Dear readers, we offer you an issue dedicated to the theme of eroticism
in photography. In my last editorial, I mistakenly cited Eroticon instead
of Satiricon, a film by Fellini. In my mind, Satiricon has become so
inextricably intertwined with the debauched eroticism of ancient Rome
as Fellini so voluptuously depicts it that perhaps you will excuse my
mistake. There is nonetheless also a film entitled Eroticon, made in 1929
by the Czech director Gustav Machatý.
The publication of erotic pictures has long ago lost the sense of being taboo, and I am at a loss whether this is for good or bad. Something originally shrouded in a veil of mystery which then becomes a commonplace element of everyday life, inflated by commercial exploitation, eventually becomes banal and perhaps even obnoxious. I still have a most vivid memory of the sensations with which, in the days of totalitarian rule, my friends and I browsed through erotic magazines smuggled from the West, and how quickly these lost their hold on our imagination as soon as they suddenly flooded the news-stands after the fall of the Communist regime. I can also recollect how exactingly the Communist establishment distinguished in art and the public media between “art” and “obscenity”. Only the “artistic” or academic nude was admissible, if possible rendered in such a manner to be as far as possible removed from the erotic impulse. Although the nude was always popular material for exhibitions of both painting and photography, there was a set degree of openness, forays beyond which the regime was not prepared to tolerate. It is therefore hardly surprising that eroticism was one of the key themes for photographers living under these regimes. It was one of the few points on which the regime wavered ideologically; or rather, the limits of what was allowed would shift over time depending of which leading ideologue happened to be in power at a given period. Real eroticism – beyond the bounds of the sterile academism of Czech photography during the 1970s and 1980s – was perhaps most memorably attempted by Jan Saudek. His pseudo-social staged scenes from the poor Žižkov neighborhood of Prague moreover had the good luck (or bad luck for the artist, who is to say?) that they began to sell very well, initially through Chicago\'s Baruch Gallery, and gradually also by other, mainly US galleries. The regime suffered this gladly – through the mediation of the state-owned Artcentrum company, it was one of its ways of availing itself of hard currency. Saudek was only seldom allowed to exhibit his work domestically, but he was not directly banned. The ruling nomenklatura would close their eyes every now and then, for politically there was little at stake.
In the 1980s, eroticism in photography began to be used as a means for a subtle provocation of the still cold, but already slightly thawing Communist system by a group of then-fresh graduates from FAMU (the Prague Film Academy), most of whom came to Prague from Slovakia – for this reason they later became known as the Slovak wave. Their photographs were more akin to some sort of neo-Dadaist épatage than to work created within the context of the existential, political or social issues of the day. In spite of this, at the time the group formed an important part of alternative culture, comparable perhaps to the new theater groups popping up at the time, such as for instance the Sklep theater and other small groups. Among those who worked with a slightly provocative soft-erotica were above all Tono Stano, Vasil Stanko, Rudo Prekop and Kamil Varga.
An altogether different eroticism was the staple of the Bratrstvo (Brotherhood) Group, who employed the post-modernist quotations, paraphrases and allusions, often lifted from the symbols of Art Nouveau. But this is already flashing forward to the late 1980s and the end of the Communist era.
Surprisingly, in the 1990s interest in the above-mentioned activities gradually waned, and the artists involved shifted their focus. A sole exception to this trend was Jan Saudek, already known internationally, who now began to build a following at home. He opted for the role of an easily recognizable and solitary figure, impossible to overlook in the turmoil of the rapidly developing media, and he embarked on relentless quotations of himself.
Looking back on the 1990s in the Czech lands, and possibly also in other post-communist countries, it was probably conceptual artists, performance artists, and others who newly adopted photography that created more interesting erotic photographs than the photographers themselves. This was perhaps due to the fact that they were not primarily engaged in the pursuit of producing erotic photographs, these often being an unexpectedly significant side-product of the happenings, performances and existential quests for identity that these artists engaged in within the circumstances of the newly found freedom.
To return, however, to the international context, and that of broader history, there occur to me certain milestones that marked fundamental shifts of the paradigm. I will try to touch on only those that had some personal impact on me, influencing my perception of photography as a tool for the dissemination of powerful, mediated experiences transcending the purely aesthetic plane. In this case it is erotica, but photography has surprised me and fulfilled my expectations also in other areas, usually in relation to its natural authenticity.
Searching through time for the recollections of some of these surprises, what first comes to mind is Hans Bellmer and his bandages. The whole cycle of his Dolls is a prototype of the much later pictures of Robert Mapplethorpe, of his X-ray portfolio, and above all the images of bondage and other “sweet cruelties”, which at the turn of the 1970s and 1980s made the reputation of Nobuyoshi Araki.
His staged photographs were to Bellmer something like the collage was for Jindřich Štyrský, one of the ways of Surrealist revolt against the hypocritical petit-bourgeois morality; in both cases the erotic content was merely one part of the complex composition of the image, whether the staged photograph of a model, or a collage using the pornographic print material of the era. Four or five decades later, both Mapplethorpe in the US and Araki in Japan faced a totally different situation. To both artists, the element of eroticism in their photographs was not a means to engage and assault the establishment, but a part of their attitude, their lifestyle. If in Mapplethorpe we still sense in the explicitly erotic scenes an effort to maintain some degree of aesthetic stylization, Araki is far more concerned with capturing daring erotic interplay between himself and his partner.
The controversial nature of their work and its unaccustomed openness helped the rapid rise of both artists\' popularity; a Mapplethorpe exhibition planned for the Corcoran Gallery in Washington was banned due to an intervention by the notorious ultra-conservative American senator Jesse Helms. There subsequently rose a huge wave of resistance on the part of artists, curators and other representatives of cultural institutions. In the end, the exhibition opened at the Institute of Contemporary Art, and the numbers it drew surpassed all expectation. As had so frequently been the case in the history of art, the banning became the best form of publicity.
Mapplethorpe did not live to see his moral victory – he died early that same year, and we can only guess what turns his further work would have taken. Untimely death plagued also Araki – his lifelong partner, muse and the protagonist of his erotic visions, Yoko Araki, died in 1990.
Araki\'s subsequent path is remarkable. In spite of the immense international popularity which his erotic photographs brought him, he was able to maintain a degree of detachment, and even in his frequent revisiting of erotic themes he still managed to maintain a sense of tension, fulfilling the expectations lavished on him by his audience for over three decades (in his photo-stories he has the uncanny ability to mix eroticism with tender banalities, as well as images contemplative bordering on abstraction… as if in his photographic oeuvre he continues to strive to define the changing of polarities in life).
A solitary figure of an altogether different stamp was Larry Clark. His Tulsa was probably the most revolutionary feat of the era in terms of its depiction of the intimate life of the young generation. Even though it depicted the life of a generation of young people growing up in the American Midwest, the impact of the book was universal. His next book, Teenage Lust, doubtless became an inspiration for his followers – headed by Nan Goldin, who nonetheless in contrast to him trespassed the imaginary borderline, her intimate diary photographs making it to the world\'s most prestigious museums. Nan Goldin\'s success encouraged many artists, and in particular female artists exploring their intimate eroticism. This in itself was a positive achievement, as it was often part of the ongoing feminist emancipation that celebrated a new interest in feminist ideas and gender art, particularly in post-communist countries, an unprecedented boost to its morale. The problem, however, was that all the essential battles had already been won; Nan Goldin exhibitions had been held at both the Whitney Museum as well as at Prague\'s Rudolfinum Gallery, and the relentless repetition of the same formula in countless variations emptied it of ideas. What was curious was that most women artists photographed either directly their own intimate life, or that of other women. Yet mostly there was nothing lesbian about it. Rather, it was as though they had internalized the censor\'s dictum that the female body, nude or engaged in sexual activity, was far more acceptable than its male counterpart. Perhaps a degree of opportunism was at play here. In any case, the most compelling male nudes for a long time remained the works of Mapplethorpe and the works of other homoerotic photographers.
Eroticism is a powerful impulse in photography today, generating ever-new forms. Visiting the recent art fair in Miami, there ran parallel a number of independent shows of this kind. Doubtless the most prominent of those was Art Basel. Not many photography galleries make it to this highest forum of commercial art scene. Yet this in no way curbed the selection of photographs on offer, as many contemporary art galleries exhibited their artists\' selection of pictures. Alongside Thomas Ruff\'s notorious Internet “soft-porn” images, these included the impressive grand-scale installed photographs by Marina Abramović, Women in the Rain, and above all Laurie Simmons\' interior shots saturated with color, featuring models in explicitly erotic postures. These alone were placed discreetly in some kind of a booth, as though X-rated. Exposed to all this public presentation of intimate, not to say obscene images, one could not help thinking of the Surrealists as well as other Modernist artists, who strove through the means of an open depiction of sexuality to provoke the social system; in the present setting they would be left in want of a cause to provoke.
In fact, the system has already absorbed erotica within its annals, it being now a well-established item of the art business.
In the final selection of artists represented in the present issue, we aimed to cover the diversity of approaches to eroticism in photography. Thus you will see side by side artists whose work is driven by the desire to record their personal experience; not only their eroticism, but also a kind of possession – or passion. This definition can be used to the full with Michael E. Northrup, and his Pam Book, extant as it is so far in a mock-up. It is a record of a relationship full of eroticism and passion – a relationship between the artist and his now ex-wife Pamela. An altogether different approach is exemplified in the work of the documentary photographer Naomi Harris, whose cycle entitled Swingers presents a sociological probe into the subculture of the visitors of sex bazaars.
We have also included in our Eroticon issue those artists who are working in a wholly opposite trend – exemplified by two conceptual artists from the former Yugoslavia: Tanja Ostojić and Vlasta Delimar. Both work on the edge of performance (self-installation) and photography, though each with a different intention.
In our inquiry into performance artists, many other figures seemed to offer themselves for inclusion in the present issue, whose work lies on the border between photography and performance. Their work, however, as a rule went well beyond the realm of eroticism, though clearly photography has long drawn impulses from the realm of performance art. We have therefore decided to dedicate to this aspect our next issue.
To conclude I have to go back to the idea that opened this editorial. The thrill and wonder of eroticism, of sex, will always be the source of a charge in both life and art. Erotic photography continues to strike a nerve again and again, while even the wisest prescripts voiced in words may bore one out of their mind. There is a limit to the sweetness one can bear in either a melody or a cake.
In turn, photography – real and authentic, will continue to discover new territories. Fortunately, also in the land of Eros.
The publication of erotic pictures has long ago lost the sense of being taboo, and I am at a loss whether this is for good or bad. Something originally shrouded in a veil of mystery which then becomes a commonplace element of everyday life, inflated by commercial exploitation, eventually becomes banal and perhaps even obnoxious. I still have a most vivid memory of the sensations with which, in the days of totalitarian rule, my friends and I browsed through erotic magazines smuggled from the West, and how quickly these lost their hold on our imagination as soon as they suddenly flooded the news-stands after the fall of the Communist regime. I can also recollect how exactingly the Communist establishment distinguished in art and the public media between “art” and “obscenity”. Only the “artistic” or academic nude was admissible, if possible rendered in such a manner to be as far as possible removed from the erotic impulse. Although the nude was always popular material for exhibitions of both painting and photography, there was a set degree of openness, forays beyond which the regime was not prepared to tolerate. It is therefore hardly surprising that eroticism was one of the key themes for photographers living under these regimes. It was one of the few points on which the regime wavered ideologically; or rather, the limits of what was allowed would shift over time depending of which leading ideologue happened to be in power at a given period. Real eroticism – beyond the bounds of the sterile academism of Czech photography during the 1970s and 1980s – was perhaps most memorably attempted by Jan Saudek. His pseudo-social staged scenes from the poor Žižkov neighborhood of Prague moreover had the good luck (or bad luck for the artist, who is to say?) that they began to sell very well, initially through Chicago\'s Baruch Gallery, and gradually also by other, mainly US galleries. The regime suffered this gladly – through the mediation of the state-owned Artcentrum company, it was one of its ways of availing itself of hard currency. Saudek was only seldom allowed to exhibit his work domestically, but he was not directly banned. The ruling nomenklatura would close their eyes every now and then, for politically there was little at stake.
In the 1980s, eroticism in photography began to be used as a means for a subtle provocation of the still cold, but already slightly thawing Communist system by a group of then-fresh graduates from FAMU (the Prague Film Academy), most of whom came to Prague from Slovakia – for this reason they later became known as the Slovak wave. Their photographs were more akin to some sort of neo-Dadaist épatage than to work created within the context of the existential, political or social issues of the day. In spite of this, at the time the group formed an important part of alternative culture, comparable perhaps to the new theater groups popping up at the time, such as for instance the Sklep theater and other small groups. Among those who worked with a slightly provocative soft-erotica were above all Tono Stano, Vasil Stanko, Rudo Prekop and Kamil Varga.
An altogether different eroticism was the staple of the Bratrstvo (Brotherhood) Group, who employed the post-modernist quotations, paraphrases and allusions, often lifted from the symbols of Art Nouveau. But this is already flashing forward to the late 1980s and the end of the Communist era.
Surprisingly, in the 1990s interest in the above-mentioned activities gradually waned, and the artists involved shifted their focus. A sole exception to this trend was Jan Saudek, already known internationally, who now began to build a following at home. He opted for the role of an easily recognizable and solitary figure, impossible to overlook in the turmoil of the rapidly developing media, and he embarked on relentless quotations of himself.
Looking back on the 1990s in the Czech lands, and possibly also in other post-communist countries, it was probably conceptual artists, performance artists, and others who newly adopted photography that created more interesting erotic photographs than the photographers themselves. This was perhaps due to the fact that they were not primarily engaged in the pursuit of producing erotic photographs, these often being an unexpectedly significant side-product of the happenings, performances and existential quests for identity that these artists engaged in within the circumstances of the newly found freedom.
To return, however, to the international context, and that of broader history, there occur to me certain milestones that marked fundamental shifts of the paradigm. I will try to touch on only those that had some personal impact on me, influencing my perception of photography as a tool for the dissemination of powerful, mediated experiences transcending the purely aesthetic plane. In this case it is erotica, but photography has surprised me and fulfilled my expectations also in other areas, usually in relation to its natural authenticity.
Searching through time for the recollections of some of these surprises, what first comes to mind is Hans Bellmer and his bandages. The whole cycle of his Dolls is a prototype of the much later pictures of Robert Mapplethorpe, of his X-ray portfolio, and above all the images of bondage and other “sweet cruelties”, which at the turn of the 1970s and 1980s made the reputation of Nobuyoshi Araki.
His staged photographs were to Bellmer something like the collage was for Jindřich Štyrský, one of the ways of Surrealist revolt against the hypocritical petit-bourgeois morality; in both cases the erotic content was merely one part of the complex composition of the image, whether the staged photograph of a model, or a collage using the pornographic print material of the era. Four or five decades later, both Mapplethorpe in the US and Araki in Japan faced a totally different situation. To both artists, the element of eroticism in their photographs was not a means to engage and assault the establishment, but a part of their attitude, their lifestyle. If in Mapplethorpe we still sense in the explicitly erotic scenes an effort to maintain some degree of aesthetic stylization, Araki is far more concerned with capturing daring erotic interplay between himself and his partner.
The controversial nature of their work and its unaccustomed openness helped the rapid rise of both artists\' popularity; a Mapplethorpe exhibition planned for the Corcoran Gallery in Washington was banned due to an intervention by the notorious ultra-conservative American senator Jesse Helms. There subsequently rose a huge wave of resistance on the part of artists, curators and other representatives of cultural institutions. In the end, the exhibition opened at the Institute of Contemporary Art, and the numbers it drew surpassed all expectation. As had so frequently been the case in the history of art, the banning became the best form of publicity.
Mapplethorpe did not live to see his moral victory – he died early that same year, and we can only guess what turns his further work would have taken. Untimely death plagued also Araki – his lifelong partner, muse and the protagonist of his erotic visions, Yoko Araki, died in 1990.
Araki\'s subsequent path is remarkable. In spite of the immense international popularity which his erotic photographs brought him, he was able to maintain a degree of detachment, and even in his frequent revisiting of erotic themes he still managed to maintain a sense of tension, fulfilling the expectations lavished on him by his audience for over three decades (in his photo-stories he has the uncanny ability to mix eroticism with tender banalities, as well as images contemplative bordering on abstraction… as if in his photographic oeuvre he continues to strive to define the changing of polarities in life).
A solitary figure of an altogether different stamp was Larry Clark. His Tulsa was probably the most revolutionary feat of the era in terms of its depiction of the intimate life of the young generation. Even though it depicted the life of a generation of young people growing up in the American Midwest, the impact of the book was universal. His next book, Teenage Lust, doubtless became an inspiration for his followers – headed by Nan Goldin, who nonetheless in contrast to him trespassed the imaginary borderline, her intimate diary photographs making it to the world\'s most prestigious museums. Nan Goldin\'s success encouraged many artists, and in particular female artists exploring their intimate eroticism. This in itself was a positive achievement, as it was often part of the ongoing feminist emancipation that celebrated a new interest in feminist ideas and gender art, particularly in post-communist countries, an unprecedented boost to its morale. The problem, however, was that all the essential battles had already been won; Nan Goldin exhibitions had been held at both the Whitney Museum as well as at Prague\'s Rudolfinum Gallery, and the relentless repetition of the same formula in countless variations emptied it of ideas. What was curious was that most women artists photographed either directly their own intimate life, or that of other women. Yet mostly there was nothing lesbian about it. Rather, it was as though they had internalized the censor\'s dictum that the female body, nude or engaged in sexual activity, was far more acceptable than its male counterpart. Perhaps a degree of opportunism was at play here. In any case, the most compelling male nudes for a long time remained the works of Mapplethorpe and the works of other homoerotic photographers.
Eroticism is a powerful impulse in photography today, generating ever-new forms. Visiting the recent art fair in Miami, there ran parallel a number of independent shows of this kind. Doubtless the most prominent of those was Art Basel. Not many photography galleries make it to this highest forum of commercial art scene. Yet this in no way curbed the selection of photographs on offer, as many contemporary art galleries exhibited their artists\' selection of pictures. Alongside Thomas Ruff\'s notorious Internet “soft-porn” images, these included the impressive grand-scale installed photographs by Marina Abramović, Women in the Rain, and above all Laurie Simmons\' interior shots saturated with color, featuring models in explicitly erotic postures. These alone were placed discreetly in some kind of a booth, as though X-rated. Exposed to all this public presentation of intimate, not to say obscene images, one could not help thinking of the Surrealists as well as other Modernist artists, who strove through the means of an open depiction of sexuality to provoke the social system; in the present setting they would be left in want of a cause to provoke.
In fact, the system has already absorbed erotica within its annals, it being now a well-established item of the art business.
In the final selection of artists represented in the present issue, we aimed to cover the diversity of approaches to eroticism in photography. Thus you will see side by side artists whose work is driven by the desire to record their personal experience; not only their eroticism, but also a kind of possession – or passion. This definition can be used to the full with Michael E. Northrup, and his Pam Book, extant as it is so far in a mock-up. It is a record of a relationship full of eroticism and passion – a relationship between the artist and his now ex-wife Pamela. An altogether different approach is exemplified in the work of the documentary photographer Naomi Harris, whose cycle entitled Swingers presents a sociological probe into the subculture of the visitors of sex bazaars.
We have also included in our Eroticon issue those artists who are working in a wholly opposite trend – exemplified by two conceptual artists from the former Yugoslavia: Tanja Ostojić and Vlasta Delimar. Both work on the edge of performance (self-installation) and photography, though each with a different intention.
In our inquiry into performance artists, many other figures seemed to offer themselves for inclusion in the present issue, whose work lies on the border between photography and performance. Their work, however, as a rule went well beyond the realm of eroticism, though clearly photography has long drawn impulses from the realm of performance art. We have therefore decided to dedicate to this aspect our next issue.
To conclude I have to go back to the idea that opened this editorial. The thrill and wonder of eroticism, of sex, will always be the source of a charge in both life and art. Erotic photography continues to strike a nerve again and again, while even the wisest prescripts voiced in words may bore one out of their mind. There is a limit to the sweetness one can bear in either a melody or a cake.
In turn, photography – real and authentic, will continue to discover new territories. Fortunately, also in the land of Eros.