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October 12, 2007 5:33 pm
“What kind of a history of sex can there be?” asks Alanna Krause, the artist Zak Smith’s sister, who’s in London to celebrate the Saturday-night opening of her brother’s exhibit, “If You Want Something Done Left, Do It Yourself,” at London’s Fred gallery, which will include his meticulous portraits of girls in hardcore punk porn. “I mean, what’s changed? I bet the people sitting around bored in a cave already thought of everything.” Without disparaging our ancestors’ carnal creativity, “Seduced,” which opened at the Barbican last night, tells a very different and decidedly more sophisticated and sordid story. Curated by academic Marina Wallace; former Tate curator Joanne Bernstein; and Martin Kemp, a leading Leonardo scholar, the show features more than 300 works that span all sexual proclivities and orientations over 2,000 years and various cultures. The emotional spectrum ranges from depictions by Rembrandt, Fragonard, and Boucher of Zeus’ various conquests to “Heartbeat,” Nan Goldin’s poignant slideshow of intimate portraits of couples in love. With so much complexity at its fingertips, humanity may never think up anything new when it comes to sex, and yet still never run out of creative material.
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