Kinsey displays art through ‘Private Eyes’

Often amusing, potentially disturbing and always thought-provoking, the art in the Kinsey Institute Gallery exhibit, “Private Eyes: Amateur Works from The Kinsey Institute Collection,” is all amateur and all erotic.

The gallery opens 7 p.m. Friday with a reception and ends April 2.

“It’s art that’s created by people who wouldn’t even describe themselves as artists,” said Garry Milius, one of the Kinsey Gallery’s curators. “A lot of pieces were done by people who were just doodling. A lot of the show is just their struggle to create something.”

Many of the pieces were created by inmates at prisons such as San Quentin, then confiscated by corrections officers as illicit materials.

Milius said there is a violence in some of the prison pieces.

Betsy Stirratt, director of the School of Fine Arts gallery, and Blaise Cronin, dean of the School of Library and Information Science, co-curated the exhibit with Milius.

Stirratt said the rough, rudimentary nature of those pieces is one of the highlights of the exhibit, for its clearly non-professional style.

Stirratt said she, Cronin and Milius worked together to select the pieces, develop the exhibit as a whole and put together the curatorial statement, which can be found on the Kinsey Web site.

From a statuette carved from a bar of soap to a ballpoint pen drawing on a handkerchief.

The art was created from a variety of different materials, including a crocheted phallus and a penis-shaped cookie that was baked in 1952.

“A lot of the fun is speculating, ‘why did this person create this piece?’” Milius said. “The penis is a very popular joke.”

Other works include crude drawings and many pieces created by altering source material like a photo or magazine page to make it sexual. 

For the pieces that are moveable, curators have made a video showing how each item works.

While many might be offended by the explicit content, Milius said the gallery curators don’t attempt to draw a line between art and pornography.

“We try to avoid that discussion,” he said. “It’s just so subjective.”

Each of the three curators said they agree the exhibit is different from what people generally expect to see at the gallery.

“It’s an eye-opener in a different way,” Cronin said.

Because the works were meant for personal use, rather than professional mass-production, Cronin said, they are arguably more intimate.

“A lot of the materials are one-of-a-kind things that people made for their own erotic use,” Stirratt said. “I think it’s a different ... and more private take on sexuality.”