A huge and important romp through two millennia of sexy art. We were there for a late opening with naked performance pop-ups.
Seduced: Art and Sex from Antiquity to Now at Barbican
The promise of sex and drinks was enough to draw us to this groundbreaking exhibition at Barbican. Giant phalluses interspersed galleries full of bondage photography alongside ancient Chinese instructional diagrams, and illustrations from the Karma Sutra to the Joy of Sex.
The experience was enhanced (or perhaps just made more embarrassing) by nude performance art and explicit poetry read, naked from a high-chair.
300 works across two millennia, including Roman sculptures, Indian manuscripts, Japanese prints, Chinese watercolours, Renaissance and Baroque paintings and 19th century photography with modern and contemporary art.
Featured artists included Nobuyoshi Araki, Francis Bacon, Jeff Koons, Robert Mapplethorpe, Pablo Picasso, Rembrandt van Rijn and Andy Warhol.
I just wish I didn’t have to talk about the Japanese prints of octopus rape, with my colleagues, the next day.
Standing in a room with life-sized, hyper-real images of bondage staring down on me and the people I share my working life with was peculiar; the writhing, naked performers on the floor took that to a new level.
Seduced was curated by Marina Wallace, Martin Kemp and Joanne Bernstein.
It was a significant and important collection of explicit art. Juxtaposing millennia of eroticism in a beautifully, sensitively curated space; it was truly fascinating.
I just wish I didn’t have to talk about the Japanese prints of octopus rape, with my colleagues, the next day.