In Australia, the National Museum of erotica opened in 2001 in Canberra and closed a few years later in 2003. You can tell a lot about a country by the way they present sex. MoNA has it's finger on the pulsing clitorus of the country. It presents its work as modern art, without a whisper of the word sex and yet it is all about the vaginas. Almost all of the artworks in the building are about copulation or masturbation. The locals find it shocking and wonder why it is not presented with warnings to protect the sensibilities of the children.
As a country we are fairly covert about sex. I suppose that is why my work came unstuck at university. It was unashamedly sexual in content and yet perhaps I should have used the word 'erotic' instead of 'pornographic'. I should have hidden behind concepts of sexual fantasy in literature rather than taking the bull firmly by the horns and dabbling with the darker arts of bestiality. I should have called it romance perhaps, certainly Triptych is the most romantic thing I have ever written. Love is at the heart of it, and love too in the throbbing cunt. The coupling does not come with grief or shame, but with a burst of romantic emotion, kisses, kind words, adoration. I should have taken a lesson from MoNA and hidden my sex in the concept of modern art.
I will visit the erotic museums of the world. I imagine that I will learn a lot about a country from the way we show or do not show our sex. Perhaps I will be proved wrong, but I imagine that the heart of a culture will be revealed in its sex museum. I am excited by this project. I will approach a country knowing nothing about its history. I am a blank slate and the impressions that I gather will have a single focus. Sex. This is the next thing now.
I am excited.
2 comments:
The museum of erotica in Paris is well worth a trip on your 'around the world in 80 erotica museums' tour Krissy.
I went on my own the first time I visited and as I moved from the gound floor steadily...if a little shakily at times:) upwards towards the (I think) 5th floor I was filled with an incredible admiration for a country who would choose to allow such a place to exist.
I took many photographs...such beauty ...and ugliness...in the portrayal of sexuality.
It is placed in one of the red light areas of Paris, Pigalle, just along from the Moulin Rouge, and only a few doors from an adult shop that sold pasta in the shape of penis.....only one kind though:)
My sister and I returned a week later. She had a smile on her face the whole time she was there!
We were at MONA recently, a few days before you posted about your visit Krissy. I took my 13 year old son and you are right, there are no warnings.
It produced a momentary hand-wringing in me.
He loved it.
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