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| Group Tit Print Event
at Good Vibrations with Veronica Hart, Carol Queen,
Nina Hartley and others. We raised $4000 for the St.
James Infirmary. Photos by Robert Lawrence. |
  
Xaviera Hollander, The Happy Hooker, making Tit Prints with Annie at Torch
Gallery, in Amsterdam. Dozens of
gallery goers eagerly watch as they create masterpieces.
TIT PRINT DEMO
Annie Sprinkle’s tit prints
have been popular with art enthusiasts around the world.
Come watch her ink up her big breasts, press them onto
quality paper, and create collectable erotic art. You
choose the colors, co-create the design, and even add
your own tits if desired. They make lovely gifts, look
great framed and displayed in every room of your house.
This event can take place in a gallery, bookstore, or other kinds of venues.
ABOUT ANNIE SPRINKLE'S
TIT PRINTS
Breast Stroke: The Tit Prints of Annie Sprinkle
by Jordon Peimer
Former Highways Visual Arts Center Curator
Presently Curator at Skirbal Cultural Center
Annie Sprinkle's Tit Prints come out of several art historic traditions.
First is that of the objective portrayal of women. The second is that of
me artist-as-hero most notably associated with die abstract expressionists.
Sprinkle's medium and subject ire directly derived from me dada traditions.
Finally, her work is perhaps most closely associated with the body monoprints
popularized nearly thirty years ago by such practitioners as Yves Klein
and Fluxus members WiIlem de Ridder and George Madunas. Additionally there
are the "low art" traditions of pornographic practice that have
to be appreciated as a filter for all aspects of Annie Sprinkle's work.
Perhaps the most traditional practice in art is that of the figurative
portrait. Significant among these are portrayals of women, both as objects
of adoration/veneration and as vessels of idealized form (a thinly veiled
term which should be read as carnal desire.) Women were most often portrayed
for some purpose other than their own personhood. Ms. Sprinkle both uses
and perverts this notion in her monoprints. The viewer is faced not with
a portrait of Sprinkle, but rather a substitute portrait derived entirely
from her breasts. We don't have a depiction of either Sprinkle or her breasts,
but rather the recollection of her tits impressed on the paper for non-narrative
purposes. Sprinkle's breasts have quite literally been the object of veneration,
and have elevated her to cult status in many meanings of the term. We are
left with the memory of her body, combined with the creative energy of
her mind. In this way we are faced with the same situation as the viewer
of Manet's enigmatic Olympia, wherein the carnal desire one may
feel is tempered by the model's gaze; here we are presented with Sprinkle's
breast, object of desire, but in such an incomplete and manipulated fashion
that desire is once again tempered. It is the societal paradox of the female:
can she be both vessel for sexual energy and an independent being?
The Abstract Expressionist movement of the American post-war years elevated
the artist (male) to heroic status. The individual -" seen as a creative
(priapic) force whose very activity itself "- " The brush strokes
of De Kooning, Klein, or Motherwell bear witness to the energy. The artwork
is quite literally the action, as opposed to the product, of the creator.
One remembers Pollack for the drips and splatters upon the canvas. Sprinkle
works a similar mode, by literally pressing her flesh upon the paper, and
in so doing leaves more of herself imprinted on the work than any other
artistic predecessors was able. One literally views the imprimatur of the
maker on the work as never before. Her breast prints become like finger
prints, marking the work as uniquely Annie.
The choice of creating work by pressing "forbidden" areas of
the body on paper and declaring it to be art is derived in part from me
tradition of dada. While one may not be able to point with certainty to
similar efforts, the facetious attitude toward the sanctity of high art
traditions is clearly heir to a practice with roots in dada. Similarly
Duchamp must be invoked as artistic ancestor, for he exhibited a related
attitude of in-your-face-sexuality combined with humor in many of his works,
most notably in Please Touch, where he created a soft breast sculpture
as a bas relief cover to a 1947 catalogue on surrealism; Object d'ard
(Dart Object), a sculptural object of ambiguous derivation but obviously
sexual origin which is meant as a stand-in for art, or his Female Fig
Leaf, perhaps,a cast of female genitalia or for creating replicas
of them.
Yves Klein, creator of the color International Klein Blue (1KB), attempted
to extract pure spiritual essence in his work in several different ways,
including the distillation of spirit into his patented color. At one point
he used live models to coat themselves in his paint and asked them to run
their bodies across paper to create works for him. In these instances he
was marrying spirituality, as represented by 1KB, and physicality, as represented
by the body of the model. Similarly Sprinkle uses her own body to create
her works which deal with the spiritual aspects of sexuality. As if to
underscore this notion, she has collaborated with several shamans of antic
practices including Joseph Kramer and Kutira Decosterd.
Fluxus, the 1960's era conceptual movement is also an important influence
on Sprinkle's oeuvre. Her long-time associate in performance Willem de
Ridder, chairman of Fluxus Europe, has been a serious mentor in her printwork
and collaborated with her on several Tit prints. Guidance was also offered
from the work of George Madunas and Yoshiko Chumo. The Vagina prints of
Fluxus member Madunas were made by Yoshiko Chumo, although they bore his
signature. It is significant to remember that unlike either Klein or Madunas
Sprinkle has chosen to perform the impression herself, thus adding a feminist
twist to the body print tradition.
Sprinkle's work is of course informed by the practices of the pornography
industry from which she first arose to prominence. She has been the object
of body painting, a practice which achieved its greatest level of popularity
during the era of the flower children. Sprinkle also remembers at least
one occasion where a film partner painted his penis with an American flag
motif. But the painting of human flesh is an object of sexual fetishization
whose roots date to man's most primitive eras. The preparation of her breasts
for creation of the works exactly mimics these practices and in some way
hints to the most carnal desire of coating the breast with cum (seminal
fluid.) Sprinkle also cites letters that she received from admirers which
were coated with semen, urine, and other materials as primary sources of
her inspiration.
ONLY PERSONS 18 YEARS OLD
AND OVER ARE PERMITTED TO ATTEND THE EVENT.
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