Drawing Lines

On page 48 of February's Vogue is a full-color ad

of a kneeling, bare-shouldered beauty applying fire-

engine red lipstick. Her lips are slightly parted and

her wide-open green eyes look directly at the camera

with a caught-in-the-act expression.


On page 49 of this two-page ad is a knees-to navel

shot of a blue-jeaned man wearing a distressed leather

belt whose concave metal buckle gauzely reflects the

face of the woman. The camera angle is centered

directly on the man's crotch. The woman is so close

that her brown hair touches the man from navel

to knees. Her red lips are inches away from the man's

jeans zipper.


The ad served its purpose, I stopped leafing and

paused on it. The photos are such close-ups that

it takes a split-second to sink in. I laughed, it was

so direct.


The ad was not for lipstick, nor for men's jeans, but

for Belvedere vodka. I laughed again. I have written

here previously of the the ever-diminishing line between

fashion and sex photography. I like both a lot but am

jarred when I see the latter so prominent in the former.

If I'm reading a fashion magazine it is not for sexual

stimulation. When I'm looking at porn I'm not interested

in what the women are wearing, or could be wearing.

There, I'm looking for crotch shots.


In Washington I attended the Annie Liebovitz exhibition

at the Corcoran Gallery. She is a good photographer

and her work often appears in Vogue. At the entrance to

the exhibition, at the top of a staircase, was a full-length,

full-color nude of Cindy Crawford from her super-model

days. My girlfriend thought that she was stunningly

beautiful. I did too, but not in the same way I think an

Ansel Adams photo beautiful (there was an Adams

exhibition at the Corcoran too). The photo of Crawford

was sexually stimulating. I was too embarrassed to

look at it closely, as one would a piece of "art."


At least the subject matter of the Crawford photo was

beautiful. Not so of the--many--nude photographs of

a near-death Susan Sontag in the Liebovitz exhibit. I

didn't enjoy the Liebovitz exhibit at all.


This morning I was again leafing, through the January

28 issue of The New Yorker. The "Talk of the Town"

article is on the romance and impending marriage of

French president Nicolas Sarkozy and Italian actress/

bombshell Carla Bruni. France, of course, has always

had very...tolerant...attitudes toward sex and infidelity,

even among its political leaders. The Sarkozy-Bruni

affair however has not played well. Part, because

Bruni is tacky, and the French are not tolerant of the

tacky. The New Yorker article is written by Adam

Gopnik and it is so well-written that it deserves to be

quoted directly:

"The Italian model and singer, who has been

around several blocks, many of them touristique,

in her career--Mick Jagger and Donald Trump

have both been mentioned--took up with the new

President last fall, and was photographed with

him at Disneyland Paris and Luxor, among other

places."


Donald Trump and Disneyland Paris. Those are

two strikes of tackiness right there, and the French

smell a rat, the rat of infuriating American tackiness,

in the whole thing. The French press,

"has struggled, with subtle semiotic hints, to place

[the affair] linguistically in the right geography:

L'Express, in its cover story on the pair, called

Sarkozy 'Le President "People" (with the word

'people' in English, so that nobody would miss the

point)..."


In a reversal that further exasperates the French, the

American press has covered the story as one typically

French. "Zey are a funny race," is how Gopnik sums

up the American reaction.


The lines between Fashion and Art (sophisticated) and

pornography (tacky) are blurred, but real, and at the

intersection is Sex (enjoyed, celebrated, but sometimes

tacky). Each of us draws these lines in different places,


and where we draw them depends on our attitudes


towards sex. I enjoy porn but only in private; it's

like going to the bathroom. Both involve natural,

inescapable bodily needs, but I close the door when

doing both because I am embarrassed by both. When

I'm in the mood I don't see anything tacky about porn;

I feel only the incredible sexual high of seeing the

women. But when I see a porn when I'm not in the

mood I see only its tackiness, and turn away.


Having sex has always, of course, thrilled me, but

also depressed me. "Third base is best," I read a

woman write recently. "The best sex organ is

the mind," someone else has written. Imagining

sex with a woman who has caught my eye is

breathtakingly exciting. Getting aroused by

the sight of desirable women several times a

day becomes tedious for me and distracting.

I've got other things that I want to do and my

sex drive interferes. Then there's shame again.

I feel puerile, I feel guilty at reacting to a woman,

often a colleague or friend, so one-dimensionally.

Having sex (on the few occasions I have) with

a woman my mind has lusted after, has usually

been anti-climactic, both figuratively and literally (I

usually don't climax). Having the woman's body

has seldom been as good as imagining her body.


For many people, wonderful though sex can be,

it can become dull quickly. My girlfriend, a

(young, beautiful, blond) marathon runner,

summed up this conundrum with this priceless

statement to a married friend of ours, about sex

with her ex-husband (and undoubtedly me

too):


"Sex for me is like running a marathon. I dread it

happening, enjoy it when I'm in it, and never

want to do it again after it's over."


I, and, as my girlfriend's statement indicates,

others, struggle with where to draw these lines.



Drawing these lines is the ambitious work of the

(American) painter John Currin. Calvin Tomkins

writes about Currin and his angst in the same issue

of The New Yorker as does Gopnik on Sarkozy-Bruni.


For some time now, Currin has used pornographic

images taken from Internet sites as the subject matter

for his paintings. He does not seem to know clearly

why he does this. He says that he was motivated by

the furor of Muslim reaction to the Danish cartoons

of Mohammad last year, of the shock of the Western

world's reaction to that reaction, but particularly by

The New York Times refusal to reprint the cartoons

and its defense of Muslim defensiveness. So using

pornographic images as subjects for his painting

became an act of defiance. The reader is not alone

if he fails to see the exact connection. Tomkins, a

Currin admirer, writes,

"When I asked how [the cartoon controversy]

tied into his making pornographic paintings,

Currin talked about low birth rates in Europe,

and people having sex without having babies,

and pornography as a kind of elegy to liberal

culture, at which point I lost the thread."


I don't get the sense that this is yet another shallow

artist attempting profundity where there is none, of

muddying the waters to make them look deep. Currin

is struggling to understand what he does and what

motivates him. He's unclear because drawing the lines

between art and pornography is so difficult, and

because the difficulty has to do with his attitudes

toward sex.


Currin experiences the guilt over the women in his

pornographic paintings and other equally prosaic

emotions. He has painted his wife's face into other

traditional portraiture. Tomkins, for one, seems eager

to see Rachel in some porno paintings with her "wide-

set hazel eyes, pearly skin, heart-shaped face...long

bare legs." Easy for Tomkins to say about someone

else's wife, but Currin won't do it. "At one point,

I thought of using Rachel's face there, but I decided

against it. The humiliation of the narrative is not

something I want to put her face into." Like one

who enjoys viewing porn, Currin feels guilty about

the women, but also embarrassment at his own

pleasure, "I'll keep myself as the only person

humiliated by this painting."


Currin experiences the difficulties in drawing lines

in every way. He is mesmerized by Woman:

"He sees women as different beings, some kind

of embodiment of creativity, of life and beauty,

all these strange emotions," says Rachel. "The

male-female issue is a constant battle for John

and me." Rachel has never experienced the

unnerving sensation of seeing a beautiful girl

or woman, and being stopped in one's tracks.

It's a guy thing, Rachel you wouldn't understand.

It is not only a constant battle between Currin

and his wife, it's a constant battle within Currin.

That is what he is trying to work out in his art.


Like many modern women, Rachel Feinstein asked

John Currin out on a date first. Like many modern

men in that position, Currin refused. "He was sort of

taken aback." For Currin, this disconcerting reversal

of traditional male-female roles reoccurred when they

finally did go out.

"I went to see him in his studio first. He had placed

two chairs so we could look at his paintings, but I

turned mine around so it was facing his. 'I'm not

interested in the paintings,' I said, 'I'm interested

in you.' " So how to think of Woman, or women,

if you're a guy today? Currin won't paint his

wife's face into one of his porno paintings, but

maybe his wife wants him to, but won't say

because she feels guilty.


The couple struggle over whether to hang one of

his porno paintings in their apartment. They have

two young boys. "What's that?," their three-year old

asked. "That's a vagina," said Rachel. "Ewww," said

boy.


Currin is mortified at what his parents reaction will

be to the paintings. "Is it really bad?," Currin's mother

asked Rachel. When told the painting showed pene-

tration Currin's mother responded, "Oh, good grief."


Both mother and father attended the Gagosian

gallery's opening of their son's work. Tomkins

writes, "Anita steered a quick course around the

room, avoiding the worst examples. Jim headed

for the gallery's terrace..."


The commonness of these feelings do not

render common Currin's attempt to deal

with them. Commonness is another word

for universal and Currin is struggling with

that universal, and if that is not a worthy

goal for an artist then nothing is. This is

Public Occurrences.