Eroticism in the Art of Harry Sudman

The objectification of women – the reduction of their humanity to the status of an object – is a common complaint lodged against erotic art.  As Lynn Hunt contends in Eroticism and the Body Politic, women become little more than a projection of the desires of the male, so that women are “still more often the object of the artist's or writer's gaze than… the subjects of their own representing processes” [1]. 

Back in the 1970’s this was one of the main objections of radical feminists to magazines like Playboy and Penthouse.  They decried images that were exaggerated and distorted to excite male sexual arousal.  They claimed that the women in these images were being taken advantage of, exploited.

Yet to the extent that any image has been manipulated to elicit a reaction, it can be argued that the viewer is as much exploited as the subject. Indeed, with eroticism, a tacit agreement seems frequently to exist between the subject and the viewer: the female agrees to distort herself to manipulate, the male agrees to be manipulated. 

Nevertheless, it is argued that this complicity requires a self-objectification of the female.  As Emily Apter puts it “'some profound, masochistic will to self-objectification (evident, at a superficial level, in a woman's desire to make herself into a sex object)...doll-like affectations, narcissistic displays of isolated parts of the body, and the faked orgasm are just so many modalities of this essentially artificial sexuality'[2].

Yet if the female employs a mode of artificiality to induce a reaction in the male it does not always have to be of the simpering, coy, kittenish kind.  In the art of Harry Sudman the females are strong, their latex, piercings and tattoos speak of a gritty toughness, their postures defiant.  At a visceral level they simultaneously intimidate and attract. 

Sudman’s hyperrealistic technique heightens this dichotomy, underlining the sexual tension in the work.  His depiction of sex is suggestive, tinged with an element of danger.  For a male viewer this kind of eroticism hints at power, and yet almost all this power resides in the figure of the female; and this approach, administered through his hyperrealistic technique, makes the subject appear stark, commanding, more real than real, giving her a dominant role and turning the old argument against eroticism on its head.  Who is being exploited here?  Who being taken advantage of? 

Indeed, if someone is being reduced to a subservient role, if someone is being objectified, these paintings speak clearly to the assertion that it is not the woman.  

Sudman’s paintings challenge traditional concepts of eroticism.  While his images are undoubtedly alluring, they are at the same time uncompromising.  This is no soft focus, come-hither pose.  This is something dangerous and exciting.      

Ultimately, at the heart of Harry Sudman’s work lies a compelling paradox, Sudman’s paintings employ hyperrealism to express an enigma, the vague and shifting definitions of the erotic, and, more deeply, the disparate and varied nature of human sexual attraction. 

Malcolm Logan

Notes: 

[1]  Lynn Hunt ed., Eroticism and the Body Politic (London 1991) p. 13

[2]  Emily Apter, in Hunt ed., Eroticism p. 170