Sex Sells: The Iconography of Sex Work in Contemporary Art

Sex work is a controversial topic that is often associated with shame and stigmatization. But in the contemporary art scene, the representation of sex workers has played an important role.

Artists use various media such as painting, photography or performance art to point out the social problems.

An example of this is the work of the American artist Jeff Koons . In his series “Made in Heaven”, he shows himself together with his then wife Ilona Staller (also known as Cicciolina), a former porn actress from Italy.

The pictures are explicitly sexual and provocative - but they also show the contradiction between the ideal image of love and sexuality as well as its commercial exploitation by the porn industry .

But not only male artists deal critically with the topic: women like Tracey Emin or Nan Goldin address their experiences as sex workers. Your works are personal in nature; They give an insight into the lives of people on the edge of our society - porn actresses, prostitutes, dominas, escorts ( Erobella ) and Co.

But why is there so many artists still deal with it today? On the one hand, one can argue that there are still far too few public discussions about prostitution - even though this is practiced worldwide!

Through artistic works, topics can be addressed without having to make direct moral judgements.

Sex Sells: The Iconography of Sex Work in Contemporary Art

In 2020, Bowdoin College Mackenzie Philbrick examined the representations of sex work in contemporary art since 1973 as part of an honorary work for the art department of the US educational institution.

Philbrick, Mackenzie, "Sex Sells: The Iconography of Sex Work in Contemporary Art Since 1973" (2020). Honors Projects. 202. This open access work will be made available to you by the student Scholarship and Creative Work at Bowdoin Digital Commons free of charge. It was accepted by an authorized administrator of Bowdoin Digital Commons for admission to Honors Projects.

This honours project examined how and for what purpose the identity of the sex worker has been used in Western contemporary art.

The term “sex worker”, characterized by Scarlot Harlot in 1987, refers to a person who receives money or goods in exchange for sexual services, and also includes those who participate in the film adaptation of pornography for money.

The term "sex work" is used in this project when it comes to the work of sex workers in contemporary context, while the term "prostitute" is used to draw attention to the historical identity and myth of the "prostitutes"

Philbrick's analysis includes several areas 1973 to 2018 and is divided into three chapters. The works fall into the postmodern period when the post -structural emphasis on the discourse in the 1970s gained importance and developed its full strength in 1980.

This historical moment signaled a departure from the idealism of modernity to something completely new, as was shaped the effects of capitalism, comprehensive globalization and further deregulation.

According to the author, this period was categorized by a loss of belief in superordinate narratives such as religion or science , which indicates a kind of lack of depth in the world in favor of an obsession of superficial phenomena.

In this context, the French philosopher Michel Foucault argued that discourse was made, which led to a subsequent shift in focus. Although postmodern theoretization had different effects on feminism, according to his statement, one of the most remarkable was the way it opened the dialogue for the "others" of feminism in order to alleviate the oppression of certain narrative and ultimately the multiple to promote.

Sexuality is to feminism what labour is to Marxism: That which belongs to you the most and yet is taken away the most."

Quote from Catherine A. Mackinnon from “Feminism, Marxism, Method, and the State: An Agenda for Theory ”, in Signs 7 No. 3, Spring 1982, translated from English.

Although today the view of individual artists on sex workers and the connections between feminist art and performative interpretations of the prostitutes were discussed, Julia Bryan-Wilson is the only art historian who dealt with this topic in the entire work of various artists.

Her article "Dirty Commerce: Art Work and Sex Work Since the 1970s" examined the different types of how artists have dealt with sex work since the 1970s, and emphasizes the economic similarities between the artist and sex worker in late capitalism.

Her argument does not address the advantages and disadvantages of different media or the way postmodernism has influenced these representations of the sex worker, but rather draws meaningful parallels between the artist and the sex worker by comparing their working conditions in capitalism.

In her article, she postulated that artists turned to the figure of the sex worker because it made a series of evolving conditions such as the professionalisation of the art market, the increasing instability of class formations, and the rise of affective labour more visible.

Based on Bryan-Wilson's work as well as the Marxschen and Foucault theory, Mackenzie Philbrick's work analyzed the position of the sex worker among artists in capitalism, just as these identities interacted and overlapped, while contemporary artists reacted to the modernist descent of the female act and the commercialization of the art object.

Pornography in contemporary painting and photography

Since the successful avant-garde act traditionally required a careful balance between the artist's sexual shoots and at the same time the control of the risk of being vivid, these women have undermined this unspoken rule and instead files that are obviously erotic and were pornographic.

The art historian Lynda Nead suggests that importance on the edges of these socially constructed categories can be questioned and questioned. A number of works of art do this and, due to their medium and its cultural location, is technically based on the category of visual art when recording or mapping pornographic images.

Betty Tompkins' Fuck Painting #6, 1973

Betty Tompkins' Fuck Painting #6 , 1973, takes over a graphic scene from pornography by enlarging and curling to just include the genitals that are shown in gentle monochromen tones applied with airbrush.

Marilyn Minter's Porn Grid #1-4, 1989

In Marilyn Minter's Porn Grid #1-4 , 1989, she shows a dot pattern of pornographic "Money Shots", while men and women serve erect penises.

Merry Albernen's photo series Dirty Windows, 1994

Merry Albernen's photo series Dirty Windows from 1994 captured illegal activities in the bathroom of a private LAPDANCE club on Wall Street, in which men exchange women with money and drugs for sexual actions.

Each of these works represents the sex worker naturalistic - through photography or photo realism - and thus reacts to the modernist obsession with the female act by putting it explicitly erotic abstraction

Representation of the female body as a request for discourse

In "The Female Nude: Art, Obscenity and Sexuality", art historian Lynda Nead postulates that the female act not only sets beauty standards, but also strengthens and normalized certain viewing dynamics.

In view of his repetition as a significant aesthetic motive and his associations with value and desire, Nead argues that

The representation of the female body can therefore be seen as a discourse on the topic and forms the core of the history of western aesthetics. ”

The obsession of art with processes of separation and order, which led to the containment and regulation of the female body and sexuality, is characteristic of how these were suppressed in western culture.

Based on Foucault's post -structural attitude, Nead also noted:

Power lies on the edge of socially constructed categories ”,

What indicates that artists can question the meaning by dealing with these classification systems and disturbing them to show how unstable the limits of these categories are.

A large part of your argument revolves around the western feminist art movement of the second wave and the various possibilities of how feminist art can disclose traditional viewing dynamics. This should criticize existing values ​​and open new meanings for the female body.

Your investigation aims to understand the interactions between visual art and obscene , and ultimately comes to the conclusion that these are two completely different spheres: pornography and art are

caught in a circulation of mutual definition ”.

Photographer clears up with stigmatization of sex workers

Let us swing our focus from the theoretical postulations and theses of Nead to an internationally celebrated and decorated photographer: Julia Fullerton-Batten sex workers during their work for their new book "The Act" with the lens. She cleans up with beautiful recordings with the stigmatization of sex workers.

Hardly any industry is as controversial as the sex industry. And only a few workers are assessed, stigmatized and showered with the prefabricated opinions of others like sex workers.

It was these ideas that the photographer Julia Fullerton-Batten, who lived in London, prompted her objectively to focus on women who use their bodies to earn their livelihood in order to understand what a person could make sex work voluntarily.

The resulting photo book entitled "The Act" shows escort ladies , pornstars, lap and pole dancers, a stripper, a webcam girl, sex "slave", a dominatrix, a burlesque dancer; Air artists and a ping pong girl. Each person is shown on a stage to make it clear that his work contains an acting element.

Curiosity was the main trigger who inspired me to shoot the act ”,

she tells in an interview to The Independent .

I was curious about what women, some of whom were well trained and had a university degree, motivated to give up this normality and voluntarily enter the sex industry and to risk social stigmatization and disapproval of their families. ”

Julia Fullerton-Batten is a globally recognized art photographer . Fullerton-Battens work comprises twelve large projects that comprise on their career in this area for a decade.

Julia's use of unusual places, extremely creative settings and street cast models, accentuated by cinematic lighting, are trademarks of your style. It suggests visual tensions in her pictures and gives them mysticism that entices the viewer to look at the picture again and again; Something new comes to light every time.

These properties have established enthusiasts worldwide and at all ends of the cultural spectrum for their work, from the occasional observer to the connoisseur of art photography.

Fullerton-Batten has won countless awards for her commercial and artistic work and is a Hasselblad master .

It was commissioned by the National Portrait Gallery in London to record portraits of leading personalities of the British National Health Service. These are kept in a constant collection there today. More pictures are also located in the constant collection of the Musei de l'Elysee , Lausanne, Switzerland.