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Cheryl Donegan Butt Print, Kiss My Royal Irish Ass (1993)
Performance July 3, 1993, synthetic polymer paint on paper
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Seymour Dog Butt (2013)
‘‘Dog’s Butt’, pleasingly symmetrical black and white photographs on iridescent ‘special’ wedding-invitation paper, give criteria of aesthetic judgement a work out. A rally between formal propriety and irreverent smirks, it’s a tail-end challenge to good taste. Aesthetic principles are demoted below economy of materials and efficiency of process. The desktop laminator, with its A4 constraint and auto-framing effect, is the freedom of restriction. Seymour locks down the process to free up the channels of decision-making.’
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Young Boy Dancing Group @ Chapter 10 (2017)
‘Young Boy Dancing Group challenges gender and sexuality with lasers in their anal sphincters whose performances are a mishmash of queerness and techno-futurism that could only exist in our digital age.’
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Arson A Beautiful Ass (1995)
‘Enter my world, where the curves of the buttocks become an ode to sensuality, freedom, and pop art. My sculptures don’t just provoke; they caress the eye, awaken the senses, and invite abandon. The voluptuousness, the gluttony, the sweetness, or the impertinence of Pattes en l’air—this entire period of my work is an invitation to explore desire, poetry, and perhaps humor, by taking a step back from who we are.’ — Arson
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Toilet!? – Human Waste & Earth’s Future (2014)
‘Donning special shit-shaped caps, children line up to get flushed down the toilet.’
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Katarina Janeckova He is interested in her Butt and all she cares about is Art (2013)
‘For me, the bear is a perfect substitute for a man. Sometimes I depict the bear as a lover, voyeur, playful cub, perverted old bear or as a symbol of protection. It’s also for my own amusement. I love to create stories and relationships between the figures I paint. I paint those bears as simple, strange dark figures, because it allows you to fantasize. The monolithic black surface of the bear also gives the eye a place to rest among all the colors and wild brush strokes of the painting. Sometimes, I give them glasses or eyes and blushing cheeks to outline a little more about their character or mood.’
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Melani de Luca Post-Butt (2018)
‘Melani de Luca’s book Post-Butt looks beyond a good looking arse focusing on the “virality of images in our mediated society”. It’s a book that started from personal curiosity after noticing the “omnipresence of the butt on different channels, especially Instagram and music videos,” she tells It’s Nice That. But what Melani particularly noticed was how much the image and placement of butts had altered over the last 20 years. “The camera got lower, the frames that show the butt last longer and the face is often cut or even completely out of the picture,” she says. Research followed and a theory developed: “the rise of the butt in media was not accidental”.
‘However rather than just posing this as a topic for discussion, Melani developed a book on the subject from her urge to open a platform on the subject. “The images of the butt are embedded in our culture and therefore have a huge influence on society and individual behaviour,” she explains. “Even though music and dance are primarily seen as entertainment, they have an indirect or sometimes direct political function. We could think that the phenomenon of the butt-selfie, also known as ‘belfie’, might be absurd, but the analysis of recent history make it suddenly appear logical. The virality of the buttocks starts from the digital domain but it has repercussions in the physical world.”’
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Wang Haiyang Party in the Anus (2018)
‘In Wang Haiyang’s video work, Party in the Anus, an ambiguously gendered figure gyrates and dances with reckless abandon in what appears to be the fleshy vortex of an anus. Echoing the anal spiral into nothingness, the dimly-lit room is carpeted in a whirling black-and-white optical illusion. Ensconced in a full-body suit that masks even their face, the figure appears to relish the debased, scatological environment, embracing what Leo Bersani might perceive as the body’s receptacle of death and disease. For Wang, partying in the anus at the end of the world is a productive proposition.’
Trailer
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Nicole Eisenman Procession (2019–2020)
‘The giant in “Perpetual Motion Machine” has gone fishin’, his tuna catch (a bunch of old Bumble Bee cans) dangle heavily from a pole as he tugs a trolly with his free hand. But its wheels are square, a playful detail which might get overlooked, though it means missing the greater point Eisenman is trying to make about societal square pegs in proverbial round holes. In the ultimate act of public humiliation, a naked form adorns the trolley, head bowed while on his hands and knees, wearing only a pair of New York Giants socks. Brightly knit with red, white, and blue (Rangers team colors), the scandal of Eliot Spitzer as Client 9 immediately comes to mind. The figure’s ass, overgrown with sheared wool fleece, lets out a loud, smokey fart every few minutes. (A fog machine has been installed in his anus.) The fart plume is every fifth-grade boy’s laughing delight, and it seems to work well in a room of art snoots, too. If you find yourself unimpressed by the literal butt of this joke, the trolley’s bumper sticker conveys a message direct from the artist: HOW’S MY SCULPTING? CALL 1-800-EAT-SHIT. (The bumper stickers are for sale in the museum’s gift shop.)’
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Odd Nerdrum Twilight (1981)
‘I had seen some of his paintings in the beginning, I didn’t really like them, I was not very interested. But then I meet him by accident on a street in Oslo. And he tells me where he is living and it was just a five minute walk from my hotel. And he invites me to come to his house. I go to his house, and we go to the garage. And there he had a huge painting which at that time was called “A Woman Shitting in the Woods.” Life itself is a kind of realism. And life itself is very cruel. Every man goes to the toilet, once a day, he sits down and he shits. Like an animal, you know. Then he cleans, washes his hands, and walks out and he is no more an animal. Then, I really discovered him. Then I started to connect with his painting and understand what he was doing.’
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Kurt Vonnegut Asshole/Asterik (1973)
‘I have seen people with Vonnegut asterisk tattoos. There is a restaurant with the symbol as its name, and there have been bands named after it too. I doubt Vonnegut knew quite the extent to which his drawing of an asshole that appears at the beginning of Breakfast of Champions would tunnel its way into the culture. But this drawing is a good example of how his images embodied more than what they appeared to represent. As an image, that asshole drawing was not lewd or provocative, and it was not meant to offend or excite. It was matter-of-fact. On the other hand, as a gesture, its aims were less than charitable. The asterisk in the novel had the effect of undercutting literary hubris, and by unleashing it in the text toward the close of the preface as an example of what is likely to come, he drew a line in the sand. With it, he was announcing, “If you are too squeamish or too sophisticated to stomach this asshole-in-the-abstract, then leave off here, worse barbs lie ahead, and if you go any further, deeper cuts would no doubt be in store for the likes of you.” In the late ’60s, members of the band the Sex Pistols swore on live TV and sent half of the UK into uproar. If viewers were shocked by a handful of expletives, there would be no point in them listening to that band’s music or any other punk music for that matter. It would only get more real from there on in. That instance of profanity during the moment of the band’s introduction to the world stage also served as a line in the sand, and like the asterisk, hovered like a warning to all ye who may come.’
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Cary Leibowitz (“Candy Ass”) Bird Talk (and butt) (1989)
‘Since his emergence in the 1990s (when he went by the moniker “Candy Ass”), Cary Leibowitz has styled himself as a self-loathing, reluctant artist. Through this cleverly crafted persona, he critiques the pretentiousness of the art world and the commodification of art. He also foregrounds his gay and Jewish identity, exploring how it places him outside of mainstream American society. His work—which encompasses prints, paintings, sculpture, and installation—is full of humor and pathos. He often incorporates such everyday items as mugs and knitted caps into his pieces, altering them with pointed text and arranging them into unlikely forms.’
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Básica TV Hemorrhoids: The Movie (2018)
‘In their longest, most prodigious work to-date—totaling over forty minutes, spanning fifteen screens, and accompanied by an installation—the Uruguayan-born art collective first questions our cultural preoccupation with butts, but more than this, asks why this is as far as we go. Katie Couric famously aired her colonoscopy on national television in 2000, but the colon was never sexy. Asses are undeniably so, and as such, are inherently linked to capital, and ultimately power. Why else would we see an onslaught of products and trends come to prominence during the same period as the rise of the ass? Juice cleanses, Activia, colonics, anal bleaching, tapeworm diets, and coffee enemas are just a few of the recent fads that oddly allude to inner workings of a sexualized exterior, but never go further. Basica goes deeper, though, making hemorr- hoids the focal point of their film. This asks us, as viewers, to come face-to-face (literally) with the highly taboo topic, urging us to question our discomfort with it.’
Excerpt
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EPSRC The Robotic Rectum (2016)
‘A robotic rectum may help doctors and nurses detect prostate cancer. The technology, which consists of prosthetic buttocks and rectum with in-built robotic technology, has been developed by scientists at Imperial College London. The idea is the device helps train doctors and nurses to perform rectal examinations by accurately recreating the feel of a rectum, as well as providing feedback on their examination technique. The device contains small robotic arms that apply pressure to the silicone rectum, to recreate the shape and feel of the back passage.’
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Judie Bamber What Do You Say? (Chrome Egg Butt Plug with Leather Thong) (1989)
Oil on canvas stretched on board
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Keith Boadwee Various (1995 – 2019)
‘Boadwee simultaneously pokes fun at the language of art history while paying homage to it. The works cover a wide spectrum, from the somatic brutality of Viennese Actionism to the primary simplicity of De Stijl. There is an ambiguity in the fabrication of these paintings hinting at past performances for which Boadwee first gained recognition in the 1990s. Often using his own body as tool, medium, surface or subject, each work obfuscates the artist’s engagement in his studio—they could stand as autonomous pictorial renderings or possible documentation of a transgressive action. The viewer is invited to draw his or her own conclusions.’
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Forrest Bess Various (1947 – 1967)
‘Bess arrived at painting incidentally. Following a psychologically scarring gay bashing and subsequent nervous breakdown during his service in the camouflage division of the US military, he resumed earlier artistic endeavours on the advice of an army psychiatrist.
‘Increasingly Bess was haunted by night-time visions, which he began to record in a book by his bedside. From 1946 onwards he painted principally according to these visions, rendering tense internal conflicts on sex, gender, and sexuality as obscure, oneiric forms, ones that often eluded even the artist himself. He wrote, “the canvases I paint are statements – each one is a statement of what I don’t know. I am only a conduit through which they pass and there are times I suffer because I don’t know.”
‘During the 1950s, Bess divided his time between fishing, painting, and the compilation of a ‘thesis’ centred on a proposition for the unification of the male and female sexes within a biologically male body. Bess’s ideas were inspired by numerous sources, including the traditions of Aboriginal tribespeople, Egyptian, Greek, and Chinese art, and the writings of Havelock Ellis. Around 1955, his own writings distilled in an operation he performed on his perineum, during which he created an orifice intended to receive a penis. Bess’s motivations – the prospect, he claimed, of everlasting life – were likely spurred by an emergent discourse on transsexuality that was catalysed in 1952 by the public disclosure of Christine Jorgensen’s sex reassignment surgery, the first such operation reported in America. In 1954, Bess had declared hermaphroditism “the perfect state of man”.’
“Forrest Bess: Key to the Riddle” (Preview)
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John Waters Haunted (2006)
‘Haunted involves a rephotographed video title. It reads MY ASS IS HAUNTED, snapped from a skin flick starring adult-film star Belladonna. That particular movie was not intended to entice gay male fans, although when frozen in Waters’s viewfinder, the disengaged title becomes a cheeky declaration of homosexual longing and loneliness, of mysterious anal-retentiveness.’
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Riikka Hyvönen Various (2016)
‘In the competitive sport of Roller Derby, a bruise is a badge of honour to show off to your fellow team members trackside. What look here like photos are actually massive 3D leather canvasses, which artist Riikka Hyvönen layers with wood, paint and lashings of glitter, working from real images of these ‘derby kisses’.’
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Manfred Erjautz Anus Tempus (2016)
Radio controlled clock Junghans Mega, brass, glass, synthetics, touch-up pen.
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Veloso, Caio and Dallas Macaquinhos (2016)
‘What is it that the ring of bodies perform in Veloso, Caio and Dallas’ Macaquinhos (little monkeys). Their asses? Yes, but this word is also the slang for a woman who prefers anal over vaginal sex. For the Brazilian artists, the anus is the southern hemisphere of the body, and has the potential to function as its own democratic and collectivizing site, and as the opening of de-colonizing explorations of bodies, desires, anxieties, privacy and exposure.’
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Scott Donahue Untitled (2008)
‘The City of Berkeley last year paid artist Scott Donahue $196,000 to install two sculptural groups at either end of a new pedestrian bridge across the freeway on the city’s waterfront. The two installations mostly feature large human figures doing “typical Berkeley” activities. But the artist recently added a series of small bronze bas-relief sculptures around the base of each statue. The new sculptures around the base of the westernmost statue depict, among other things, dogs going shit, fucking, and sniffing each other’s butts. You decide: Is this the best way to spend Berkeley’s taxpayer dollars?’
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Claire Lambe LazyBoy (2012)
‘A pair of gold lamé disco pants placed on the floor has plump buttocks as if harbouring a body beneath. The oscillation between the alternate reading of discarded clothing or a prostrate body makes for a disturbingly compelling form. Added to which is the sexual innuendo of the title, meaning much more than a comfortable reclining chair.’
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Art Workers Coalition Art Workers Won’t Kiss Ass (1969)
‘The Art Workers’ Coalition (AWC) was an open coalition of artists, filmmakers, writers, critics, and museum staff that formed in New York City in January 1969. Its principal aim was to pressure the city’s museums – notably the Museum of Modern Art – into implementing economic and political reforms. These included a more open and less exclusive exhibition policy concerning the artists they exhibited and promoted: the absence of women artists and artists of color was a principal issue of contention, which led to the formation of Women Artists in Revolution (WAR) in 1969. The coalition successfully pressured the MoMA and other museums into implementing a free admission day that still exists in certain museums to this day. It also pressured and picketed museums into taking a moral stance on the Vietnam War which resulted in its famous My Lai poster And babies, one of the most important works of political art of the early 1970s. The poster was displayed during demonstrations in front of Pablo Picasso′s Guernica at the MoMA in 1970.’
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Patrick Henne Various (2016 – 2018)
‘Patrick Henne adopts the motifs of old masters such as Guido Reni, Caravaggio and Jacques-Louis David. Through the expressive and surreal colouring, along with the alteration of some details and titles, which have nothing to do with the original context, Henne transforms the paintings into grotesque, partly blasphemous and whimsical picture worlds. The paintings are the result of a lengthy process: the work of the artist and his study of art history and the examination of the respective documents form the foundation of his work. By sketching and editing the selected templates in Photoshop, he slowly approaches the desired results; color, contrast, details and background are greatly altered, varied or removed.’
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Anthea Hamilton Project for Door (After Gaetano Pesce) (2016)
‘If the Turner prize had been decided by Instagram, then Anthea Hamilton’s Project for Door (After Gaetano Pesce) would be a shoo-in to win on Monday. Since mid-September, the UK’s favourite spot for a selfie has been beneath this pair of large, splayed buttocks. Hamilton’s photogenic piece is actually a re-creation of a 1970s proposal by the Italian architect Gaetano Pesce for a building in New York. The buttocks in question were modelled on Pesce’s friend and collaborator Ulderico Manani, who was, Pesce says, delighted to help. “Ulderico was a homosexual and also a bit of an exhibitionist, so he was quite happy to do what I asked,” says Pesce. “When you have an idea and are convinced of its quality, you have no problem communicating it.”’
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Arwe Back Buttocks Stool (2016 – )
‘At the height of a successful business career, a burn-out caused Arwe to reconsider what was truly important in life.’
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Salvador Dali The Enigma Of William Tell (1933)
‘Depicting Vladimir Lenin half-naked, and with a huge protruding buttock, this Salvador Dali painting seriously offended the surrealist community when it came out. This association was made worse by Dali’s appendant note. He wrote that “the buttock, of course, was the symbol of the revolution of October 1917.” When it was unveiled in 1934, many of his contemporaries tried to physically damage it, without much luck.’
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Ronald Ophuis Various (1995 – 1997)
‘Two men in combat uniforms are playing with a ball in a filthy toilet,
disregarding the man crouching on the ground at their feet and bathed in a pool of blood. In a cloakroom, three teenagers hold a fourth one down on the ground and sodomise him with a (large) Coca-Cola bottle. Note that all of them are wearing the same football team uniform. These works by Ronald Ophuis are part of a series of paintings done between 1995 and 1997 and exhibited at the Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam in 1999 under the title ‘Five paintings about violence’. They won the artist rapid fame in the country of Vermeer, especially when he went to court to oppose the state’s demand that a child abuse scene (‘Sweet violence’) be withdrawn from a public exhibition – and won his case.’
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Lloyd James Toilet Rolls (2011)
Oil on canvas
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Lari Pittman Spiritual and Needy (1991)
acrylic and enamel on mahogany panel, 82 x 66″
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Jonathan Monaghan Escape Pod (2015)
‘Jonathan Monaghan’s Escape Pod is an epic, seamlessly-looping 20 minute 3D animation. This magical journey follows a golden stag with a baroque anus from birth to the moment he conceives himself (?) by pooping out a cyborg penis to inseminate …something. That something is a giant set of testicles attached to an equally baroque, flying mansion with a minimalist Scandinavian penthouse. The cycle begins again with the baby stag exploring a world of stunning landscapes and duty-free shops that look like the Miami airport.’
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Sarah Lucas I SCREAM DADDIO (2015)
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Aline Bouvy and John Gillis The anus, in relation to the penis, the hand, the face (2013)
‘Belgium artists Aline Bouvy and John Gillis are contemporary artists who worked together to produce an unorthodox body of drawings that are a collage of body parts that reference the anus and other private areas of the body.’
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Personalized Anus Sculpture (2012)
‘Nothing says “I love you” better than an actual sculpture of your anus. Each sentimental token is created by making a physical cast from your anus – displaying your unique beauty through the intricate detailing. $1,900.00.’
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Carissa Rodriguez Symptomatic / What Would Edith Say (2015)
‘A service top is one who tops under the direction of an eager bottom. A versatile top is one who prefers to top but who bottoms occasionally. Starting at the top, the artist’s tongue—muscle of conceptual articulation and arbiter of aesthetic disposition—is more simply, the locus of language and taste; while accordingly at the bottom, the filth of distinction gathers in the anus. Pornography sanitizes anuses by cosmetically bleaching them for the screen, rendering natural flesh “more uniform with its surrounding area,” similar to the way art galleries light and fluff their spaces to achieve the cold, fluorescent-white installation shot that emits an ambience akin to the sweatshop—an artwork at its maximum efficiency. Between tongue and anus are the organs, situated midway, or Midtown, much like the art advisor’s position between the artist and the collector. Practitioners of Chinese medicine diagnose the conditions of internal organs as its symptoms appear on the tongue’s surface, which is read and appraised like a rare map, rug, vase, or painting, and although it is too overwrought to liken the tongue to a screen (mirroring the artist inside) or to a ‘mood board’ in the case of the branding consultant, the liver and spleen are nevertheless dutifully at work scripting messages to the moist upper surface.’
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Anna Uddenberg Journey of Self Discovery (2016)
fiberglass, aqua resin, windjacket, synthetic hair, paint, crocs, fabric, selfie stick, rubber strings, terrace puf, wall tattoo
*
p.s. Hey. ** Adem Berbic, Hi. It was so hot here yesterday that it was truly shocking. It might descend a little today. ‘Prayers’. Bob Flanagan is a wonderful poet. That was his main form. His S/M performances came later, and the glare that created around his poems is unfortunate. I never watched ‘True Detective’, but yeah. ‘Twin Peaks’ really spoiled me. ** jay, HI, jay. Thanks. Okay, I’ll try to find a copy of ‘DtP’ on a shelf somewhere and skip around/skim. ‘To the point of incoherence’ … now you’re making me interested. Gosh, dare I? The heat is supposed to start breaking a little today, and it kind of has to because everyone here is kind of going insane. I hope yours is vaporising too. ** James Bennett, Hi! Right, you’re in the middle of this too. Adem made the event seem quite successful. Congrats, sir. Yes … Everyone, Our own Adem Berbic’s first new book ‘Two Stories’ published by Ssnake Press aka our own James Bennett is gettable and you seriously want a copy, I feel utterly confident in saying. You can score it here. So important to concentrate on your writing, so that sounds like a very sane plan. And your modus operandi re: rebuilding your voice does sound quite exciting. Wow. Luck with the apartment hunt. I’m not versed in such things, but if I can help, give a shout. I like ‘Resentment’, of course. I’m a big fan of Gary’s, although I do think non-fiction was his best form, the one he absolutely mastered. Gary was very, very jealous of Kathy, and he did feel compelled to write and say things that let that be known quite frequently. This week? Honestly, mostly hiding out in my shitty air-conditioning. I’m going to see a Fujiko Nakaya fog sculpture with live score by Kali Malone at Pinault this morning. And Zac and I have some work to do. But I’m kind of saving my plans until atmospheric sanity returns starting on Monday. You? You actually getting out and about? ** Carsten, JB is pretty special. Interesting that she’s become almost more admired than Paul at this point. ‘Landscape Suicide’ is great. It’s Benning’s most narrative film by far. It’s not really reflective of his main, structuralist film work. I heard that Celine/Lavant film was terrible, so I never saw it. Terrible not due to any fault of Lavant’s, I understand. ** Steeqhen, Hi! It wouldn’t shock me if some director ends up shooting the ‘Ronnie Rocket’ script, and, yes, what a horrible idea. It’s supposed to go down to 27 degrees next week, which, under the circumstances, is going to feel like winter, I suspect. ** _Black_Acrylic, Here too. Every plan is being delayed for next week. Yesterday being outdoors here was like walking in the Sahara desert. You gotta believe, man, you bet. ** Steve, Matt talked about his current and upcoming projects, but he didn’t mention Louise Hay. Redesigning public space here is such a massive project costing such a massive amount of money, and, given France’s beleaguered economy, my guess is, no, they won’t, or very fitfully. ** Ferdinand, Well, hi there! Terrific to see you. I don’t know about that newer J Bowles book, and I’ll try to find it. Thanks. How are you? ** beaujolais, Hi. Cool, I haven’t checked Instagram yet today, but I will. That’s interesting: When we were in Chicago for the ‘RT’ screening I distinctly remember that a lot of people we met were sporting that exact look/style, which I hadn’t seen elsewhere in such proclivity, and which was very effective, if we’re any indication. ** HaRpEr //, Yeah, she’s so cool. She and her hubby would surely be very surprised by the ongoing strength of her work’s and her following. Yeah, I feel like I’m the living embodiment of ‘A Voice Through a Cloud’. But more like through steam. Your approach to the pitch sounds very labor intensive, yeah, but right. But again, I seem to be better at dashing possibilities. ** laura w, Hi. Yeah, she wasn’t a one-trick pony, although ‘TSL’ is her big pony. Oh, maybe I’ll try to watch that Christmas episode. I don’t mind being narratively lost. I think the last ballyhooed TV show that I ended up thinking was ok at least was ‘Wednesday’, but I only watched the first season, and I’m sure it fell way off. I think it is fashion week here, yes. Horrible/satisfying timing. Instagram is so weird. Last week it somehow decided I wanted every possible far right MAGA/fascist site output in my feed, andI I had to spend days blocking hundreds of them. Now it seems to think I want non-stop videos of people rescuing sea turtles and prying the barnacles off of them, which is of course infinitely better, but still. Oh, the thought of queers everywhere reading ‘Castle Faggot’ in hopes of having their pride in themselves reinforced. ** Okay. Very self-explanatory post for you today. See you tomorrow.
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