Women, gender, and sexuality studies concentrator Iman E. James ’12 is writing her thesis about porn. Granted, it focuses on the erotic writings of Georges Bataille and Anaïs Nin rather than the history of Hustler centerfolds, but James still identifies pornography as the subject of her work. James harbors no qualms about this. She considers pornography to be a serious art form that can address the same issues that more respected forms examine. For her, pornography is much more than a graphic means to a crude end. Her ideas about the aesthetics of pornography may not be shared by the general populace or even a discernable portion of Harvard students. “There’s not a huge community I can point to that talks about stuff like this,” James says. However, the Harvard community does not shy away from issues of sexuality in its artistic ventures.

It would be disingenuous to say that Harvard University is home to a thriving subculture of art that focuses on sex, but that’s only because the varieties of sex-based art at Harvard aren’t nearly as organized or stylistically similar as the word “subculture” implies. Indeed, there is an impressive amount of art about sex at Harvard. This incongruity stems from the fact that much of Harvard’s sexual art remains unseen, with exception of some works that engage with the subject tangentially. Interestingly, this lack of broad popular appeal seems to stem from the circumstances surrounding the creation of this art rather than any public or administrative bias against sexual content.

UNDER THE COVERS

Abby P. Sun ’13 and Samantha A. Meier ’12 have an acute sense of the magnitude of sexually focused art at Harvard, which makes sense given their roles as the organizers of Sex Week at Harvard. Sex Week, which begins on March 25, is designed to provide cohesion to the variety of workshops and events regarding sex issues on campus. Though not explicitly concerned with art, Sex Week will include some artistic events, including a public art display outside of the Science Center. Sun and Meier consider the material not only artistically valid but also of social importance.

“I think a lot of times people tend to think of art as depoliticized in some way or that the art community here at Harvard is disengaged from any advocacy,” Sun says. Examples such as Nayeli E. Rodriguez ’10’s “SEX, America”— a show that used materials from sex education classes to comment on the evolution of ideas about national views on sex—clearly contradict this view.

Sun and Meier describe a surprising range of the work they described. Some pieces, like Rodriguez’s, involved curation rather than creation. Others took a distinctly more hands-on approach. Sun and Meier recalled that several years ago, a student in the VES department tried to make a pornographic film as a thesis. What united all these efforts, aside from their sexual content, was the minimal exposure the final products received in the Harvard community.

Meier compares the obscurity of these works to the events that Sex Week is attempting to centralize. “I would say this sort of work tends to be under the radar…. [They] existed and people knew about them, but I wouldn’t say that the “general Harvard populace knows about them,” Meier says.

However, Meier attributes this to the circumstances of their creation; these works are generally produced in Visual and Environmental Studies classes and rarely exit that environment. “I think they tend to be kept in the arts community they’re produced in,” Meier says.

These sentiments were shared by Rodriguez. Though her thesis was unique for its curatorial approach, it was not well attended, as she readily admits. “It wasn’t underground, but it definitely wasn’t popular,” Rodriguez says. Like Meier, Rodriguez does not feel that this was due to the work’s sexual content. “Nobody had any problem who attended the show or advised the show or anything. If anything, they were interested even more just because it had a catchy title,” Rodriguez says. “[The low attendence] was partly a function of the budget I had to do marketing or promotion.” Ultimately, the visibility of the show was weakened not by its controversial subject matter but by administrative issues.

PASSION PIT

The most conspicuous intersection of art and sex at Harvard takes place onstage. When Sun and Meier listed Harvard artistic projects that focused on sex, the first thing they thought of was an HRDC production: this past fall’s “Spring Awakening” at the Oberon. There is a great deal of sex in  Harvard theater: Peter Shaffer’s ‘Equus” and Sarah Kane’s “Cleansed” were both produced last spring, in some way engage with sex. Some HRDC directors believe that theater and sex are intextricably linked.

“[Sex] is one of those perennial themes that always keeps popping up in Harvard theater. There are always going to be plays that deal with sex. Frankly, a lot of very well-written and interesting plays are about these subjects, because they’re very relatable facets of the human experience,” says Matt C. Stone ’11, a former HRDC director and Crimson arts editor. Several of the plays that Stone directed at Harvard—in particular, “Cleansed” and Jean Genet’s “The Balcony”—serve as notable examples. Though both of the plays take a darker view of sexual relations, “relatability”  is a very plausable reason for sex’s appeal to playwrights and, in turn, for Harvard productions.

Joshua R. McTaggart ’13, a Crimson arts editor who is directing Ella Hickson’s “Hot Mess” this semester, says that the play attracted him due to its contemporary look at love and sexuality. “It deals with emotions that affect people of my age. It’s about how it feels to be 24, 25—still exploring what it means to be in love or have sex,” McTaggart says.

This relevancy may be one of the reasons why these plays are attended by students, but it doesn’t necessarily distinguish the plays from their less visible counterparts in the VES department. Rather, the biggest difference lies in the way the theatrical productions use sex; instead of focusing on sex in and of itself, these plays use it to discuss other issues.

The play’s suggestive disclaimer on the HRDC website perhaps alludes that “Hot Mess” contains copious amounts of sex. But when asked about the play’s use of sex, he bristled a bit. As it turns out, the disclaimer wasn’t as subtle as the play itself. “It’s not a play about sex, but it’s a play that involves sex,” McTaggart says. Though he acknowledges that the play contains many sexual elements, McTaggart ultimately feels it was more distinctive for its frank treatment of ideas surrounding sex—the reality of falling in love and maintaining relationships.