Clayton Cubitt.
Where is the line between pornography and erotic art and what separates these two realms—one gaining renowned acceptance and embraced by art critics and enthusiasts, the other relegated to a category of dirty, disgusting and lowliness.
Cubitt’s work makes convention and its opposite collide in an image that exudes both extremes simultaneously. Horrid, disgusting, dirty, but pure, clean and ivory are adjectives that come together to describe the same piece of art. Pale girls covered in semen, urine, blood and excrement become so horribly beautiful it’s hard to look away. Cubitt’s work is a collision of extremes; things that aren’t suppose to combine collide in some sort of high speed car crash that makes you rationalize repulsion into something that resembles appreciation. His work captures a profound intimacy in a brazen, bold expression of his subject laid bare.
Cubitt has done ads for David Yurman, Nike and Converse, he’s had spreads in Vogue and Elle magazine and for the last four years he has kept a blog called 'The Daily Seige' where he reveals his most intimate self. While most photographers stay comfortable behind their lens, his blog is a righteous exposure of his inner being, featuring photographs and films of his own experience of group sex, friends, fights, and other art experiments. It might be easy for someone to pass Cubitt’s work off as another imposter trying to delude extreme profanity as an attention getting mechanism for art. But that would greatly misinterpret Cubitt’s work. His photographs and videos capture an obvious appreciation for his subject and reveal Cubitt’s genuine belief that every niche is undiscovered beauty. Our most disgusting fantasies are beautiful, and trades that are socially unacceptable like sex work have more to them than their conventional categorization might suggest. In a serious called ‘Damaged Doll’, Cubitt uses the red haired adult-movie actress Justine Joli to model haute couture. Ads in magazines and fashion in general always seem to suggest sex and other dirtiness but in a less explicit manner. They flirt with the idea but never cross that line so as to actually suggest bestiality, rape, group sex, or something else considered by society as repulsive and wrong. Cubitt brings these worlds together--the man who comforts himself with paid pleasure and the girl that buys the magazine for the latest fashion trend all of a sudden share something in the same image. It is thrown together in an image where neither world is better or worse than the other, they just exist without judgement and unscathed, simply a photograph.
In a similar way to the popular play 'The Vagina Monologues', Cubitt brings the unmentionable and the somewhat uncomfortable subject matter to the fore- seeing beauty where others see ugliness and showing interest where others shy away.
Where is the line between pornography and erotic art and what separates these two realms—one gaining renowned acceptance and embraced by art critics and enthusiasts, the other relegated to a category of dirty, disgusting and lowliness.
Cubitt’s work makes convention and its opposite collide in an image that exudes both extremes simultaneously. Horrid, disgusting, dirty, but pure, clean and ivory are adjectives that come together to describe the same piece of art. Pale girls covered in semen, urine, blood and excrement become so horribly beautiful it’s hard to look away. Cubitt’s work is a collision of extremes; things that aren’t suppose to combine collide in some sort of high speed car crash that makes you rationalize repulsion into something that resembles appreciation. His work captures a profound intimacy in a brazen, bold expression of his subject laid bare.
Cubitt has done ads for David Yurman, Nike and Converse, he’s had spreads in Vogue and Elle magazine and for the last four years he has kept a blog called 'The Daily Seige' where he reveals his most intimate self. While most photographers stay comfortable behind their lens, his blog is a righteous exposure of his inner being, featuring photographs and films of his own experience of group sex, friends, fights, and other art experiments. It might be easy for someone to pass Cubitt’s work off as another imposter trying to delude extreme profanity as an attention getting mechanism for art. But that would greatly misinterpret Cubitt’s work. His photographs and videos capture an obvious appreciation for his subject and reveal Cubitt’s genuine belief that every niche is undiscovered beauty. Our most disgusting fantasies are beautiful, and trades that are socially unacceptable like sex work have more to them than their conventional categorization might suggest. In a serious called ‘Damaged Doll’, Cubitt uses the red haired adult-movie actress Justine Joli to model haute couture. Ads in magazines and fashion in general always seem to suggest sex and other dirtiness but in a less explicit manner. They flirt with the idea but never cross that line so as to actually suggest bestiality, rape, group sex, or something else considered by society as repulsive and wrong. Cubitt brings these worlds together--the man who comforts himself with paid pleasure and the girl that buys the magazine for the latest fashion trend all of a sudden share something in the same image. It is thrown together in an image where neither world is better or worse than the other, they just exist without judgement and unscathed, simply a photograph.
In a similar way to the popular play 'The Vagina Monologues', Cubitt brings the unmentionable and the somewhat uncomfortable subject matter to the fore- seeing beauty where others see ugliness and showing interest where others shy away.