From the article:
“Steamy videos of women getting off while reading books go on view in a show opening this month at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA).
Clayton Cubitt’s “Hysterical Literature” series depicts women seated at a table reading a book of their choice. Each woman introduces herself, identifies the text she has chosen, and begins to read. As she does so, someone unseen under the table stimulates her with a vibrator.
The women’s increasing arousal is evident as they lose track of the text, gasp, and clutch the table, before they climax, come down, and restate their names and chosen texts. Simple enough, right? It may sound gimmicky, but the work makes you think about how erotic fine art can get before it starts to seem like it’s really just erotica, about definitions of pornography, and whether depictions of women’s pleasure, filmed by a man, can be a feminist project….
The videos are both funny and hot. The contrast between cerebral and carnal is amusing. To avoid any associations with pornography, the videos are in staid black-and-white. The project also provocatively touches on female desire and sexual pleasure, which, as feminist critics and theorists have often pointed out, tends to make people, uh, uncomfortable.”
Read more:
http://news.artnet.com/art-world/how-erotic-can-fine-art-get-before-it-becomes-pornographic-218730
