Barbican Stages X-rated Exhibition
Published: February 26, 2007
An X-rated exhibition featuring a pornographic fresco from a Roman brothel and a fig leaf used to hide the private parts of Michelangelo's David is to staged at one of London's top arts centers. "Seduced: Art and Sex from Antiquity to Now" is so explicit that only patrons 18 and older will be allowed in when the show, which features around 250 works spanning 2,000 years, opens at the Barbican on October 12. Organizers say it aims to provoke "a lively public debate about shifting attitudes towards explicit imagery and to question the lines drawn between art and pornography.” "Is an explicit painting from an ancient Pompeian brothel acceptable because it is hallowed by time, while its modern equivalent is not?" a spokeswoman asked after a press conference to announce the show. "Because something can claim 'artistic merit', can it be exempted from charges of obscenity?" Other items likely to raise eyebrows at the normally staid Barbican include sketches of sexual acts by British artist JMW Turner and French sculptor Auguste Rodin, erotic Indian manuscripts and Japanese wood carvings. A sound installation called The Voice of Sex will feature readings from Vladimir Nabokov's novel "Lolita," the Marquis de Sade and the Kama Sutra. The 1.6-foot fig leaf is also likely to attract more than a few curious glances—it was made to hide David's genitalia from Britain's Queen Victoria after she was given a cast of the statue by the Grand Duke of Tuscany in 1857. Visitors can also expect to see "Made In Heaven," a series of sculptures and paintings depicting American artist Jeff Koons in explicit poses with his ex-wife, porn star and former Italian parliamentary deputy La Cicciolina. And Andy Warhol's Blow Job will also be shown—filmed in 1963, it is a 35-minute-long single shot film showing the face of a man being pleasured. Works by Pablo Picasso, Jean Honore Fragonard, Francis Bacon, Louise Bourgeois and Robert Mapplethorpe—famed for his controversial homoerotic photographs—are slated to appear. Kate Bush, the Barbican's head of galleries, has defended the show—which will run to January 27, 2008—against claims that it will be gratuitous. "It's not a show for someone to get their rocks off on, but a serious scholarly undertaking," she said. By Elodie Mazein, copyright 2007 Agence France-Presse |
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