Good Art, Naughty Art 
A few weeks ago, I ran into my friend Ellen on the street. Ellen is an artist who draws comics (her best-known work is a strip called I Was Seven in ’75, later collected in the graphic novel Monkey Food), though lately she’s been doing more fine-art work, plus posters, album covers, illustrations and all the stuff that artists need to do to pay rent and put food on the table. A week prior to our encounter, a particularly great piece of hers (shown at left) graced the cover of the local alternative weekly, The Stranger, and in the course of our conversation, I asked her if she still had the original.
Sure, she said, turning the discussion to her various efforts to sell her work. We walked back to her apartment where she showed me that piece, beautifully matted and framed, ready for sale. Great, I thought – I could buy a very cool work of art for my wall and help a friend out at the same time. Then she pulled out another pen-and-ink work in the same style, also matted and framed, showing a full shot of the woman reclining nude and leisurely masturbating while explaining what she was doing in some detail. “They’re a set!” said Ellen proudly.
Indeed, they were facing pages of a short story called “How to Please a Woman with Your Fingers,” which appeared in the Fantagraphics anthology Dirty Stories #3, and Ellen had re-used the more presentable of the two images as the cover shot for the Stranger. I suppose she would have split up the set if really pressed, but clearly she was intending to sell the pair as a unit. The second image, while certainly less subtle than the first, was also quite striking and well-executed. Personally, I had no problem getting both pictures; the problem was, where to hang them?
My girlfriend was rather skeptical of this whole enterprise. Although we don’t live together, we spend an awful lot of time under the same roof. We also entertain together at my place from time to time, and she made a very good point that most of our guests would be somewhat discomfited under the gaze of a flamboyantly naked masturbating woman in my living room. I got the feeling she was not entirely pleased about the venture, but as she had purchased some suspect-looking art from some of her (male) artist-friends from time to time, she hardly had grounds to object.
Also, this is precisely one of the reasons we have separate living spaces (she lives in the building next door to me), despite being together over 12 years. In those occasional moments in the relationship where we can’t agree about some domestic detail, there’s no need for conflict over a shared environment – one of us always has the irrefutable last word. Our arrangement strikes some people as odd, but all I can say is that we’ve outlasted the marriages of most of our friends. It’s not for everyone, but it works for us.
Once I got the pieces home, I took the obvious step of splitting the set between two rooms. The presentable head-shot hangs in my living room, underneath a drawing by Dave McKean that offers an amusing contrast. The other one is in my office, where I’m still searching for the right nook to display it semi-publicly. But hey, what could be a better measure of the quality of contemporary art than its ability to generate controversy?
8:18:24 AM 
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