The Art of Desire: Erotic Treasures from the Kinsey Institute
Over the years, the Kinsey Institute has amassed a collection of what both connoisseurs and sailors on leave would consider art and objets d'art. The effort was passive - donors either gave the work or, as was the case with at least one item, left it wrapped in brown paper on the front step. Perhaps this explains the enormous number of 'Unknown' artists in the collection. It is significant that the Institute has not intentionally collected, and it is only on the occasion of its 50th anniversary that a first attempt to display the collection through the curatorial exigencies of theme, scholarship and installation has been attempted. The work, for the most part, is scintillating, although sometimes a little repetitive (how many dildos, however carefully wrought, does an exhibition need?). It is easy enough to grasp why the show could have been an adolescent's wet dream, but the problem is, I felt a little like Pee Wee Herman in his last public appearance, in Florida, when the lights came on: I knew why I went but I couldn't satisfactorily explain what I was doing there.
Having winnowed through the collection to present an exhibition of nearly 300 objects, the curators presented their methodology in the exhibition's didactic accompanying material. They had to. How else account for a chastity belt, 17th-century Chinese erotic novels, Frederick's of Hollywood catalogues, Yoruba and Mali sculpture, the famous 1953 Playboy that launched both the magazine and Marilyn Monroe, a photograph of mating elephants, condoms - some bejewelled - preserved in nitrogen, a photograph of an enormous flaccid whale phallus slung over a man's shoulder? Censored were items deemed pathological (what a great salon de refusés that would be). Thus, one could find an extraordinary section of gallery wall containing, from left to right: a Joel-Peter Witkin photograph so gross that it's beautiful; a 1910 photo by an unknown artist fondling a woman's buttocks as if they were magic lamps from which, with a little rubbing, a genie would appear; a Matisse lithograph of a nude, the triangle of whose mons veneris is echoed upside down in her cleavage (a great pun on Cézanne's own Mont, by the name of Ste. Victoire); a painting of coitus, by the late 18th/early 19th-century 'minor' French artist Mallet, in which the woman is in the superior position but whose earthen tones and bovine features squelch the effect of passion - it might as well be two mating animals; a pair of photographs, the top one depicting two intermingling women, the bottom one, three; a proof-sheet of patriotic tattoos with the obligatory triad of buxom woman, eagle and American flag; Clifford McCollam's Man and Woman in College Setting (two rah-rah students, in a dorm or frat/sorority room, rendered like the inside of a book of matches, which proclaims, 'Take our correspondence class and you too can learn to draw!'); another pair of photographs: the top one depicting buttocks in water, which resemble a creased lemon, and below, Clarence John Laughlin's double exposed mirrored breasts, Surrealist-style - objects from the sublime to the ridiculous, all united by some manifestation of desire.
Although I enjoyed the show - and with an open mind, who couldn't? - there were some larger issues that weren't satisfactorily raised, much less resolved. These were to do with the installation and the fact that the items were blatantly cross-referenced but without any attempt to explore reciprocal influences between one genre and another. In other words, there was no high/low dynamic that could have intellectually galvanised the show. A great deal of titillation was generated, but it was more from the subject matter than from any potentially explosive convocation of presentation.
Even this titillation is not readily apparent. Walking into the main gallery, it takes a while to focus on what is really going on. The sheer number of works, their generally small size, and the fact that they are hung salon-style, stacked on top of each other, requires getting up close and personal; treating it all as a peep show. But if this were a peep show, and I'd paid my quarter, why are there so many people in here and why are those damn lights so bright? This is one of those shows where the curatorial premise - a celebration of human sexuality in all its glory - is very far removed from its articulation.
Indeed, as a whole, the installation dilutes the potency of the individual pieces: it's difficult to take in everything at one go as each work must be examined and re-examined, and this must be done while looking over one's shoulder to see who's peeping too. Ultimately, the overall effect is to skirt over the issues the work should raise and instead to broach consideration of the purpose of an art museum. In an essay entitled 'Reinventing the Museum', Michael Lind discusses the pre-Civil War idea of museums as Wunderkammer, or curiosity collections, culminating in the circus sideshows of P.T. Barnum. Such is the general impression of this exhibition. It is full of wonders, eclectic, a repository of pleasure, but not the pleasure of a sensual nature; instead, it is the pleasure of the short attention span - the G-Spot has been replaced by the C-Span.
