The Shock and Awesome of Sarah Lucas

My preference in art is anything from about the Impressionist period forward. I've seen enough depictions of Christ and pudgy cherubs to last a lifetime. Goya gives me panic attacks.

So when we were wandering through the permanent collection at San Francisco's Legion of Honor museum one Sunday afternoon this past fall, I was excited to stumble upon the works of Sarah Lucas peppered through the gallery.

Among the cherubs, saints, and ruffled aristocrats, a couple of fried egg tits suspended above a pair of disembodied legs, or the giant phallus protruding from a barber's chair, stood out like clown kitsch in a Lladro collection. So, of course, I loved it.

I didn't know Lucas' work but discovered she is an English artist, born in 1962, a year before me, and part of the generation of Brit artists who emerged in the '90s. Her work relies heavily on boundary-pushing visual puns and humor.

London's Tate Modern museum website describes the work of Sarah Lucas: "One of the principal themes in her work is a confrontation with traditional female roles and identities. She explores the ambiguities in her own attitudes and those of others (men as well as women) towards sexual objectification and desire. One of the ways she does this is by making physical and literal representations of vernacular terms for bodies, focusing, in particular, on sexual body parts and their connection to foods."

It's worth mentioning, she has a piece entitled "Chicken Knickers."

I had heard rumblings through social media that some patrons of the museum were particularly outraged by this indecent, smutty, raunchy, crass, trashy, lewd, artless, whatever you want to call it, display amongst the masterpieces of the ages. I, however, particularly enjoyed the juxtaposition of her subversively sublime work within the staid environment of the classical galleries. Past and present meeting for a somber and salacious conversation. Pour me a gin & tonic and let's discuss.

Art serves many functions. Sometimes its only function is to bring beauty and joy, like the work that you display above your fireplace. I believe the larger role of art is to create dialogue, to disarm, to challenge, to provide a new perspective, to expose truths under the surface of the human facade.

If it takes a life-sized plaster bust of a man's ass smoking a cigarette to do that, so be it. I'm not one to judge.