Is Sexy Art Back, or Is It Just Me?
From Willem de Kooning’s miserable nudes to Alexandra Barth’s hot and bothered architecture, sex is in the air in Chicago.
CHICAGO — I see a lot of exhibitions in Chicago, and lately, I have been noticing more than a few that feel almost ridiculously erotic. I mean, I get it, there's always been plenty of eros in art, but I haven't observed it much lately at the school where I teach nor in the shows that I view. Is sex back? Or it could just be me. I turned 50 this past year, and popular culture suggests that this might be what happens around my age, à la Sharon Horgan's Youth and Olivia Colman's Wicker, both recent screen-based explorations of lusty midlife ladyhood.
For those who have never had one or maybe never will, female middle-age libido sets at either zero or 1,000, on a scale of one to 100. It is not an easy ride. Shifting from one state to the other causes severe whiplash for driver and passengers alike. That’s based on an admittedly minuscule survey, though fear not, this will not be a personal essay about my own sexuality or that of my acquaintances. God, no. Maybe after everyone’s dead. What proceeds, instead, is a round-up of exhibitions that, for me, have a strong connecting thread, obviously red, and not discussed much if at all in the various associated didactics.
What shows? Last spring, Alice Tippit’s sly, meticulous paintings at the DePaul Art Museum had me thinking I probably needed to start talking to a therapist again, because what was going on in my head was not articulated anywhere in the otherwise delightful catalogue. Not even close. During the summer, SHADOW at tête-à-tête-à-tête, a wicked little curatorial project of Shannon Stratton, included Holly Murkerson’s sensuous photographs of a stone passageway worth entering and two dark leather-and-wood stools by David Sprecher and Neiva Mulhearn that required straddling and peering into.
What wasn’t a turn-on was the Art Institute of Chicago’s summer blockbuster, Willem de Kooning Drawing. You wouldn’t know from the glowing reviews or polite museum text that miserable naked women filled the walls. I like a good nude as much as anyone, but at some point, maybe it was the third room — definitely by the time I got to the giant rowboat charcoals of the mid-60s — de Kooning’s subjects started to look like crime victims.
Left: Lee Miller, “Woman with Hand on Head” (also known as “Coiffure”) (1931), photograph; right: Lee Miller, “Charlie Chaplin with chandelier" (1932), photograph (both photos courtesy Art Institute of Chicago)
