Pure Sex

When the door opens, of sensuality,
then you will understand it too. The struggle begins.
Never again to be free of it,
often you will feel it to be your enemy.
Sometimes
you will almost suffocate
such joy it brings.

Rukeyser 1968

The first time I ever saw an exhibit of O’Keefe paintings I gasped out loud at the pure “sex” of it. Granted I was a child girl and the pure sex of anything excited and terrified me. One of the greatest disservices we have done to art, in my opinion, is to objectify it. The O’Keefe you see on coffee mugs, calendars is not the art hanging on the wall. I have seen the difference and the space is immeasurable.

It is rumored, Millay and O’Keefe had a writing affair that the two minds interacted so well but were separated at the time by distance and convention. I have once read Millay under her paintings. I can see the attraction.

The pure sex of a poem has nothing to do, (again my opinion) with being sexy, one can see a vagina in O’Keefe’s paintings yet the painting is not truly about the anatomy of a woman’s body. When art posses the pure sex of itself it is doing nothing more than taking you to the deepest part, its origin. It moves by its simplicity. The rules are not complicated. No one has good sex by thinking about it. No one feels comfortable in their sensuality by saying, today I will feel comfortable. It is the act of being present, of allowing yourself to be stripped (no irony here) of outer layers.

There will always be those who confuse pure sex with the act. Who claim the sexuality of a poem or art has to do with the erotic. I have found the two very rarely even hold hands. When we do this, we limit our possibility. We say there can be no love unless we close the distance and modify the convention.