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Way back in the early Seventies, before the
decade became forever associated with licentious decadence,
French customs officials detained several large scale
photorealist paintings of sexual congress by American artist
Betty Tompkins and denied them entrance into
France. Those prudish French! Ah, mais la justice, c’est
douce: for in 2003, the Centre Pompidou in Paris acquired
one of those detained paintings titled Fuck Painting #1.
And now Tompkins has a new show of new work (at the Mitchell
Algus Gallery through 6 June 2009), some acrylic on canvas, some
pencil on paper, some as small as 14 inches and some as large as
seven feet by six feet—and all of them depicting (gasp!) sex,
with titles such as Blow Job Grid #4 and Girl on Girl
Painting #2. In previous work, Tompkins has utilized rubber
stamps and fingerprints to help create the high-resolution
quality of her canvases. The newest pieces in Tompkins’
impressive oeuvre incorporate spray paint to achieve an
almost-Impressionistic gauzy effect that belies their incendiary
subject matter. With their microscopic-like scrutiny of
genitalia and penetration, Tompkins’ paintings provoke and
titillate (hang them in the bedroom for maximum libidinous
effect) while reminding viewers anew of society’s fetishistic
reverence granted one area of skin above all other.
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