A. D. Coleman: Critical Focus

As a provocation, it's unquestionably successful, not least because it exposes the bedrock of hypocriry beneath the current hysteria over things sexual. That first Saturday afternoon, one could evesdrop on TV and print reporters interviewing gallery-goers for stories that would be aired or printed at great length without any illustration of the works in question, which the mass media would inevitably censor; and it was highly amusing to watch the opening-day crowds -- most of whom wouldn't be caught dead with a copy of Hustler on their coffee tables -- demonstrably having a great time staring at enlarged close-ups of Koons's phallus and Cicciolina's vagina and rectum.

For this curious, calculated and highly-orchestrated event focuses attention on a problematic truth: one of the severe polarities that currently rends our culture between those who enjoy sex immensly and those that don't. Of those who do, a great many -- women as well as men, if one is to judge by attendance at this show, not to mention the autobiographical accounts contained in Nancy Friday's new survey, Women on Top (Simon & Schuster) -- like to look at pictures of people fucking. A considerable number, in fact, like to record themselves in the act -- and, though it's more professionally rendered, what Koons has put on view here isn't much different in kind from what millions of Americans have produced over the past few decades with Polaroids and portable video cameras. Not a few of them have even made such material available to others -- home videos and amateur photos of the couples next door going at it are widely distributed.

But none have had at their disposal a gallery of the stature of this one, whose sponsorship of this event surely justifies the profound faith expressed recently in Connoisseur magazine by Ashley Bickerton. In a discussion of his choice of Ileana Sonnabend over Mary Boone as his representative, Bickerton said, «I asked myself one question: five years down the line, if I want to shit in the corner of the gallery, put up a plaque, and call it a show, who out of Mary and Ileana would let me do it? The answer was obvious, and that's why I'm here.» Bring on your millenium, I say; by the time it arrives, for better or worse, I'll be ready.