Robert Mapplethorpe, ‘Boot Fetish’ (1979) and Catherine Opie’s ‘O, Portfolio’ (1999). Images courtesy of mapplethorpe.la and hyperallergic.com
The chronology of bondage can be traced back to the Marquis de Sade’s torrid erotic literary works in the late 18th century. The sexual libertine instigated a rich evolution of a style that has since influenced iconic tastemakers. In 60s New York, photographer Robert Mapplethorpe was at the helm of the underground queer and BDSM scene, crafting his opus of powerful, homoerotic images. The controversial BDSM practices featured in his 1978 “X Portfolio” later triggered Catherine Opie’s “O Portfolio”, which extends the theme of sadomasochistic rituals.
In honour of Opie’s series which is currently on view at LACMA, we’ve compiled a list of our five favourite artists stretching the limits of art through S&M.
Taken from the “O Portfolio” by Catherine Opie, images courtesy of LACMA
Catherine Opie
Catherine Opie’s work captures the raw tenderness and explicit sexuality of San Francisco’s bondage community during the Nineties. At this time, AIDS had reached crisis point and leather wear was still taboo. Meanwhile Opie was constructing and capturing intimate scenes in her studio. Scenes which confronted a type of sexual play that was misunderstood in mainstream culture. Romantic and intimate, Opie’s black and white soft focus snapshots sensitively highlight her subjects and assuage highly charged sexual imagery such as rope binding and blood.
Robert Mapplethorpe. Image courtesy fotografiska.eu
Robert Mapplethorpe
Power play, gender and porn are prescient topics in Robert Mapplethorpe’s work. His muses were androgynous outsiders such as body-builder and actress Lisa Lyon, writer Kathy Acker, and singer-poet Patti Smith. S&M and gay culture also informed his work and his titles are often overt references to this, for example “Boot Fetish” (1979), “Man in Polyester Suite” (1980) and “Cock” (1981). They depict Mapplethorpe’s bold and radically candid study of sexuality that was recently the subject of a major retrospective at LACMA.
A.L. Steiner
“Community Action Center” by A.L. Steiner and A.K. Burns is a collaboration based on friendship, explicit sex and art. Inspired by porn-romance-liberation films, the sociosexual work has a women-centric focus that explores feminist fashion and queer sexual aesthetics. Burns and Steiner acknowledge that sexuality and the complexities of gendered bodies are inherently political. The video exposes and pokes fun at typical porn tropes and the performances are complex gender roles set to music soundtracked by members of the international sisterhood.
“Sade for Sade’s sake” (2009) by Paul Chan, image courtesy of MoMA.org
Paul Chan
Prison cell, sex dungeon – it’s all the same to Paul Chan and the Marquis de Sade. In 2009, Chan developed a three channel animation inspired by de Sade’s “120 Days of Sodom” entitled “Sade for Sade’s Sake”. The projection unfolds a set of silhouetted figures who argue, crawl and whip each other into a debauched frenzy. Chan’s piece is both a critique and revelry of libertine desire. For six hours, each character gives or receives sexual punishment for pleasure until the cycle ends. Thrusting and dispersing into abstracted body parts – limbs, torsos, penises – the violent and the erotic collide culminating in a depraved, carnal ecstasy.
Luther Price, Sodom. Image courtesy of hyperallergic.com
Luther Price
Luther Price’s handmade films are divisive – particularly his hardcore S&M porn epic “Sodom”. Its images of hellfire, fallen souls and queer sex saw him ostracised from New York and San Francisco’s gay film festivals in the Nineties. Yet in spite of the oppressive imagery, Price’s films have a pervasive humanity. Shooting on Super 8 film, Price’s process is as integral to the sadomasochistic act as the visual narrative. Each film frame is hole punched, inserted with porn footage then cut into propulsive jumps soundtracked by a medieval liturgy. Price continues to make potent sculptures and “home movies from hell” coloured by loss and sexual ecstasy.
Catherine Opie’s “O Portfolio” is on display at LACMA until 2 October 2016