In this case, sex-for-a-price on tape isn't a film-flam game
This is what I love about art: all it takes for is for someone to call something "art" and Voila!!; there it is...
NEW YORK — What do you call it when a woman approaches a wealthy man through an intermediary and offers to have sex with him on camera and then sell him the videotape?
Art, of course.
The body-for-a-price in this case belongs to the New York-based conceptual artist Andrea Fraser. She approached the man, an unidentified art collector, through the Friedrich Petzel Gallery in Chelsea. The result is an hourlong, unedited videotape shot with a single fixed camera and showing the artist and her patron engaged in sex. (It will be on view until July 9 at the Petzel Gallery.)
So what distinguishes this piece of work from pornography or prostitution? Simple: According to the gallery's Web site, www.petzel.com, Fraser's work "raises issues regarding the ethical and consensual terms of interpersonal relationships as well as the contractual terms of economic exchange."
After all, isn't good art about making people think? About raising issues, creating controversies, challenging the way people think about and perceive the world around them? Hey, if that doesn't work, just make sure you bring some Kleenex to the gallery with you....
