A PERFECT ROMANCE: Part III - Online Exhibition | Summer Series: Part 3 of 3

For our third and final online exhibition to close the summer season David Nolan Gallery is pleased to present “A Perfect Romance: Scenes of Desire and Intimacy in Times of Chaos,” an exhibition that gathers works by a varied group of artists spanning nearly 100 years centered around themes of desire and intimacy. For most of the artists included, erotic representations are an inherent part of their practice, if not an explicit focus.  

The figures and scenes presented display a wide range of interests and motifs, from intimate nude sketches and obsessive, voyeuristic indulgences, to melancholy and analytical works on a more human scale. Clothing often plays a significant role in many of these scenes. Fabric conceals and reveals the body; useful for its ways of regulating or controlling desire in others, or keeping censors at bay. The theatricality of dressing likewise allows one to easily objectify, commodity, or fetishize the body; with the duality of power and the gaze inevitably entwined in depictions of sexuality and desire. 

“All art is erotic,” Adolf Loos wrote in his infamous “Ornament and Crime” essay of 1908, where he further emphasized the erotic and “gendered” impulse of vertical and horizontal lines in drawings, even as it relates to more abstract works. Ultimately, the effects of erotica comes down to the projection of the viewer. Each generation that depicts erotica must transcend its own taboos, as in the case of George Grosz, for whom erotica provided a respite from the brutality around him, even when the misery of his models matched the often gruesome style in which he depicted them: “Even when my images represent the most vile debaucheries they are always expressions of concrete moral tendencies.”

This online exhibition features artworks by Richard Artschwager, Hans Breder, William Copley, Carroll Dunham, George Grosz, Alice Maher, Jonathan Meese, Wardell Milan, Jim Nutt, Peter Saul, Serban Savu, Miroslav Tichy, Sandra Vásquez de la Horra, and Jorinde Voigt.