On my second go around of the show I overheard a young woman remark to her boy friend as she stood in front to one of Sherman's untitled pieces, Ugh! I don't like this--to which he replied --me neither and they both veered off toward less threatening pieces. What was this art that so repulsed these twenty somethings. A reprise of Courbet's Source which had been shoved off into a specially created closet for the Metropolitan Museum of Art's show a few years ago. Sherman's however, was a delightful riff on the whole idea of the gender/sex/identity theories floating around. It showed a dual torso with a pink ribbon bisecting it's middle. On one side a ruby red vagina directed your eye to the orchid like opening and on the other side of the divide a penis adorned with a cock ring and rising greeted your unbelieving eyes.
Why this was so off-putting to most of the audience in the MOMA the day we went is beyond me. Perhaps it is the on-going puritanicalism that has so frozen any possibility of comfort when it comes to discussing, indulging and experiencing the truly erotic in America? It's an area, as Sherman so rightly and pointedly suggests, we need to revisit again and again instead of shying away closing our eyes to what is in front of us.
Most viewers are drawn to images like these which are spectacular and rightly so. Only a really risk taking viewer would dare to linger in front of the Sherman I described. Go see the show and see for yourself. It is worth a first, second and third look because it is packed with provocative images by one of the best artists working today.
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