Studies in Erotic Art: When Narcissists Go Flaccid

 

INCHES AWAY: The Nude Self Portraits Of Jimmy Chen

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Auguste Rodin

Unknown (ca. 1910)

Alberto Giacometti

Unknown (ca. 1955)

Pornographic aspects have always been legitimized under the auspices of art. Take for example the highly suggestive—almost anatomical—renderings of Auguste Rodin. The self-portraits of Jimmy Chen share the same unabashed, almost glib scrutiny of genitalia, though his are obviously more fickle, less informed, and detached from any sexual possessiveness. Jimmy Chen’s self-portraits are far from erotic—as they almost dismiss the fact that he is not wearing any pants, as if his flaccid genitals lack any enterprise.

             Another series of drawings come to mind—not due to similar aesthetics, but due to the implication (or lack of),  of surrounding space, namely, the sketches of Alberto Giocometti (1901-1966). In Giocometti’s work, incomplete or fragmented figures are shaped and informed by that which is absent (i.e. negative space). The same existentialist ‘incompleteness’ is apparent in the highly fragmented fashion in which the artist’s drawing hand is rendered, as if to suggest: the hand that makes the man whole is not whole in the man who is made. Word play aside, it is striking how the surface on which the artist is using to draw (his bedroom dresser) is, in every case, missing—thus denying the self-referential components of self-portrait.

Jimmy Chen

Untitled, 2007

Jimmy Chen

Untitled, 2007

From a series of 13 nude self-portrait drawings done every night before going to bed during the summer of 2007. The results are at once both comical and austere—a man contemplating his own body, notably its external apparatuses—treading ambivalently upon and inversing the male gaze, which traditionally was reserved for traversing the contours of a woman’s body. This paradox of imposing patriarchal ideals of beauty and sexuality self-deprecatingly on oneself, marks the spirit of one who is both enthralled and ashamed by his own body.

 

 

Jimmy Chen

Untitled, 2007

The missing dresser and fragmented hands are precursors to what would come—and was drawn last—the feet. In almost all cases, Jimmy Chen is cut off at the shin. A running joke among artists is that feet are difficult to render. The artist would like to suggest a possible interpretation (borrowing from a Zen Koan saying): A man who tiptoes cannot stand. A man who cannot stand, cannot stand the sight of his toes.