Here’s something I’ve been working on for the last few days, I drew "Death of Erotica" for a submission piece to the most recent Neo Pop Realism art competition at www.neopoprealismstarz.com. I’m still in two minds if I should include it in the Indoor Street Art series as it’s a little off-topic for my usual work. The theme at the contest is "Erotica As A High Artistic Aspiration".
I originally sketched the idea out in pencil and then worked on a graphics tablet to create a vector image at my usual scale (so far) 44" x 55". I am still working on another work "Outta Space" however due to a plethora of technical problems over recent months it’s been somewhat delayed. Still I am pleased with the results for Death of Erotica.
My thinking behind this piece is as follows:-
Essentially erotica is dead or rather the mainstream perception of it is, encompassed by generation after generation numbed to or revolted by the sight of the naked human form. I based it on the pose of an old wartime photo of Betty Grable, the prototype for Marilyn Monroe, welcoming, with basic seduction skills and body language, blessed with a curvaceous figure, blond, female, Aryan featured, you get the picture. A stereotype for a war torn generation of men estranged from wives and girlfriends desperate for a reason to live.
The marketing monster that is modern media learnt a great deal from that time, primarily this…
If you want people to buy your junk then take away what they love, Devalue it. Reduce it to its basic components, reveal the intricacy of its works, the engine of its desire, the machinery of its emotion, and then throw it away for a pittance. Like a conjurer’s sleight of hand, the audience will be sufficiently distracted enough to allow him to slip something different into the equation,; a rabbit from the hat, a coin behind the ear, a mass-marketable, mass-consumable product that soon enough people will assume they cannot live without.
Erotica is dead. They say that Victorian gentlemen of old would get rather hot under the collar at the sight of a lady’s ankle or two. That is. to put it bluntly, B.S. In public, behaviour was as prim and proper as the history books no doubt purport, but behind closed doors upper-class Victorian England was filled with kinky toffs and crusts by the mansion-full. They were into sadomasochism, leather, very extreme sexual practices, something you definitely didn’t want the butler to see. However nowadays we’re so bombarded with sexual imagery, however subtle or blunt (you take your pick), that there’s almost no escaping it.
We have become immune. We are developing a third sexuality, an androgyny, supermodels all look male, their cheekbones, shoulders, facial features, height, build, waist and rear are hardly female. Then there’s the experience of modern life… power, money, drug experience, virtual experience, so many other facets of life now compete with sex. The world was a boring and penitent place filled with illiterate god-fearing serfs who did as their masters told them. Now as always the masters of the world live in ivory towers bemused at the rantings of ravings of the rest of us, they almost feed us visual and aural detritus just to test our bounds, as a people, as a race. But now it’s all gone wrong, advertising has lost its credibility, people are making more and more individual life choices, there is no "mainstream".
So the market and the powers-that-be diversify, they "niche", they can tailor the facts, the celebrity, the news, the presentation, the colour, size, weight and so on and so on. There’s no escaping the fact that someone somewhere wants to give you exactly what you want because there’s profit in it, if they can find more like you there’s even more, if there are millions who feel the same way you do they’ll be rich. It’s easier to convince you you have choice than deliver it. The media rely on peer pressure, social consensus and the fading glamour of fame to appropriate your individuality, process it and return it to you fully-modified with a new and glitzier frame of mind.
Erotica is a glimpse into what could be, what is not quite revealed, a potential for ecstasy. Erotica should be beautiful, it should be of graceful form and heart-stirring temperament. It’s too subtle, too slight, too delicate to compete in the 21st Century. Nowadays you can see half-naked reality show stars rolling around an island or in a showbiz tenement, cavorting around on a drip feed of alcohol and heightened ego awareness. You can watch anorexic mutants draped in pieces of string or nothing at all. You can sift through a million years of on-line adult content. There’s Spring break. There are sex holidays. There are "ranches". You name it it’s out there. This should be sci-fi, this should be the end of the world, but it isn’t, it’s the Death of Erotica.
Tags: art competition, art contest, arts contest, death of erotica, erotica, graffiti, pin up, pop realism, sex
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