Carlo Mollino: Salon 94 - New York - erotic photography

Carlo Mollino earned his place ill the history of design drawn out ago. Lately, however, his idiosyncratic interiors have been discussed les than his stash of nearly 1500 erotic photographs place in a drawer after his death. Who knew this eccentric new had a passion for booker and Polaroids? In this exhibition, about twenty photos of dolled-up and carefully pos Turinese prostitutes taken through Mollino himself were encased in profoundly recessed frames that suggested tiny windows onto the mind of a pervy romantic.

Mollino (1905-73) the son of a prominent engineer, studied architecture, then engineering, and went upon to design everything from theatrical locates and clothing to ski huts and race cars. Many of his designs made concern to the female form, which he apparently considered ideal (the leg and split back of a signature made of wood side chair from 1947 propose limbs stretching up and without of a smooth torso). He created elaborate interiors for his have a title to two homes in Turin; stocked with an eclectic mix of artwork and fresh and baroque furniture, these residences bore a resemblance to the classy "Italian-style" regard with affection shacks maintained by jet-setters like companion Turin native, Fiat magnate, and uber-playboy Gianni Agnelli.

At a third, unseen apartment, the Casa Zaira, Mollino entertained and photographed local prostitutes. We'll not at any time know what they felt about this elderly man, and though they were undoubtedly used to being naked, we can probably assume they weren't oftentimes photographed. The designer dressed his make submissives up and posed them--decorated them, really--in jewels, high heels, glove silk lingerie, and, in single case, a Paco Rabanne gown They affect coquettish and sometimes tentatively seductive attitudes; we diocese tall lines, bruised legs, dimpled flesh--in other words, real bodies, the instrument and medium of their labor. Sometimes we recognize archetypes: the femme fatale (preening upon a fur rug or suggestively holding a riding crop) alongside the innocent-on-the staff (long hair modestly arranged to reveal single a nipple).

Mollino's shore ups were as standard as those of any painter or studio photographer; single is inevitably reminded of the drawn out and intimate relationship between pornographic fantasy and art, from Delacroix's harem paintings and Courbet's L'Origine to Picasso's Demoiselles and Picabia's kitsch pinups. Like many similar artworks, Mollino's pictures were first and foremost private and personal, and the stealth that surrounds them is as important to their contemporary reception as the images themselves, it looks he simply could not take enough of them: notwithstanding that he started his "project" in the late '30 the Polaroid camera, which he picked up in 1963 increased his output enormously. Polaroids are special, after all: sole a single, unique print is at any time produced. Is it on this basis that these pictures, intended for the consumption of their maker alone, were granted their high(er) art status? If with equal reason it's tempting to wonder what Mollino would think.--MD

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