The May covers of Vogue and Mademoiselle tempt our gaze into the shady caverns between voluminous mounds of smooth flesh, into glossy wonderlands of ideal body parts on parade. Artist Sharon Guy wants us to admire breasts too, but her standards for what qualifies as admirable are somewhat less exacting than Vogue’s.
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Like the cryptic utterings of Jerzy Kosinski’s gardener in Being There, the significance of Guy’s artistic statement depended on the beholder. One elderly viewer, a grad student in industrial design, deemed the exhibit “obscene,” a denigration of the sacred. “I’m curious why women would expose themselves like that,” he said, adding “but I would feel the same way if there were a whole bunch of jock straps with men’s penises of various sizes on display. I think that sex is a private, loving kind of thing. This kind of display takes away the love.”
For Bonnie, a 20-year-old sculptor and a collaborator, the breasts on display represented forbidden fruit, tempting her to cop a feel. “I definitely have an urge to touch them and to pick them up,” she mused. “I really like objects in general, the whole idea of touching something that you’re not supposed to.”
Paige, a 26-year-old dancer, found her breasts quickly. Unlike many of the collaborators, who compared themselves to each other, Paige compared her breasts to the way she remembers them looking. “I can see with the shape that I’ve lost my strength. I used to teach dance and my whole upper body was much stronger. It tells me the state of my health.”
Guy’s husband David wore the shirt and said he noticed a couple of people sneaking a guilty peek. He was dismayed to discover what happened when he caught their gaze. “As soon as you make eye contact with them they look someplace else.”
