Seduced: Art and Sex from Antiquity to Now

12 October 2007 - 27 January 2008
Barbican Art Gallery

This is a large, well curated, historical show. Works hang together beautifully, especially within the awkward open-plan, double-height central room. The content hits all relevant chronological peeks (Greek, Roman, Victorian, etc.) and expected geographic range (Europe, Japan, China, India). Michelangelo’s drawings are a real treat.

I’m cynical towards exhibitions about sex; their popularity purely as spectacle almost guarantees success, especially when they’re as widely publicised as this and open the day before Frieze. And much of the contextual information is about how this work was viewed. Art’s relationship with pornography, rather than with sex, seems the stronger theme throughout.


Iain Pate