Philosophical Brothel

Saturday, 23 February 2008
7-10pm
Tamela D’Amico, Jae Henson, Haven Howell, Amanda Owens & Jana Williams
Curated by Jana Williams
After party at Forty-Deuce Burlesque Bar in Hollywood

redlight

PawnShop presents Philosophical Brothel, a ONE-NIGHT group exhibition featuring the work of 5 Los Angeles based actresses producing erotic portraiture. This exhibition will throw focus on sexual expression, a seedy, societal taboo within a contemporary art gallery. Westwood becomes Amsterdam’s Red Light District.
“The earliest sketches of the iconic painting, Les Demoiselles D’Avignon, by Pablo Picasso, feature two men inside a brothel, one a sailor and the other a medical student. A trace of their presence at a table in the center remains: the protruding edge of a table near the bottom of the canvas. Critic, Leo Steinberg argues that the ‘viewer’ has come to replace the seated men, forced to confront the gaze of prostitutes, invoking readings far more complex than a simple allegory or the autobiographical reading that attempts to understand the work in relation to Picasso’s own history with women. A world of meanings then becomes possible, suggesting the work as a meditation on the danger of sex, according to Rosalind Krauss, the “trauma of the gaze” and the threat of the sexual relations. The ‘reversed’ gaze, as in, the fact that the figures look directly at the viewer, as well as the idea of the self-possessed woman– no longer there solely for the pleasure of the male gaze.”

In 1974, Leo Steinberg in his landmark essay “The Philosophical Brothel” posited a wholly different explanation for the wide range of Picasso’s stylistic attributes. Using the earlier sketches, which were completely ignored by most critics, he argues that, far from evidence of an artist undergoing a rapid stylistic metamorphosis, the variety of styles can be read as a deliberate attempt, a careful plan, to capture the gaze of the viewer. He notes that the five women all seem eerily disconnected, indeed unaware of each other. Rather, they focus solely on the viewer.

outside
Philosophical Brothel, PawnShop 2008