Sex and Art...

Very dull

The Barbican is planning another of those adults-only exhibitions about sex, this one entitled ‘Seduced: Art and Sex from Antiquity to Now’. The Daily Mail has already provided their usual injection of free publicity: “Barbican puts on porn show for over-18s” wailed their headline on Monday. No doubt there’ll be plenty more hand-wringing from the tabloids, the main effect of which will be to get the dirty mac brigade (and their sexually-active counterparts, the middle-aged swingers) down to the Barbican Art Gallery in force.

But the people who really annoy me when shows like this come along aren’t the Mary Whitehouses and Peter Stringfellows of this world, who at least have an honest opinion and aren’t afraid to express it. What gets right up my nose is when British journalists and arts types get themselves in a lather trying to show how cool and intellectual they are about sex.

The Barbican’s press release, for example, bangs on for 400 words of ‘evolutionary rituals… preening birds… elaborate social frameworks… the antiquarian context of museums’ when all anyone really thinks when confronted with an erotic seventeenth-century Japanese print is “OMG!!!! You Can See His Thingy!!!! LOL!!!!!”

The problem of critics being extravagantly casual about shagging has been particularly noticeable as the censorship laws on movies have relaxed, and we’ve been exposed to all sorts of films which actually show It Going In. “Surprisingly dull…” was ViewLondon.com’s verdict on Michael Winterbottom’s ‘Nine Songs’, a film which included close-up shots of fellatio, ejaculation, cunnilingus and penetration, and which John Patterson in The Guardian agreed offered only “butt-numbing tedium”. I’m sorry? Tedium? I couldn’t write the word ‘fellatio’ without a stifled giggle – even ‘butt-numbing’ made me a little awkward – and now members of the notably more sex-obsessed gender are telling me they found sixty-nine minutes of red-hot rumpy-pumpy “dull”.

We’re English! We don’t find sex dull, we find it excruciatingly embarassing! Show me the Brit who’s slept with a new partner while sober, and I’ll show you their dual nationality passport and US driving license. Find me the Englishman who can walk through the lingerie section in M & S without staring awkwardly at his shoes, and I’ll point you in the direction of his boyfriend.

Yet you can bet that ‘Sensation’ is going to be jammed with people in thick-framed glasses, stroking their chins and seriously discussing “where Art stops and pornography begins”. And do you know what they are going to say, with studied casualness, when their friends eagerly ask them how it was… “I found it a bit boring, actually”.

Well I’ve got a better plan. First, I’m going to get roaring drunk with the girls. Then we’re going to head up to the Press Opening, and we’re going to do what any true Brit should when confronted with “A sound installation entitled The Voice of Sex featuring readings from erotic texts, such as the Kama Sutra, Lolita and late 18th century books by the Marquis de Sade”. We’re going to snigger, and giggle, and nudge each other in the ribs. Then phone our friends and hold our mobiles up to it so that they can have a listen.

And if we hear anybody claiming to be bored, they’ll be in for some very public humiliation. All in the name of Art, of course.

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