Olivia Brookshire

Grotesque Erotic
Art invokes various discussions and can express many unique
experiences and personalities. One of the most personal artistic expressions
can be the erotic, the sensuous, and taboo. For my own work, the desire to
explore sexuality and womanhood is essential. Through my own experiences
and with the addition of artistic scholars, I will analyze the need for erotic
art, propose the positive benefits to its conception, and suggest artists reclaim
the term grotesque when referring to their art and body.
To fully understand my desire for more eroticism, I will first discuss
my own artistic endeavors and how I perceive the beauty in this form of selfexpression. The past two years of my career as an artist have been dedicated
to expelling the demons of someone who once rejected her body. Im Pink is a
series of nine nude photographs that explore the flaws and curves of my body
from various angles. The goal was to embrace my body with a gentle and
erotic approach. When I first made the proposal, I was introduced to artists
such as Jenny Saville and Jen Davis, both of whom I greatly admire as
inspiration for my personal work. Both women use the artistic nude as the
subject of focus. Often times the subjects are their own bodies, a method I too
practice. I chose to use my body as the representation for struggling with the
damaging way I saw myself. I had hoped that other women could see
themselves in the photographs and learn to embrace the erotic beauty of their
own fuller figures.

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The question I continued to ask myself during the making of this series

was why I chose to be represented fully nude. In an earlier series, an

archetype for Im Pink, I hid myself behind an unflattering dress for most of
the images. It was only until I stepped back to observe the photographs that I
realized that I had not truly expanded upon my aspiration to see myself as a
desirable young woman. To fully find that need to explore my sexuality, I had
to embrace that my figure does not meet conventional standards for feminine
beauty. To put it candidly, I admit to myself that I am fat and that many may
choose to perceive my figure as grotesque. Only now I could also choose to
portray myself as a grotesque erotic and reclaim the ordinarily derogatory
expression.
Before I delve into the importance and need of the erotic nude, I will
give a brief history of the importance of the female nude. The value of the
artistic nude has been essential to the progression of art since the early days
of man. A popular example, The Venus of Willendorf, is an early piece that
dates to 20,000 BCE. The figure, curvaceous and round in its small stature,
represents the female nude in possibly its earliest form. However, while we
do not know all about this piece, we do know it is identified as a fertility
figure, which is to say that perhaps the belief was held that fat bodies were
not ideal unless they were bearing children. Many cultures depicted the
female nude in various ways and were often either erotic in nature or
representational to the societys ideology of human attraction and desire.
Today there are a myriad of motivations for artists who choose to portray the

nude figure; sexual desire, appreciation for the form, representation, a need
for intimacy, etc.
However, the artistic nude was not always meant for expression or
representation. As one author notes,
Prior to the late nineteenth century in Europe and the United States,
it was considered improper for women to use nudes as the subject of
their art. They were excluded from studying the nude with their male
counterparts in art schools (Corinne, 1).
Because female artists were considered lesser to their male colleagues, many
pieces of female nude art were lost or unpublished from history.
Representation illustrated by women was stricken down and instead fell to
the renderings driven by the male gaze. The female form was displayed as a
means for a mans arousal, but without the sense for exploration or
admiration, it became almost pornographic, a sexual object more than a
sexual subject. As women began to make their way into art history, the
artistic nude began to present itself with new senses of purpose. There was a
study of anatomy and an exploration of sexuality, femininity, and identity.
Before I begin to explain the importance of the grotesque erotic, it is
important to know more of the female artistic nude and its eroticism. Sue
Taylor, author of the article The Erotic Eye, discusses the importance of the
erotic in terms with what women want. Taylor also includes the studies of
Alyce Mahon, a specialist in twentieth century art and critical theory.
Feminists struggling against objectification by men turned towards erotica as

a genre they could embrace for their desire for sexual pleasure (Taylor, 59).
The objectification that stemmed from the opposite sex mainly arose in
pornography, a genre that catered to power dynamics and sexual release
rather than sexual exploration. Mahon argues that the intent of erotic art
differs from pornography as it employs sexual imagery as a shocking means
to express social, religious, and political criticism or defy bourgeois taste
(Taylor, 59). Though there are other branches of erotic art, I am discussing
the need to express oneself and conduct social and cultural criticism. The idea
in my work is to express sexuality and desire in a way that disturbs the
societal ideals of beauty. So how do I do this? How do I choose to address the
erotic and the so-called undesirable?
There has always been a sense of shame and controversy around
nudity and eroticism, and the intent of my art has led me to tackling both
issues in a representative form. The artist statement for my series of
photographs entitled Im Pink addresses my desire for an appropriate
illustration.
After years of hiding myself with shame and struggling to accept the
young woman who faced me in the mirror, Ive embraced the blushing
skin and curves of fat. These intimate photographs invite viewers to
explore the form and color of the human body and the details that we
are given as we grow. The marks and rolls pictured dont destroy the
beauty of the body, but create striking scars and graceful lines
(Brookshire).

I approach the call for erotic art in a way that enables me to explore what
could be defined as my grotesque body. My body is often considered an affront
to modern societys views towards female beauty. I have flaws, fat, and a
body that is usually seen as unhealthy and unattractive. While I may have
once agreed with the negativity, Ive managed to break that hold and now
work to overcome the personal demons that kept me from exploring and
loving myself. There is a power in eroticism that gives me the strength to
explore who I am.
With empowering erotic art can come a boldness to openly address
female sexuality, something that is commonly repressed and degraded. In the
article Dirty Commerce: Art Work and Sex Work since the 1970s, Bryan
Wilson mentions the art of Cosey Fanni Tutti in her exhibition entitled

Prostitution, in which she displays pornographic spreads of herself. She

shamelessly shows viewers her nude body, often with genitalia completely
visible. John A. Walker, an art historian, commented [the show] presumably
[makes] the Marxist point that most of us have to prostitute ourselves to
some degree by selling our mental or bodily labour powers (Wilson, 79). I
disagree. Tuttis work seems to be a reflection of her own interest in posing as
an erotic woman of art, and seems to be in no way prostituting herself to
achieve some kind of status in the art community. Again theres this
misogynist idea that women who engage in this kind of behavior must be
seeking to sell themselves, and were reduced to being thought of as inferior.

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Audre Lorde, a writer and feminist, explains how women have been

made to be naive of the power the erotic holds.

We have been taught to suspect this resource, vilified, abused, and
devalued within western society. On the one hand, the superficially
erotic has been encouraged as a sign of female inferiority; on the other
hand, women have been made to suffer and to feel both contemptible
and suspect by virtue of its existence (Lorde, 53).
She continues to discuss how women have been manipulated into distrusting
their natural desires.
We have been warned against it [power] all our lives by the male
world, which values this depth of feeling enough to keep women
around in order to exercise it in the service of men, but which fears this
same depth too much to examine the possibilities of it within
themselves (Lorde, 54).
If a woman finds that inner power to express her sexuality, it becomes a
threat to the hold men like to believe they have over women. Those women
who enjoy sexual pleasure or at the very least love to feel sensual with their
bodies without giving a service to men are often treated as cheap or lesser. In
western society, its akin to comparing someone to a sex worker, and even
then we forget that theres a broad spectrum of women who may enjoy their
work and eagerly wish to participate.
To further the understanding of the benefit of erotic art, Lorde
continues to discuss how the erotic affects her life.

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The erotic functions for me in several ways, and the first is in
providing the power which comes from sharing deeply any
pursuit with another person. The sharing of joy, whether
physical, emotional, psychic, or intellectual, forms a bridge
between the sharers, which can be the basis for understanding...
(Lorde, 56).

This is true of my artwork and myself. When I share Im Pink or any other
personal erotic pieces, Im sharing myself with the audience. That connection
with others who may also seek to discover their erotic nature can be formed,
prompting self-exploration of themselves until they too can find the power
that comes with becoming aware of their hidden sensuality. As I mentioned
before, one of the goals of Im Pink was to reach out towards other plus-sized
women and address them as women who understand the struggle of finding
their sensuality.
So what is a grotesque erotic? Upon further research to discuss my
thesis, I came across a study that followed the artistic exploration of a female
undergraduate painter who sought to explore her own sexual desirability and
find the grotesque appeal in her own body. The study followed six fine art
students from their second year term to a year after graduation. One student
in particular was closely studied and watched with interest as she chose to
articulate her intentions and thoughts about what she was trying to portray
(Chittenden, 56). As a traditional artist interested in honing her skills in
anatomical studies through life drawings classes, the student struggled to

find her own fat, grotesque female body image in canonical art historical
works or [in] contemporary popular media (Chittenden, 57). This was a need
for claiming an identity where one could not be often found.
Like myself, the student was fond of studying the work of Jenny
Saville, a painter who is known for pushing the limitations of the female form
and confronting modern societys concerns for female body image. Savilles
paintings often involve the distortion of the nude form, pushing skin and rolls
of fat to create grotesque shapes and images. While the misshapen mess of
the body is indeed provoking a sense of grotesque, its sensuous in the way
she paints the rosy tones of naked flesh. Naked flesh is naturally a
provocative element of desire. In one of her paintings of the series Plan, the
body evokes eroticism in the angle she chooses to present the female nude.
The audience is made to look up to a woman with heavy breasts, thick thighs,
and wild pubic hair, an unusual sight compared to how women are portrayed
in advertisements and other forms of most popular media.
The student went on to explain her views on the connection between
the body and female self esteem and body positivity. Its commonly known
that with women the pressure to conform to societys strict demands of
physical beauty begins at a young age, often the teenage years and onward.
The painting student related how she had already been made to feel
that her body size was undesirable, but these feelings were
exacerbated when, on finally finding her body image in Jenny Savilles

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paintings, critics deemed the body to be monstrous, disgusting, or
grotesque (Chittenden, 59).

There is a sense of anguish when the student finally sees herself represented
in large, stunning paintings with lush colors, only to be rejected by critics
who may negate the desirable art as hideous. The same can be said for
myself. It is difficult to find representation in acknowledged art when youre
of a different size than what is believed to be desirable, and its considerably
more devastating when the art you find beautiful is demeaned. Its akin to
having something precious stripped away.
The more I engaged myself with the article, the more I began to
identify with the students desires. In one instance, she breaks away from
Savilles style of directing the viewers eye towards the shape and size of the
nude, fat form and instead paints herself in a series of carnivalesque roles
to express the body as a happy and desirable personality.
She explained: In the end I found the problematic issues relating to the
female nude too difficult to reconcile within my work so I moved
towards role play with circus characters as a form to express an alter
ego (Chittenden, 60).
In order to aid herself in exploring the boundaries of desirability and identity,
she places herself in a narrative. I had never thought to explore this, but the
idea is fascinatingtaking our bodies and giving them life where normally
we may not find representation. Reclaiming the term grotesque involves
addressing our so-called flaws, which in reality are not at all real faults. Fat

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and grotesque have been seemingly coinciding since the very beginning of
word association. The student chooses to portray her bodys persona in a
fantasy of a controlling spectatorship, a freedom...which defies the limits of
the fat body (Chittenden, 63). Its about breaking the limitations that
society has given us as we master our own eroticism and define whom we are
against a stigma that paints us as grotesque.
This is the very reasoning behind my motivation to create selfrepresentation for erotic and grotesque art. To find my own positivity and
desirability, I had to push myself to break past the uncomfortable attitude I
once held towards my body and acknowledge that my flaws and fat are just
as beautiful as they are grotesque. The need for this genre of erotic art is
based in the desire to expand upon differing views of aesthetically pleasing
beauty and giving a voice to those who have ever felt undesirable and
unrepresented in the art world.

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Bibliography

Brookshire, Olivia. Im Pink: An Artist Statement. 2015. Print. 1 May 2016.

Bryan-Wilson, J. "Dirty Commerce: Art Work and Sex Work since the 1970s."
Differences 23.2 (2012): 71-112. Print. 29 Mar. 2016.
Chittenden, Tara. "Body-Building: A Female Student's Use Of The
Transitional Spaces Of A Painting Degree Course To Explore Her
Sexual Desirability And Aesthetics As A "Grotesque" Female
Body." International Journal Of Art & Design Education 32.1
(2013): 55-67. ERIC. Print. 1 Apr. 2016.
Corinne, Tee A. "Subjects Of The Visual Arts: Nude Females." GLBTQ Arts
(2015): 1-6. LGBT Life with Full Text. Print. 1 May 2016.
Lorde, Audre. Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power. Brooklyn, NY: Out & Out,

1978. Print. 29 Mar. 2016.



Taylor, S. "Eroticism And Art." Art In America 96.5 (n.d.): 57-+. Arts &
Humanities Citation Index. Print. 2 Apr. 2016

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Jenny Saville Plan 1993

Oil on canvas 274 x 213.5 cm 108 x 84"