. And complained and cried and screamed and fought. The fact that I wanted someone to take a strong hand with me, or as Paglia says of Madonna, the fact that I was “confronting the dilemma of the strong woman looking for a man but uncertain whether she wants a tyrant or a slave,” manifested itself in my finding and staying with abusive men well into my twenties. Sometimes, as much as it pains me and frees me to say it, I asked for it.

Not always, of course. The boy I mentioned earlier really was horribly abusive, inside and outside of the bedroom he was a master of manipulative button-pushing and the wielding of raw, adolescent rage. But sometimes, when I look back, it was me that wanted to play rough. I just didn’t know how to ask for it – not that he was the correct one to ask, as he most certainly was not – and I didn’t know how to recognize my own impulses for what they were: perfectly acceptable, if a bit off-center, sexual desires. Rape? Sometimes. Not-rape? Other times. Oh, what’s a girl, and her hapless, horny boy, to do?

As Paglia says, “Aggression and eroticism are deeply ntertwined…[and]…Women must reorient themselves toward the elemental powers of sex, which can strengthen or destroy.” And this brings me back to myself at 19. I wish I would have read this – known this – when she wrote it. It may not have changed anything of my history – my predilection to stay with abusive men was far more insidious than simple sexual proclivity – but at least I would have seen it and heard it and been given the opportunity to think about something like date rape as other than my inevitable predicament; the inherent risk of carrying around a vagina.

My power was almost my undoing; my ignorance of alternative sexualities putting me into dangerous situations that could easily have been more controlled and kind. I thought for years that what I needed to write about was my abuse. It seems to me now that what I really need to write about is the knowledge of desire and ways to avoid being tricked and trapped by one’s own ignorance of kink.

Art by Pichard, via Kinky Delight.

Arousal, as a general term, simply refers to the state of being awake or reactive to stimuli. But for whatever reason, it’s tempting for me to think of it solely in terms of sexual arousal – that excited reaction to desire – the visceral, bodily, wet, hard feeling that we all get for something.

However, if I stick with the universal idea of arousal – in other words, if I leave the sex out of it – then I think we can all agree that we should be aroused by good art. Or perhaps stimulated is a better term. Yet another word that tempts me into a sexual connotation.

Hmmmm.

Being a word nerd (in addition to the aforementioned art nerd), I promptly realize I can’t decide which is more appropriate. So, as all good nerds do, I look them up to compare. My Merriam-Webster desktop widget tells me that stimulate means to “raise levels of physiological or nervous activity.” Arouse, on the other hand, means “to evoke or awaken a feeling, emotion, or response.”

Both say something slightly different that I am interested in exploring. But which is the more general response to art, I ask myself? And since I’m talking to myself and can therefore only speak for myself, I would probably have to go with arouse.

You know that feeling you get when you kiss someone that you really want to kiss for the first time? The awe, the excitement, the terror – the absolute sublimeness of it? Of course there’s the obvious bodily reaction, but it’s always more than that. Somehow the newness of those particular lips at that particular moment sparks something deep and lush in the hypothalamus and everything just lights up. Magic.

That’s how I felt the first time I saw Judd’s 100 untitled works in mill aluminum in  a converted airplane hanger in Marfa, TX. It’s the way I felt when I saw my first Jenny Holzer at the MCA in Chicago. My first Nam June Paik installation. The opening page of Ono’s Grapefruit.

John Waters once remarked that, “Contemporary art is sex. The artists, the cute kids working in the galleries, the paperwork from the galleries, the crating and shipping, all the young ‘hangers on’ crashing the openings — it’s all about sex.”

I’d say that really, it’s just all about your first time.

Image: xenon on berlin’s matthäikirche, 2001
© jenny holzer

I’ve been talking to R.S. for over an hour now. I still haven’t seen her paint, although the evidence is all around us. It’s actually quite romantic – this setting of hers – this world she’s managed to manufacture for herself. Like a movie set.

The action paintings were existential acts, I say, ways of struggling with physicality and man’s desperate need to create. However, most would agree they often manifested in work many see as angry, aggressive – savage even.

What role then – as woman, as artist – does violence play in your work?

“A subdued one,” she answers. “Like a velvet rope.”

De Kooning is said to have commented that “flesh was the reason oil paint was invented.” His work was at times so violent that one of his dealers observed that the canvases he received had holes in them from the brushwork. The critic Emily Genauer writing in Newsday in 1969 remarked that “[de Kooning] flays [the women], beats them, stretches them on racks, draws and quarters them…”

And R.S. is talking about velvet rope and nipple contours and calling her work “Action Paintings,” with only the slightest bit of irony.

And I’m talking about white, heterosexual, male abstract expressionists working during arguably the most reactivist, anti-feminist movement in American art history.

“They were the first artists I really related to, I guess. They still work at me – touch a part of me that is visceral, deep and dark and holy.”

She takes a long drag of her cigarette. Looks out the window, past the paintings that hang unfinished on the walls, out the window and across the street.

“The paintings,” she says, “When I look at them, they make me want to drink and smoke and fuck while someone reads Bukowski from a microphone and Patti Smith screams in the background. They keep me in a certain place where things can happen without consequence, where I can feel my heart beating and my mind spinning and everything seems brighter and worth looking at. Things feel worth creating.”

She looks right at me then. “Existential acts, I guess.”

It’s almost too much. I stifle a laugh. She’s starting to sound like a character from a bad movie – one of those over-exploitive artist mythologies that continue to create current versions of deKooning and Pollock at every art school in the world. Trying too hard, thinking too deep.

But then she does it for me. Laughs.

“What bullshit,” she says, stamping out her cigarette and gulping her wine. “The truth is, I like to fuck and I like to paint. And I don’t need a man for either one.”

I breathe a sigh of relief. Maybe it’s time to get a fukbox.

Image: Willem De Kooning, Woman V, 1952–1953.

R.S. built her machine -- she calls it her muse -- one long weekend while suffering from a seemingly endless dry spell (from both fucking + painting). When I asked her about it, she carelessly told me she’d found a DIY video online while contemplating using one of her larger brushes as a dildo.

Needless to say, I watched the “fukbox” video immediately. It’s only about 40 seconds long and all the speaking -- somehow predictably -- is in French. Kinda. Of course, you probably don’t want anyone to actually SEE you if you watch it at work -- there is a real (non art tool) dildo at the end. Be warned.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=61upXwSqq08

R.S. doesn’t tell her patrons about her proclivity for mixing sex and art -- she innocently called her most recent series of works “Action Paintings,” in somewhat ironic homage the misogynistic, womanizing art fuck, Willem de Kooning.

I remember an art history professor telling me that the abstract expressionists were all a bunch of testosterone-driven, drug-of-your-choice taking, mostly drunken macho men -- de Kooning included. Romanticized versions, all -- starving artist-geniuses toiling away in paint (cum) splattered studios, giant brushes (penises) ejaculating all over canvases (women) stretched wide, unwitting and unspoiled.

I ask R.S. about this -- she obviously feels some sort of affinity for these paragons of the white male canon. No matter how ironic, by naming her work after them she’s granted them some sort of status. At the very least, she’s implied their process.

“It’s like tracing the contour of a nipple,” R.S. tells me over a glass of wine. “I touch the canvas as delicately as I can, for as long as I can. I try never to lift the brush, to let the brush become a part of me. Of my trembling.”

It’s a beautiful, totally feminine thing to say. When she says it, she looks straight at me, her green eyes unblinking, unashamed. I imagine her bent forward at the waist, the fukbox behind her, a small brush poised ever so lightly between thumb and forefinger.

I want to see her paint. I realize that somehow I don’t care about the paintings. I simply want to see her paint them…

Image: Woman with a Green and Beige Background, 1966. Artist: Willem de Kooning.

We have VJ Peter Rand to thank for this tribute to Donald Judd. If you aren’t a fan of Minimalism – and Judd, in particular – this probably won’t have much meaning for you.

But then again, if you’re not a fan of Minimalism, you should become one and maybe watching this video is the first step toward redemption.

Enjoy the sounds of natural ecstasy, layered ever so brilliantly atop the hard edged industrialism of a true master.

Yes – this video is safe to watch in your cubicle.

No – the sounds are not from a real orgasm (or is it????), but as Peter Rand asked: When is the last time art made you feel like this?

Personally, my last art O was in the presence of a Judd. Maybe yours can be too.

Untitled from VJ Peter Rand on Vimeo.

So to convince you that I am not just some sort of pensive, feminist tease I decided to rectify that situation with today’s post. So if you don’t want to see some full on penetration (and/or other, similarly nasty things), it’s best that you navigate away from this page immediately.

Did I mention that this post is not at all safe for work? Consider yourself warned…

1. Pussy Purse, 2009

Artist: Deborah Alma Wheeler

2. Jeff in the Position of Adam, 1990

Artist: Jeff Koons

3. Witch and Dragon, 1515

Artist: Hans Baldung Grien

4. Monument to Pro-Life: The Birth of Sean Preston, 2006

Artist: Daniel Edwards

5. The Danes, 2006

Artist: John Currin

6. Bedtime Story

[Too Explicit to Post]

Artist: Barbara DeGenevieve

7. Untitled, 2006

Artist: Carroll Dunham

8. Erotic Scene, 1903

Artist: Pablo Picasso

9. Nude, Campden Hill, London, 1955

Artist: Bill Brandt

10. Penis Landscape, 1973

Artist: H. R. Giger

P.S. I do recognize and sincerely apologize for the fact that there are only three female artists represented – a situation that I will fight against in future installments.

For those of you who haven’t been following along, Gerald Ebinger – Vienna’s “cultural spokesperson,” was quoted as saying, quite vitriolically, that,  “Gangbang parties and domina rooms have nothing to do with art and certainly nothing to do with culture.”

I didn’t comment further and a reader called me on it. Told me that he felt like my post was a cop-out and a tease.

You missed the whole point, he told me. That sentence is the crux of the whole thing – the meat, so to speak. I want you to tell me: Why are gangbang parties and dominatrix rooms art? Or culture? Or anything besides perverted sex acts performed by perverted perverts?

Why indeed?

In a different article referencing the same exhibition – nothing brings out the Righteous Right like deviant sex – Ebinger was also quoted as saying that Büchel’s exhibition (Element6, really – I mean let’s give credit where credit’s due) was “abusing artistic freedom.”

In the context of Ebinger’s other comments, the first thing that strikes me is that these people are the same everywhere. Don’t understand what freedom is, but are damn sure about what it isn’t. It certainly isn’t tying someone up and suspending her from the ceiling of the Secession. Especially when she “appears not to be enjoying it,” as some vanilla-but-think-I’m-not blogger imbecilicly observed. And therein, as Hamlet says, lies the rub. Sexuality = sin, deceitfulness, duplicity = BAD.

We’re not only talking about artistic freedom – we’re talking about sexual freedom.

Sexual content is – and has been throughout Western (read: Christian) art history – the easiest target for the moral high rollers. Consider the 1998 Supreme Court decision that irrevocably (and to the detriment of all artists in this country) endowed those controlling art’s purse strings (read: NEA) with the right to “take into consideration general standards of decency and respect for the diverse beliefs and values of the American public.”

Okay – sorry – but What the fuck does that mean?

Try this: Connect the word decency to its enemy obscenity and you can get an idea of its implicit American essence. In 1964, and in truly historic fashion, Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart (in)famously declared that while he couldn’t exactly put his finger on it, well, “I know it when I see it.”

Okay – not sure that helped.

Fast forward ten years to 1973. The rules have been clarified somewhat (there are now three clearly delineated criteria that remain unchanged today), and yet there is still virulent disagreement about what is obscene and what is decent. About what is culture and what is simply crass.

I mean, there’s Piss Christ and Poop Mary and Bobby Bullwhip (to name a VERY few) – and that’s just up into the nineties.

…Shit. Tangential? Don’t think I answered my reader’s question…I guess I’m going to have to keep looking…

Photo courtesy of Memento24 & Element6.