When will art be ready for erections again?

It’s time for art critics to pass the soap

While others avert their eyes, we toast Michael Kirwan on his fantastic book…

 
 
 
When Beryl Cook died four years ago there was a rush to celebrate her life’s work. Cheerful obituaries sprung up in national newspapers and across major TV channels, she was a “national treasure”. Yet throughout her career the art world refused to acknowledge Cook as one of their own.
Despite selling pieces out of her front room for around £20,000 on a fortnightly basis and receiving commissions from celebrity collectors, with no formal art education and no desire to write thought-scraping self-statements, Cook’s amusing paintings of fat Brits and their quotidian pursuits were deemed appropriate only for postcards and calendars.
A similar thing is happening in the world of erotic art today. Look at Michael Kirwan’s latest book Just So Horny, a glossy paged serving of over 100 of Kirwan’s homocentric cartoony paintings. It is immediately obvious from just flicking through that he is a brilliant artist. The compositions, facial expressions, classical references and power dynamics. His work evokes a psychological landscape that goes beyond the explicit and into a new dimension of the suggestive.

By Jack Cullen

Published: 6th April 2013

Categorised in: Friends of Tom