Sandy Wenderhold is the CEO of Sansyl, a major adult media company based near Amsterdam. I interviewed her via email.
Karl: An influential New York art dealer remarked here on Art & Perception that art about sex — “painted pornography” — sells especially well in galleries. Is that surprising to you?
Sandy: Sex is the biggest thing people react on. You have a lot of people that love football or fishing or whatever. But almost everybody reacts on sex, so it is logical that it is a big thing in the art world.
Karl: Could a person find photographic art on a porn website as well as on a gallery or museum website?
Sandy: Commercial porn is not made for art. And currently on the internet, you must look very very thoroughly to find something that feels like art. There is too much porn online and it is made to earn money, not to let people think about their own borders or changing life style, etc.
Karl: Sandy, you went to art school, you are an artist yourself. Do you ever feel frustrated by the level of product you offer with your business?
Sandy: Yes of course. It is still a dream to make a more artistic movie. We made a movie together with Wasteland. That was really something else and cost a lot of money. At the end it was profitable but it took a long time to make.
Karl: If almost everybody reacts on sex, as you say, why are you satisfied to market to a limited group — the sex “fast food” customer, so to speak? Isn’t there a lot more money to be made by the company that could widen the appeal of porn by giving it greater artistic depth?
Sandy: In the end the profit will probably be greater with artistic porn, but the risk is also bigger. Because of the responsibilty for the employees you cannot start too soon making things you like yourself.
Karl: How do you view your own work at the moment, then?
Sandy: When I’m busy with my people making the magazines or the covers for the DVDS then sometimes it is work and sometimes it is art.
Karl: Wouldn’t the people who work for you producing pornography (many of them artists by training or inclination) do a better job if they felt that their work had the potential to be recognized as art?
Sandy: Some of the producers would. I know because we talk about that part. But for example one of the better producers does this work under an alias. I’m talking with Dutch movie companies who want to make a movie that is porn but acceptable for the cinema public.
Karl: What exactly can make pornography into art?
Sandy: Pornography is art when it gives you more than just an erection.
That is possible when the artist really thinks about the feeling it brings when he makes small changes in the work. That can be light, colours, the face of the girl, the surrounding, handling it can be anything. But it is also possible that porn is art when it is so simple and so real that is brings up your animal instincts. Are we really more than animals? Something to think about!
. . .
What questions would you like to ask Sandy Wenderhold?
Sandy,
I just watched a Wasteland video and I was struck by how perfectly safe it is to watch porn on the internet. No cigarette smoke, no strange characters around you. The video was sort of like a ballet, music, dancing, big feathers used as props, not much nudity.
Watching porn on the internet is like watching a war movie. One is not actually on the battle scene. Besides having one’s emotions played with, one is perfectly safe.
Having been in the red light district of Hamburg as a child, I miss the grittiness of the real life porn scene watching the internet performance. Presumably, the artists performing on the internet, are shielded from customers that could be tempted to accost them in real life?
What weird sublimation. The ‘Threepenny Opera’ by Kurt Weill catches more of the grittiness of real life.
Having spent much time in front of ‘White Boards’, I love the humor of your personal picture. Unfortunately, I cannot apply for a job at your company because I do not speak Dutch.
Sandy,
Your distinction between artistic and non-artistic porn is about the decision-making process of the producer (and actors, etc). How do you decide what happens and how it looks? Tried and true formulas? What you think will grab attention? Likely impact on sales?
Also, how different is it making porn for an audience of women, men, or both? Is one harder for you?
Sandy:
I wasted no time clicking on your name in Karl’s post. Thereupon I saw the wardrobe malfunction. Shy as I am, I averted my eyes to the chalk board (been away from the office environment too long). Would that diagram be a mammalian flow chart?
It took me back to organizations past and the iconography used to describe how things fit together: arrows, boxes, etc. I would imagine that Sansyi has developed its own descriptive iconography for in-house use, which I would imagine is fascinating. Care to share?
Also, I can remember visiting a stationary shop in Amsterdam back in ‘72. A rack in the store carried school supplies while the one adjacent featured porn magazines without the plain paper covers. I marveled then at the breadth of the Dutch mind and wonder if a like attitude exists today.
I read in the New York Times yesterday that Andres Serrano’s History of Sex photographs were attacked and destroyed by a group of men in a Swedish museum.
Anyway…what’s the point of this post? Am I supposed to feel bad because a bunch of people filming other people fucking for money aren’t artistically satisfied?
Excuse the gender specific language here but I’m pretty sure your average Joe doesn’t give a flip about artistic merit when he’s watching porn. “Gee, if only the light on that woman’s vagina wasn’t so harsh, I’d have a more enjoyable orgasm.”
Puh-leeze.
I can only watch porn for 5 to 10 minutes maximum, then once you satisfied is very very boring… the problem with pornographic art is that would be stuck on the wall and everyone could see it all the time…
It is not the kind of thing you want to display when you got children and guests around. With a dvd is ok to hide it in the closet or under the bed to have a peep now and then, but not with a painting it would be such a waste.
Personally I preffer erotism to pornography in art, it gives more suggestions to the imagination…
Anyway…what’s the point of this post? Am I supposed to feel bad because a bunch of people filming other people fucking for money aren’t artistically satisfied?
Tree,
I would not say anyone is asking for sympathy. For me this interview raises an interesting point: how the portrayal of sexuality becomes dominated by the pornographic mode of production, when a more artistic approach could be more fulfilling and more profitable. It is a sign of a failure of artists perhaps, or a sign of open possibilities.
Sandy: Sex is the biggest thing people react on. You have a lot of people that love football or fishing or whatever. But almost everybody reacts on sex, so it is logical that it is a big thing in the art world.
Yes and no. Yes, sex is central to the progression of life. No, baseball has no bouncing cheerleaders and few would wish otherwise.
It’s an appetite thing and has to do with innate responses. Be deprived of sex long enough and the Goodyear blimp begins to look good.
Appetite and art.
Angela,
Now there are some good points: porn paintings, if great art, might not be something you would want to display all the time.
But doesn’t that open so many possibilities? In Christian art, certain paintings were made with painted doors. The paintings on the outside, when the triptych was closed, were generally in grayish tones, whereas the paintings inside, seen on special occasions only, would should the most intense colors available.
As for porn being dull after 5 to 10 minutes, that is the failure at the artistic level. That’s what I was asking Sandy about: why not make really good movies? As she says, it’s risky. Sandy is a millionaire, we are painters. We all are living with our choices!
Jay,
I don’t quite get your last point. Is it that there is not enough painting of baseball? Or are you saying that sex art, even if good art, would only be of interest to people deprived?
Jay,
I was in Leiden on Sunday and, looking at a bronze sculpture in a public square. I noticed that a large and anatomically realistic dildo was part of the metal construction. The Dutch have always been shocking to their contemporaries. Most of the shocking things are later acknowledged as being modern and adopted by other lands. One day America might even have a real health care system!
Steve,
Good questions, I will be passing these all on to Sandy and I am eager to learn the answers. In the meantime, my guess is that you have hit on the key point: the pornography industry is incredibly conservative and risk averse.
Here is the link to the sex photo vandalism that Tree referred to above.
Destruction of paintings is shocking. Is destruction of photographs at the same level? Aren’t photographs something that can be produced in unlimited quantities?
Karl, I think you miss the point by a wide margin if you have to ask if the destruction of photographs is just as bad as the destruction of paintings.
I’m thinking that with art, money is the bottom line for you. Is this accurate?
One day America might even have a real health care system!
Karl, you’ve taken the discussion from pornography to an even more extreme fantasy.
Karl:
It was a drive by attempt to deflate a conflation. It seemed to me that football and sex were somehow being expressed in one thought.
That being of no value as an explanation, allow me to say it differently and point out that Sandy states that people might “love” football etc., but that they “react” to sexual stimuli. Sex is a biologically-ordained activity with a predictable outcome while sports is a great combination of the physical and mental with unpredictable outcomes. It’s hard to imagine any significant visual art that is based upon porn. Doesn’t mean it can’t happen as concurrently total porn and art. This sounds a little confused to me.
Anyone here ever see the pornographic images painted by Courbet? It was quite common for men to hire artists to paint pornographic works which were then usually kept behind a curtain and shown to the patron’s friends. A fairly common subject was lesbians; the Girls Gone Wild images of the 19th century, I suppose. I’ve studied some of Courbet’s works which I find to be tacky and misogynist, much like contemporary porn. Whether or not the works are significant is hard to say.
Tree,
Interesting coincidence, because I was thinking in the mean-time, what is the difference between destroying photographs and destroying paper money?
Destroying an original painting is different from destroying a print that is one of many. I was hoping to have one of the photographers explain why destroying the photograph is bad, in order to learn more about the labor of love put into making the print. I’d still like to hear about it.
I’m thinking that with art, money is the bottom line for you. Is this accurate?
If you want a serious response to that question, you would have to expand on it further.
Karl, you’ve taken the discussion from pornography to an even more extreme fantasy.
David,
Who says that porn can’t be made interesting?
Sex is a biologically-ordained activity with a predictable outcome while sports is a great combination of the physical and mental with unpredictable outcomes.
Jay,
This is a gem. If I had posted it, they’d be roasting me alive at this point.
It’s hard to imagine any significant visual art that is based upon porn.
Okay, I’ll post about this this weekend.
Here (scroll down a bit) is a Courbet erotic painting, not unlike a contemporary porn photograph. Misogynist?
Misogynist, adjective: reflecting or inspired by a hatred of women.
Labeling porn as misogynist is a modern version of trying to make people feel bad about sexuality by calling it sin.
Who says that porn can’t be made interesting?
I’m sure it can. But a health care system in America? That’s a stretch.
I’ll try to make this as brief as possible. :-)
1) I stand by my use of the word misogynist. And I’d like to ask you Karl, (and anyone else who cares to venture into these murky waters) do you see a full body in Origin of the World? Do you see a head/face? What is the perspective on this painting?
How could this woman be anything but a sexual object? She certainly can’t be viewed as a whole human being and she definitely is not to be thought of as on equal footing with a man. This is the whole point of the painting and therefore it is painted with the belief that a woman is “less than” and nothing but an object for a man’s sexual release, and all of that rises from and creates more hatred.
2) I take exception to your analogy regarding porn and sexuality as sin. There’s a huge difference between demanding that women are treated as more than a sex object and the narrow mindedness of the religious mind-set. I would hope the former empowers people while the latter only causes more pain.
3a) You completely missed the point of the “art destruction” issue in that you seem to think because it’s a “mere” photograph, the act of violence is not as important. I don’t care what the medium is, the point is that violent men attacked art because they didn’t like it and they want to control people and their forms of expression. The fact that these men may be Neo-Nazis is even more disturbing.
3b) Believe it or not, photographers can spend hours on one photo. It is creation and it takes skill and passion and sometimes a great deal of time to perfect one image.
Yes, a photo can be reproduced, if there is a negative, but photographers don’t have a lock on reproduction. Think of Warhol, as one famous example. There are painters who put out prodigious amounts of paintings; is one worth less than the others because there’s several of them?
Also, are you familiar with the story of O. Winston Link? One can’t reproduce photographic prints if one’s negatives have been stolen.
You wonder why destroying a photograph would be bad? Why don’t you tell me why destroying a photograph would be good?
I almost feel apologetic for the outline form of this comment. It’s been a long day and I had to keep my thought straight!
On the destruction of the photographs, I agree with Tree that their reproducibility has nothing to do with the act. I don’t know Serrano’s methods, these could have been anything from digital prints — reproduction is trivial — to one-of-a-kind images. Even if digital, if the photographer sticks to edition limits (a discussion in itself), the value would be like any other printing process.
Misogyny in the sense of a general hatred sounds too strong for Courbet, from the little I know. But disrespect is certainly plausible, though I find it hard to say without seeing more of the work.
Sex is a biologically-ordained activity with a predictable outcome while sports is a great combination of the physical and mental with unpredictable outcomes.
Jay,
This is a gem. If I had posted it, they’d be roasting me alive at this point.
Karl:
I’m such a nice mild guy that I get away with such stuff. By the way, please name the gem that it is.
Allow me to be plain: I usually don’t know what I’ll say until I try saying it. My participation in this discussion reminds me of once trying to walk across a rotted garage roof, pulling my legs out of holes as I went. Any activity, with defecation a possible exception, has an aesthetic dimension. Maybe it’s like food photography: the restaurant wants to present its offerings so as to arouse your appetite and it also wants to be as formally attractive as possible. Maybe it’s like the Heisenberg Pornographic Uncertainty Principle where observation of the chosen position, as a variable, has an effect on the observation of the motion.(nudge, nudge)
Do you see a relationship between that large object in Leiden and the success of Nederlandish medicine?
Tree:
I saw Origin Of The World by Courbet, and was amazed. Here was a depiction of a body part that is everything his title infers. It is indeed far more than a mere object, being essentially a doorway to the future through which everyone passes. I think The Vagina Monologues deals with the subject in those terms. Putting a woman’s face on that anatomical/philosophical illustration would have damaged the point he was making.
By the way, Karl, when is this Sandy person going to start commenting here? She looks like the cat that ate the canary and would likely have more to say.
Any activity, with defecation a possible exception, has an aesthetic dimension.
Jay,
At the Rembrandt house in Amsterdam there are etchings on the doors of the restrooms. The one one the women’s room disproves your comment. I tried to find the image on the web, but didn’t find it.
Steve and Tree,
This is really an interesting discussion about destruction of art, because it gets to the core of the question, what is art? I recently tossed some exhibition invitation cards into the recycle bin. Was that destruction of art? If a photographer throws away an unsatisfactory print, is that destruction of art? What if I paint over a painting to use the canvas for something new?
If you had an exhibition of photos in some small Swedish university town and a group of U-Tube-savy vandals destroyed a few prints and in the process made you world-famous, would you call that a net gain or a net loss?
Tree,
Your comment about the significance of the lack of a head on the Origin of the World painting is important because it illustrates that art is as much the possession of the viewer as of the artist. The viewer creates a meaning which may or may not agree with the artist’s intentions. I disagree with your interpretation, but who is to say which interpretation is closer to the artist’s?
As a practical point, the discussion shows that an artist shouldn’t try to please or convince everyone. The more controversial the subject, the greater the scope for diverging opinions.
As to your opinion of this painting, I could use similar reasoning to say: a painting of a woman’s face, such as Vermeer’s woman with a pearl earring in The Hague, which does not show the body, seeks to claim that women are the same as men, they have the same bodies, they are equal. I don’t think that is the point of the painting, it is tangential to the painting.
She looks like the cat that ate the canary and would likely have more to say.
Jay,
I’m certain she does. I’ve passed along the questions to her and I hope we will hear from her before too long.
Karl, it IS the point of the painting because it was specifically painted for a patron who collected pornographic paintings! Also, Courbet only spoke of this painting once, and rarely, if ever, wrote about it. The owners kept it hidden behind curtains, doors, etc because it was considered pornographic. The last known owner was Lacan, by the way.
Your argument using the Vermeer painting is weak on many points.
You can interpret Origin of the World any way you want but it’s clear to me you don’t know enough about art history or theory to understand it’s purpose or intent. Therefore, I give up on this discussion. It’s no longer worth the effort and I’ll probably end up posting something I’ll regret later.
Okay Tree, we can stop the discussion if you prefer. I appreciate the insights you shared.
I want to share my gender-specific porno story. Carol, a young MD, and I attended a meeting with probably about six middle-aged guys. To amuse herself during the boring meeting, she opened a pathology text with glossy colorful pictures of male genitalia. Obviously, she invited me to share her amusement because, otherwise, I would not have known.
Sorry Karl, I could’ve phrased my response better. I’m cranky these days.
Tree,
You did great! Please stay ‘cranky’.
Thanks Birgit. (grrrrrr)
Birgit:
Male genitalia in a pathology textbook…that must have been salacious. Like that old “I’m the man who…” thing: “I’m the man who put the “no” in porno.
haaaaaaa!!
See Black Cat Bone for a characteristically different take on the Serrano incident from one of our readers, the “Right Reverend James W. Bailey.”
She looks like the cat that ate the canary and would likely have more to say.
Sorry, I was in Paris and just came back and I saw Karl his mail. I will try to answer the questions soon but work is waiting. Very good to see all these reactions.
Karl:
I’m wasting a lot of thought here. I’m a poster boy now and must log in before commenting. Just threw away a half hour of comment because I forgot.
That rant aside, let me see if I can remember.
I had something about Japanese anime and the improbably-proportioned female action figures that you find there. Tough grrrls and highly stimulating to a large segment of the population, male and female.
I wanted to know why men should not be seen as exploited in the pages of Playgirl.
Then it was about an erstwhile Broadway show with total nudity and implicit and maybe explicit coupling and the arguments about art vs. sex that raged at that time.
I may have suggested further work in the field of sexual opera where the orgasmic aria is ripe for development.
And finally, just before I began to swear, I brought up the example of Jeff Koons who was able to sell images of himself and his porno wife together and have them exhibited in a number of prestigious venues.
Jay, technical aside: you may have cookies turned off or possibly a really old browser, or you should be logged in automatically. If it’s not by choice and you want to fix it, send me the details of your setup by email. It may be easier to compose longer comments in a word processor anyway, then paste into the comment box. I just don’t want to miss any of your rants!
Steve:
Careful what you wish for.
Am composing this in Word to see if it can be copied and pasted as you mentioned.
I probably shouldn’t add to this, but what the hay…
I’m with Jay — I like a little suspense rather than a predetermined outcome, and so perhaps a good end-of-season play-off game is preferable to a pornographic flick. Although, along with sex, food is a universal desire, which might be why we all swoon at Hanneke’s paintings.
But alas, I must agree with Tree (and thank you, Tree, for keeping your temper so long) that it’s hard not to conflate pornography and misogyny. You can do it — I think Karl’s explicit paintings refuse to be misogynist, although some might see them as pornographic — but as long as men hold the power in the world, which they by-and-large do, pornography is likely to be about turning women into subjective others.
And (you knew there would be an “and”), Courbet is just a bit inflated in his titling of that pudenda that he paints. He’s thinking of himself as The World, and ta-da, there, in his own mind, he came, I’m imagining, plump and fully dressed. Howsomeever, the world is larger than human beings, male or female, unless you imagine your consciousness to be the only world worth thinking about. Me, I think Courbet could be accused of a certain well-known psychological syndrome — f… your mother, anyone?
I think I love you June.
My wife and I were visiting Amsterdam with family about four years back and we ventured to some parts of that great city that displayed women in glass cases. Like Richard Rothstein confesses in his latest post, it was too cold, too obvious.
Sunil:
Reepersbahn? No, that’s Hamburg.