Dorothy Iannone's Naked Truth at M HKA
Love is her inspiration, she said. Dorothy's (1933-2022, American) works are easily mistaken for scandalous pictures of sex when in fact, they showcase a fierce vulnerability only few are capable of.
Meeting Dorothy
My first encounter with her work was around five years ago in an archive. I didn’t think much of it. It was a small print of a blank blonde female figure standing on a piano, her legs spread, black kitten heels tiptoeing on the keyboard, a smaller piano keyboard covering her groin. The bright blue star-covered lid and the flowers around her neck highlighted her nakedness. The work’s title PLAY IT AGAIN (2007) was written above her head. I thought it was fun.
I met Dorothy’s work again last September at a group show in Düsseldorf with monumental statues of liberty and more drawings of gender-bending couples engaged in sexual pleasure. The curator combined her work with that of William Copley (1919-1996, American). He’s famous for painting multiple scenarios of a guy in a green checkered suit and a brown melon hat getting busted with a blonde naked woman. Nice combo, I thought: Repression of sexuality on one side and its liberation on the other. Goofy and sexy.
Last December, I finally got to her solo show at M HKA in Antwerp. Now I really saw her. It was Dorothy’s last exhibition before she passed in 2022 aged 86. Knowing this, entering felt like crashing the funeral of somebody I’ve barely known. But every single piece was a guest kindly inviting me to chat and remember their old friend. I listened and felt like I had got to know her.
More than just sex
Throughout her life, she faced censorship and outrage. Dorothy’s figures not only openly have sex. They defy gender norms. Women have balls and men have breasts in this queer gender-fluid world where body parts are easily swapped and mixed. Even when otherwise fully clothed. Dorothy plays with Hindu and Buddhist perspectives on sexuality, often using Kamasutra and the concept of chakras. But it wouldn’t do justice to limit her work to a take on the sexual liberation movement in the 1960s with a hint of exoticism. To her, sex and passion are the bottom line to understanding life. In her bright images of sex, Dorothy intertwines words and poetry revealing something so much deeper: Vulnerability.
In the print 10 Scenes (1969), affirmations of sexual dominance and power play swap places with doubt. Alas, I still cherish slavery is written above the breasts of a crouching woman performing oral sex on a seating male figure. And domination, too says the woman in the next scene receiving cunnilingus. What does it mean when we do it this way? asks another woman taken from behind, her head beyond the frame. The phrase I wonder if I will ever be free fills the belly area of a woman being penetrated. Sex alone isn’t liberation. And not always is it intimacy. You can still be alone while being with someone. Nobody can take that loneliness away from you. This work made me ask: If sex doesn’t bring freedom, what does?
Friends, Family & Lovers
I love the way that there are several different words for love in Greek you can’t translate one to one. There’s eros, romantic, sexual love. And there’s agape, the love of deep friendship. Then storge is often used for family ties. As much as there’s a focus on sexuality, the exhibition leaves a lot of space for the platonic bonds throughout Dorothy’s life. There’s this 1992 Ouija board game she played with her art friends asking every single one What is art? Why art? Is art important? What is art’s future? There are letters she exchanged with her friend & lover Mary Harding (1888-1971, British) and founded the publishing agency Passion Press with. The show beautifully included Sarah Pucci’s (1902-1996, American) embellished heart-shaped artworks she gave to her daughter as symbols of her maternal love. That daughter was Dorothy.
There are countless postcards and inside jokes she exchanged with fellow artist, friend, and lover Dieter Roth (1930-1998, Swiss). A vast textile work, An Icelandic Saga (1989), holds the auto-fictional memories of her trip to Iceland where they first met. Unapologetic nudity included. As much as there’s humor and wit in her cheeky and scandalous nakedness, Dorothy drops the covers emotionally, too. I was deeply moved by a letter she wrote to a friend in the early 90’s:
For Roger,
who might well have been the most handsome of them all.
With love, from your friend dorothy who is so happy that you had space in your life for her.
Do you remember when you+Albert had dinner with me and my husband in a Spanish restaurant on Macdougal Street and I revealed more of myself than you had Known or expected to Know. You were interested, taken, but you warned me that you would not reciprocate.
I appreciated your scrupulous honesty and in the end I found that your bark was worse than your bite.
I was not okay after reading that. Matter of fact, I didn’t see much after that due to my tears.
Dorothy is well aware that there’s some luck, coincidence, risk, and gambling involved in love. Dorothy’s work Roulette Table, Love Is My Inspiration (1972-2020) designed in her typical black and white and accent color scheme looks as if the players just abandoned their game of roulette. There it is again. The loneliness. Four tall cut-out figures of Dorothy’s friends stand a bit farther away. Much rather props on a scene than real human beings.
Two handwritten texts lie next to the neatly arranged tokens. In the first one, Gambling on Love, Dorothy looks back to her time at university. She had an exam coming up on the planets of our solar system and decided to learn everything about Venus. She bet everything on the planet and Goddess of love. It luckily worked out. In the other text, Choosing a Man, Dorothy recalls how her three loves (a brief love, a married love, and a Dieter love) chose their bets at the horse races. The first one bet on a coincidence, a sign. He won. The second one closely inspected every horse and chose the most dominant one. He won, too. Dieter, finally, chose a horse he felt sorry for. And he, too, won that race.
Love always has the last word
Dorothy’s Notes For An Autobiography (1977) consist of 15 drawings and texts. They capture her despair, her delusions, her hopes, and her longing for a vulnerable, honest, and reciprocated love. It made me understand that piano print from five years ago. Play It Again. Play Me Again. These texts about her life are not so much about her relationship with herself as her romantic and platonic bonds once again. Dorothy, you hopeless romantic.
It’s the smaller works that whispered to me. Amid the monumental figures of divine sexuality, word-riddled music-blasting boxes and TV screens, it’s the small handwritten notes that took my hand and showed me something I didn’t know. I didn’t see the work of an artist. I saw a woman who was so vulnerable to put herself into her art and gently hand it to the world to hold and not break.
Thinking of Dorothy as she worked on this show until the very end, I wish I could have known her. I wish I could have talked to her about both an anxious and lighthearted life craving for love. I would have squeezed her hand and whispered I see you, friend.
Get lost in the vulnerable and erotic poetry of Dorothy Iannone: Love is forever, isn’t it? until January 21, 2024, at M HKA.
M HKA, Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst Antwerpen
Leuvenstraat 32
2000 Antwerp, BE
Website
I hope this review helped you see something that I did. There is so much more that I’d want to say. If you want to learn more about her work and thoughts, the exhibition guide is out of this world. Thank you for being here. Leave a comment, a like, or send it to a friend who might like to see the show.
See you soon.
Jennifer
The Gen Z Art Critic