Art Imitates Sex Imitates Art

Art is inherently sexy. I've been talking to many artists lately about how the mere process of making art is an act of sensuality. The connectivity, the emotional ground, the intimate nature of just you and what you are making. It's the sound of your breath, it's the endless touch, it's the focussed energy, and it's the Gaze. No one has embodied this idea more explicitly for the Festival than artist Ryan Molenkamp, whose entire piece was about the erotic process of making art. The work itself isn't necessarily an erotic image, but it's entirely imbued with the presence and history of its charge. I can hardly explain the beauty I found in this small melodrama, how I thought about my own work and the ways in which I'm intimately bound to my process.

But it's odd and uncomfortable to bring up “erotic art” in every day conversation when there's a bizarre stigma. Our Puritanical roots (oh blah blah) inform us that if we don't have that solid two by eight plank between us and the world, our sins will condemn us to Hell. This is confusing in a society which pummels us with sex in nearly every imaginable arena – advertising, self help, talk shows, video games, cinema – sex sells because to some degree we all want it. Do we seek sex because we're seeking something Other or something within the Self? Aren't we all looking for an energy or connectivity on a higher level than what our daily life provides? Sex on its own is a pure survival instinct. It's vapid, unquenchable; an empty hole. Perhaps this is what causes the aversion to sexy art. Or sexual art. Perhaps we simply want something More.

What turns us on is a completely different story. Some of us are sensual, some of us are romantic, some of us are hard core. Some of us use sex as power, some as an emotional catalyst. Some of us need to be married, some need multiplicity. A large part of us wants to be seduced, its' just we don't all agree on how. Enter eroticism, that perennially unique signifier of personal sexuality. We'll never agree on it. Eroticism isn't even just cultural any more. We can't unanimously agree on a body type, a facial characteristic, a sexual lifestyle.

This is not the sex of the downtrodden or disadvantaged. This is not even porn. This is a cross section of a society's collected perspective of what is sexy in today's culture. The Seattle Erotic Art Festival is nothing if not fully Democratic – you may not like everything you see or hear but you have to acknowledge it has a place there. And isn't that what art and life is supposedly about? This Festival is a safe place for celebrating and encouraging sexuality in all its incarnations: love, happiness, joy, acceptance, reaching out, crossing bridges, longing, kinship, distance, closeness, storytelling, whimsy, acceptance, rejection, control, losing control, risk.

It sounds to me art and sex have a lot more in common than one might think. Wouldn't you agree?

The 2009 Seattle Erotic Art Festival will celebrate its seventh year May 1-3, 2009 in the Exhibition Hall at Seattle Center. Tickets are on sale now at Brown Paper Tickets. For more information about the Festival event, visit the Seattle Erotic Art Festival website.

I mean I don't really have to spell out a lesson in art history, do I? She's lookin' at *you*, kid.
Why not tell the truth?
Olympia Édouard Manet, 1863 Oil on canvas Musée d'Orsay, Paris