P·P·O·W is pleased to announce our fourth exhibition of the work of Dotty Attie. As in her previous work, Dotty Attie continues to seek psychological connections with great artists of the past and this time explores the work of Gustave Courbet (1819-77). Attie has been working on this series for two years and this time has focused almost exclusively on an interesting incident in Courbet's career which had irrevocable repercussions on the rest of his life. Pornographic in their nature, the commissions of The Origin of the World and The Sleepers (a scene depicting two naked women in bed) by Khalil Bey, a Turkish diplomat and art collector, not only haunted Courbet personally but was indirectly used against him in his imprisonment and eventual sentence by the French government for his involvement in the toppling of the Vendome column. Vulnerability and exposure, both by the painter and the subject, are explored as well as the psychological torments of public disgrace and shame.

In Mixed Metaphors, a greatly enlarged version of The Origin of the World (a female torso with legs spread) Attie places a bloody hand holding a knife from Eakins' Gross Clinic. suggestive of the classic Freudian castration complex. However, Attie also suggests possible alternatives, all of which substitute for different psychological states associated with female genitalia. Not to overstate a feminist reading of this work, Attie also provides a male counterpoint from a detail of male genitalia from The Raft of the Medusa. In both works, Anie explores the myriad conventions used in painting to represent the complexities of human sexuality. Aligning herself with Courbet, Attie attempts to understand and convey the pleasures and dangers inherent in depicting cultural taboos.

The pornographic images Courbet was given license to paint in 1866 are just as shocking now as they were then. Courbet's image of the female pubic area is still alarming and Attie, using her wonderful technical painting skills, allows us to publicly confront our voyeuristic impulses and psycho-sexual dramas. In Etant donées, Duchamp has us peer through a hole in the door to see another version of this same image. In contrast, Attie chooses to present this image boldly, over and over again.

This body of work was partially seen in The Corcoran Biennial in Washington, DC. Dotty Attie's work has been exhibited in major museums and galleries internationally; she has been actively exhibiting since 1972.