Betty Tompkins is a trailblazer of both feminist and erotic art. Starting the Fuck Paintings series after graduating in 1970, Tompkins began cropping and focusing in on body parts and penetrative sex acts, fading into monochrome paint the artist painted stills taken from her husbands (illegal at the time) porn magazines. Her husband travelled some distance to Canada to secretly obtain them and I think this is massively important when we consider these paintings.
Tompkins was rejected by her feminist peers for being pro-porn in a climate of contemporary feminism that felt sex work and porn were oppressive and at times akin to rape. This particular painting, “Masturbation Painting #2”, a much later work in the ongoing series, offers us an opportunity to talk not only about, obviously, masturbation, from both a Sex Ed and pornographic lens. In addition by closing in on a vulva, unpentrated and instead being touched gently, Tompkins illuminates for us further insights and questions about the representation of female desire and pleasure more broadly as well as the importance of self pleasure as both and act of self love and self exploration.
When considering the lengths at which it took to get hold of the porn that first inspired Tompkins work we can contrast it with the online world now and just how far it’s come in so little time. The difference of experience faced by generation X and some older millennial parents with what their children, as digital natives, will grow up with is vast and only widening with technology. Betty’s work separates limbs and faces from bodies and distils the image into one specific act. Should we equate this to the dehumanising nature of gonzo online porn? or is this a highlighting of the bottom line? Cutting straight to the intimate and perhaps arguably innate nature of sex?
Predictably Instagram keeps taking this image down.