The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum

In a cross-country partnership with independent curator Stuart Horodner-who conceived the idea for the project-and DiverseWorks director Sora Kellner, the Museum’s goal was to revisit one of the oldest and most robust forms of art, erotic drawing, in the light of contemporary cultural realities. In recent years, our culture has been saturated with explicit photographic and computer-based images that sell us fantasies of sex in a variety of public and private zones. Concurrent with this explosion of promised flesh is a growing fascination with the traditional aspects of picture making, especially representational imagery. This has led to a renaissance in erotic drawing. This exhibition brings together examples of drawings dealing with the sexualized human body that are personal, comic, political, beautiful, startling, reflective, and biographical.