This is an engraving from The Secret Companion, a medical work on onanism or self-pollution, with the best mode of treatment in all cases of nervous and sexual debility, impotency, etc., by R. J. Brodie, 1845, Plate 2.
​
What a long way we’ve come — well, all of us except maybe for Christine O’Donnell.

Via MorbidAnatomy.

Why would someone attack a painting? Last week in Washington DC, a visitor to the National Gallery’s “Gauguin: Maker of Myth” exhibition took hold of the frame of the post impressionist’s artist’s Two Tahitian Women, then began to pound her fist against the plexiglas protecting the painting.

A by-stander tackled the woman, enabling museum officers to step in. The woman, later identified as Susan Burns, a 53-year-old from Arlington, VA, was told her rights, then asked by an investigator why she had attacked the painting. She responded:

I feel that Gauguin is evil. He has nudity and is bad for the children. He has two women in the painting and it’s very homosexual. I am trying to remove it. I think it should be burned. I am from the American CIA and I have a radio in my head. I am going to kill you.

She is currently being held without bail as she awaits a hearing regarding her mental health. According to the Huffington Post, Burns served six months in jail following a 2006 assault and battery conviction after she attacked a police officer. Two years prior, she was convicted of misdemeanor trespassing. The Washington Post reported that Sharon Weathers Burns’ attorney, declined to comment when approached on Monday.

The painting by Paul Gauguin Two Tahitian Women shows two women standing side by side. One has both breasts exposed, and the other is showing one. A statement by the National Gallery has confirmed that the painting was not damaged; it returned to the exhibit following thorough inspection on Monday.

Violence against art at museums is uncommon, but it still occurs. According to ArtLyst, a man took a hammer to Michelangelo’s Pieta in 1972, shouting, “I am Jesus Christ, risen from the dead.” In 1975, a school teacher out of a job slashed Rembrandt’s The Night Watch with a bread knife some dozen times, decreeing, “I have been sent by the Lord! I have been forced to do this by forces out of this Earth!”

The Washington Post also cites several acts of vandalism against art: in 1974 a man ripped a painting from its mounting at the National Gallery and smashed a Renaissance-era folding chair into 30 pieces; between 1978 and 1979, also in DC, 25 paintings were damaged by a sharp instrument, including pieces by Henri Ma­tisse and Pierre-Auguste Renoir; in 1998, two Ma­tisse paintings were vandalized with a pencil at the Capitoline Museums in Rome.

Neither article mention the exact motivations for the damage in these cases. We’re disenchanted by the violently homophobic nature of the attack in DC, however. Bad for the children? We fail to see how censorship and violence are better than the freedom of artistic expression.

Header image by iamsosorry, via Dean Skibinski.

Meet Jack Davis. In the sixties, while in grad school, Davis was coming out. Asked how he came to the idea of penises, he recalls how many of his classmates in his weaving and textile classes were making wall hangings reminiscent of vulvae.

The imagery inspired him to focus on making something that would feel men feel empowered as well. Thus, he crocheted his first penis. In 1975, his graduate show included these penises, and he’s continued making and exhibiting them since.

​
“They aren’t penis warmers,” he told the San Francisco Bay Times. “They do open, however. There is a drawstring in each foreskin. So while they are not designed to be worn on a penis, you can put other things in them. A crocheted penis with a foreskin easily functions as a container.”

So it doubles as a little purse, also! Now that Davis has taken to making more simple designs, the penises are more accessible to the public. Davis has sold innumerable crocheted penises.

“Sometimes I get raised eyebrows when I talk about numbers,” he says. “I don’t think I would get the same response if I were making ceramic coffee cups.”

It’s true. This is something of an unusual thing. But who are we to judge what’s unusual? We have an in-house sacred Andean vulva cushion.

Photo by Mark I. Chester.

Meet Matt McMullen, the creator of the Real Doll, those wondrous masterpieces of workmanship that are part sex toy, part work of art. In this video from California is a Place, McMullen describes how the first doll came to be.

Honey Pie from California is a place. on Vimeo.

Here’s a snippet from the video:

I was always driven to sculpt females and it just evolved. This was the logical progression of what I wanted to do with my artistic abilities and my desire to create.

I’ve always been sort of a recluse. I spent a lot of the time in the garage by myself. There were family I would show what I was doing — they all thought I was weird. And really, the original concept, I thought it would be a really cool mannequin for display stepping outside the bonds of your traditional mannequin, which are very super-modelesque — I wanted to do something with sexy curves.

I put up a website, I said “I’m making this really crazy mannequin” and I got a lot of people asking me by e-mail if these things were anatomically correct and if so could they order one. I realized early on this was the direction this was going to go and I went with it. I added in some obvious parts and there you go. The first Real Doll was born.

We dig it.

Meet Kira Ayn Varszegi, a bodacious blonde who’s uses her DDs to paint abstracts.

That got your attention. Good. We here at Sex and the 405 are lovers of fine art and we’ll do whatever it takes to get you to pause long enough to consider the work of artists worth their salt.

“My art is generally abstract and unconventional,” says Varszegi on her blog. “I just don’t have the patience for any degree of realism, so I put most of my focus into developing pieces with great color, contrast, and composition.”

That she does.

“I enjoy working with different mediums and finding new ways to get paint onto a canvas,” she says. “Although I’ve got nothing against brushes. I like to be the first (documented) to attempt any given method or style.”

We’re into it. Check out the rest of her wares on eBay.

“I was just kinda a hack at it, never thinking it would one day lead to running three websites and doing it for a living,” Savage told us laughing when we asked about how he got started. “I got into the porn business as talent and one thing led to another.”

He started with POV (point of view) for women in the skin biz, then moved to solo girl sets, shooting female masturbation videos and stills, then eventually moved into sex.

“After getting into the fetish world I actually prefer it to regular porn,” he confessed. “Regular porn shoots are so rehearsed, they get real boring. Same five positions, same pop shot, same bad sets, blah blah blah. Bondage and fetish photography is always new and exciting.”
​
“Now shooting every other day with new models and locations, I plan on filling my sites with tons of hardcore erotic photos and videos — POV bondage, latex, etc.,” he told us. “I look forward to many more years of shooting the unknown.”

Yeo shot to the spotlight in 2007 after the White House reneged on a commissioned piece for George W. Bush, prompting the artist to go ahead with the piece in the form of a collage using pornographic images. The piece revolutionized the artist’s style and his Porn in the USA show showcases this growth.

We hit the exhibit over the weekend, taking in the figure studies, portraits and a gorgeous wall paper design that turns vulvas into leaves, completely changing the way that we view pornography.

We love Freud’s cigar — it, as well as his entire hand, is made of penises. Sometimes a cigar is… oh, it’s too easy.

“Seeing the beauty of these women touched my creative soul,” he told us. “For the next few years, all I could think about was how I would shoot a beautiful woman if I got the chance. Then, when I was 18, I got that chance.”

“My girlfriend allowed me to use my creative ideas I had been storing for years with her, and I took full advantage,” he said. “I had an old Pentax film camera and a few rolls of film. We spent hours working together that first shoot. I never felt so alive.”

​
“Here I was doing what I had dreamed about for the past five years,” Neil told us. “Soon after this first shoot, I purchased some darkroom equipment so I could develop and print my own work. That was many years ago, long before digital cameras and photo editing software. As the years went on I progressed to better lighting and locations. I was no longer chained to a small bedroom and camera flash. I could take my passion outside where the colors and locations are more vibrant.”

“Today, I enjoy a diverse love of nude photography,” he said. “From fine art nudes in black and white to a colorful close up, the idea is to show the female form in all its beauty. From the studio to an exciting outdoor location, I can’t wait for my next shoot. There is always one more idea I want to shoot. My eyes are always looking for new ways to capture the beauty that is all around me.”

Even if those of us who do, if we don’t have much experience exploring other female bodies, we can only assume they’re not all the same. There must be some differences — penises are not all the same, after all.

Just how different are they? Scarleteen offers illustrations by Betty Dodson that are incredible in the manner they showcase the wide array of vulvas. Behold:

Images from Scarleteen.

One look at the sign on the door told us that Koplin del Rio was the gallery to hit during Culver City Art Walk over the weekend.

"Asian Banana" by Tracy Nakayama

“Erotic is the step between sensual and pornographic,” writes Marsha Burns, an artist at the exhibit. “What may be to some sensual to others is erotic, to others pornographic. Definitions are not something that interests me; the language to address a work of art must be learned.” She’s right. This is what we found.

"Pearls" by Randy Hayes

"Discovery" by Tracy Nakayama

“My interest in portraying sex is more about the feelings that linger after people have shared an intimate moment together than the act itself,” says Nakayama. “To say that I promote ‘free love’ isn’t true. Though I often depict individuals that have all the visual signifiers of being ‘hippies,’ to me they represent an idealized moment that couldn’t be sustained. They appear natural and uninhibited, practicing a lifestyle that challenged what society deemed acceptable. In the end, their belief in ‘freedom’ became their undoing which adds an element of melancholy. They failed, but we all fail. Without failure, what can be considered success? It’s about a moment in time. My works are invitations to escape into a moment in time which is all any of us have. Now. And now. And now.”

"Untitled" by Rico Lebrum

“They are apparitions of my own being to myself, because I would like to be double, or many upside down and right side up, masculine and feminine, carnal and remote, seen and unseen; these obsessive shapes keep popping up and now they keep me company — a company I have always wanted, now they do, they come, they say, they mirror me,” says Lebrum.

"Jock Lad" by Martin Ireland

“My drawings and paintings are discovered through an exploratory process, with models,” says Ireland. “Any figurative work using a life model in collaboration between subject and artist. It’s a passionate arrangement exploring the sensual and erotic participation at a sitting.”

"Ou'd (downfall)" by Oldrich Kulhánek

Kim Frohsin

Kim Frohsin

"Sagittal Section Fellatio" by Peter Zokosky

"Untitled" by Christine Wuenschel

“I have always felt an urgent drive to create figurative images; and more especially, images of myself,” says Wuenschel. “While there are several themes in my self-portraits, the subject of eroticism remains constant. I often find myself obsessive seeking erotic art and trying to incorporate it in my work. Other times the sensuality comes through in the drawing on its own. I often attribute this to the act of drawing being very physical and guttoral, whether consciously or subconsciously, eroticism is always preswnt in my work. The ultimate goal when drawing my fleshy figures is to create arousing, bodily, honest images to envelop the viewer.”

"Reflections by the Pool" by Tracy Nakayama

"Smear" by Jennifer Vanderpool

“Erotic art is more tantalizing when it is suggestive and provokes the viewer’s imagination,” Vanderpool says.