Andy Warhol's Polaroids: Sex
Andy Warhol wanted a person to be a machine, constantly working and producing. He famously called his studio “the factory” after the model of machine-like production he aspired to have in the creation of art. Sex is part of this machine as Warhol said that looking at sexual images would keep a person working and excited, like a 'well-oiled machine'. Warhol bought many pornographic magazines for his own pleasure and also as inspiration for artworks.
As part of Warhol’s fascination with sex, he created the “Landscapes” series. The series was originally titled “Nudes” but became “Landscapes”, because Warhol wanted the series to have a more artistic name. Andy’s friend Victor Hugo went to the baths and other places where gay men would gather for the pursuit of pleasure. On his adventures, Hugo selected almost fifty models to be part of the series. It included 1,664 Polaroids and 47 rolls of film of men in different degrees of nudity and, in some, having sex with each other.
This photograph was taken in 1977, the first year that Warhol worked on the "Landscape" series. The chest hair on this man almost resembles a landscape as it creates shapes in various directions on the man's torso.
When Warhol wanted to create works of erotic art, he had trouble naming them as institutions and galleries would censor names of his works that were perceived as obscene. Instead, curators and scholars called many of his works simply 'Torsos' that displayed varying body parts including torsos and genitals.
Also taken during the first year of the “Landscapes” series, this image shows the variety of poses that one of the fifty models would do for Andy Warhol’s camera. According to art historian Kenneth Clark, there is the aestheticized nude body we see in art and the naked body we see in the mirror when we look at ourselves. Blake Gopnik offers an alternative to Clark’s interpretive division: the type of body that is on display here is the “hot” body, seen in pornographic films or in the baths, where Victor Hugo spent time and found models.
Andy Warhol never publicly proclaimed his homosexuality. The photograph here is a playful parallel to the role sexuality played in Warhol’s life. Here we see one of the models in a position where he could be receiving oral sex but we don’t know precisely if that is happening because the genital area is hidden from view. All we see are the buttons to the man’s pants open. It is a game of “is it or isn’t it,” reflecting Andy’s approach to answering questions about sexuality as a public figure.
Many of Warhol’s films were also concerned with erotic tension caused by a tease, such as the 1963 film Blow Job. Like in this image, we see the head of a man, writhing in pleasure but we are not sure if he is receiving oral sex or not. Andy liked the concept of the tease a lot as he often bought pornographic magazines and went to peep shows.