IS SOMETING MISSING?
By Rob Hugh Rosen

DB Turnbaugh
Female Condom
2005
Polaroid
3 x 3"

Marco Silombria
Condom Fantasy 1996
Murano glass
20" high

Jason LeBlond
BESAFE
2005
6 panels
5.5 x 5.5" each
Collection LLGAF
Gift of Earl Carlile

Bob Ziering
Condom in Open Hand
2006
Color pencil on paper
5 x 5"

Paul Blanca
Condom
1990
Gelatin silver print
Collection LLGAF

Robert W. Richards
Man with Condom
2001
Pencil on paper
13 x 11"

To solve the problem of exhibiting over 1,200 drawings by sixty-three artists at last year’s Dirty Little Drawings show, the curators arranged the artwork in columns of six drawings each, with the name of the artist atop each column. One artist, Jason LeBlond, observing this columnar motif, deliberately created a set of six drawings that he later titled BESAFE.

BESAFE depicts the pleasures of anal sex with condoms. Each drawing is done in black mixed media on gray paper, but the condoms are in brilliant, almost fluorescent colors. Additionally, each drawing is overlaid with a single letter drawn with a thick strand of translucent white glue. The visual similarity of this substance to a certain human fluid is wittily apparent. Read from top to bottom, the six drawings spell out BE SAFE. With all drawings priced identically at $50 each, the original concept of the show was to give collectors a chance to purchase individual pieces of erotic art inexpensively. LeBlond’s drawings, each having been overlaid with a single letter, became less commercially viable, since it would not make sense to buy just one. Thus, for a moment, within this singular column of drawings, the artist at once negated the concept of the show and substituted his own personal concept—that of promoting an idea of urgent importance.

A friend of mine has a gay nephew, now nineteen years old, who came out to his family a few years ago. My friend immediately began proselytizing to his nephew for the cause of safe sex. Eventually, the adolescent did one day confess to his uncle that he had allowed himself to be penetrated anally by another young man without using protection. When my friend became acutely upset, his nephew replied nonchalantly that his bedfellow had said he was HIV negative, and anyway, if he did catch anything he could just take some pills and he’d be okay. In magazines and periodicals we see many ads by pharmaceutical companies showing beautiful men declaring that they take “such and such” medication, and they are living healthy lives. Ads for condom use do not seem to be as prevalent. One ad I’ve seen extolling condom use incorporates an illustration of a young man wearing a yellow hooded slicker, proclaiming “don’t forget your raincoat.” The rolled edge of a condom is just barely visible at the border of the layout.

In LeBlond’s BESAFE the condoms are not merely painted in vivid color, they appear to be glossy as well. They become the dominating element of the artwork, as the highly charged depiction of sexual activity begins to fade into the background. Here we see condoms at once glorified, fetishized and eroticized.

One educated collector and member of the LLGAF, Earl Carlile, ultimately bought all six drawings and donated the set to the Foundation’s permanent collection. Impressed by Carlile’s gener-
osity and the unusual concept expressed in LeBlond’s artwork, I began a search of our collection for more work that depicted condoms. I found only one piece, a black and white photograph. At the recent Tom of Finland Erotic Art Fair I continued to search for artwork that showed condoms. There was not one to be found. We see many images that glorify muscles, virility, youth. We often see images eroticizing such fetishes as bondage, piercing and tattoos. Less often seen, but not absent, are images of mature men, drag queens and she-males. But condoms are not typically considered erotic or beautiful, and images of them seem virtually alien to our visual vocabulary. I wondered if I could find more artwork that would represent them as having beauty or even some kind of allure.

With the kind help of Nelson Santos of the Visual Aids Organization, I made a brief search of its archive. Its Frank Moore Archive Project represents over 400 artists with HIV/AIDS and holds approximately 12,000 slides of artwork, but at Neslon’s direction I viewed perhaps just a few hundred slides. Our search turned up three pieces of artwork that included actual condoms—a large room-sized installation piece, Oops!, by Frank Green; an abstract work, Shattered Lives, by Bruce Wesley Boyce; and a small assemblage piece in a Lucite box, A Day In The Life, by Curtis Carman. A digitally created image, Condoms/Tongue, by a fourth artist, Timothy Lonergan, depicts two men kissing, with an oversized, unrolled condom as a backdrop.

Condom, the photograph in the LLGAF collection, is by Dutch photographer Paul Blanca. It focuses on a nude man’s loins; a condom clinging securely to his penis in spite of its flaccid state. The captured ejaculate, evidence of an implicitly pleasurable experience, is held for our contemplation. As well as recording a moment, the image seems to speak mysteriously about something that happened before the photograph was taken.

Robert W. Richards’s pencil drawing is another image that has this quality of mystery. An iconically handsome and virile man lies in bed, his penis erect, a dreamy expression on his face, as he holds an apparantly used condom. Has he just removed the condom from himself, or is it a souvenir taken from a partner now gone? Richards will not say. But Richards did tell me that he had displayed this piece at a Tom of Finland Erotic Art Fair several years ago and had sold it at that time to a private collector. Whether the collector made the purchase because of the inclusion of the condom in the drawing or in spite of it, he does not know.

As I continued my quest, I discussed my mission with many artists, and with my friends and associates. I asked Bob Ziering, who, like Robert W. Richards, has had a one-man show at Leslie/
Lohman, if he had any drawings of condoms. He immediately sent me several small drawings of condoms being handled. Condom in Open Hand is one of them.

Douglas Blair Turnbaugh is well known to the Leslie/Lohman Foundation as an astute collector, and as a writer he is a consistent contributor to this journal. But he is a visual artist as well, and particularly gifted as a draftsman and as a photographer. His photograph Female Condom captures a tender moment. Although the female condom was designed to be inserted into the vagina, with a ring that remains internal and holds it in place and an external ring for easy sheathed penetration, it can be used rectally as well. Turnbaugh’s image reveals a young man in a submissive pose sprawled languidly across a bed. His smooth skin and geometric pose contrast with the labyrinth of tousled and tangled bedding; his very aroused state emphasizes his masculinity as it contrasts with the feminine intention of the device he demonstrates. If a facial expression can be perceived to say “come hither,” this device seems to beckon to the viewer similarly as it glistens diaphanously at the very center of the image.

Peter Weiermair, art historian, curator and publisher, brought my attention to the work of Marco Silombria. An Italian artist based in northern Italy, Silombria seems to want to work in every possible medium. He paints, draws, takes photographs, works in ceramics and more. He has designed pieces produced in Murano glass. Condom Fantasy is one such piece, and it demonstrates the exquisite possibilities inherent in traditional Murano glassmaking; vivid colors, delicacy of form and whimsical expression. In this case, the whimsical expression is humorous and ironic: a green serpent spirals around a pink condom and appears to bite the condom’s reservoir tip. The biblical symbolism of the serpent as the conveyor of sexual knowledge compels us to gaze with fear and wonder of the possibility that the serpent’s fang might successfully pierce the tip, and thus succeed in doing the devil’s work to render the condom useless. The instructions for using a condom are that it should be rolled down over the erect penis. Silombria’s condom is unfurled and standing erect, and yet there is no penis. It is a disembodied condom, or a condom in search of a penis. Moreover, it is a condom of glass, a brittle, inflexible material antithetical to the concept of a condom. Silombria’s condom, a series of formal contradictions adding up to a beautiful objet d’art, is instead infused with mythic power that eroticizes it in the process of disturbing the spectator held by it.

In a future article I may be able to discuss some works of Keith Haring; the Brazilian artist Adriana Bertini, who makes dresses of condoms; and hopefully more that I will discover as I continue to look for what has been missing.