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Yeah, But Is it Art?
Detroit's Dirty Show makes filth fashionable
I was a big hit with the boys in grade school, but not for the reasons you may think. Fact is, I could draw naked ladies like nobody's business.
My skill at rendering chalkboard floozies was so adept that, when I scored a trip to detention (a frequent occurrence), it was something of an event. Sentries would watch the door as I scrawled my best pre-adolescent porn at lightning speed. A couple of fellow detainees with erasers would stand next to my creation, poised to destroy it should an authority figure intrude on our crude little peep show. My moment of glory would come when circumstances permitted a fully detailed nude capable of drawing smutty utterances of admiration from my little jailbird buddies.
They're probably in real jail now ... getting tattoos that look just like my drawings.
If I had known Jerry Vile, creator of Detroit's Dirty Show, back in 1973, he would have been one of those kids — a smut-obsessed little weirdo destined to grow hair on his palms. As it turns out, he ultimately parlayed his interest in boobs ‘n' buns into the biggest erotic art expo in the United States. Mama must be so proud.
The Dirty Show, now in its ninth year, has grown from the office space of Vile's now-defunct Orbit magazine to an enormous warehouse theater in Detroit's Eastern Market, and seems to be getting bigger all the time. A Valentine's Day tradition, Dirty features over 300 mixed-media works of art along with topless cage dancers, backyard burlesque troupes, and live "demonstrations of the flesh." The big party went down over the weekend, but the show, which features the work of Bunny Yeager (famous for photographing Bettie Page) and modern industrialist H.R. Giger, among others, will continue to be on display through the 16th.
My skill at rendering chalkboard floozies was so adept that, when I scored a trip to detention (a frequent occurrence), it was something of an event. Sentries would watch the door as I scrawled my best pre-adolescent porn at lightning speed. A couple of fellow detainees with erasers would stand next to my creation, poised to destroy it should an authority figure intrude on our crude little peep show. My moment of glory would come when circumstances permitted a fully detailed nude capable of drawing smutty utterances of admiration from my little jailbird buddies.
They're probably in real jail now ... getting tattoos that look just like my drawings.
If I had known Jerry Vile, creator of Detroit's Dirty Show, back in 1973, he would have been one of those kids — a smut-obsessed little weirdo destined to grow hair on his palms. As it turns out, he ultimately parlayed his interest in boobs ‘n' buns into the biggest erotic art expo in the United States. Mama must be so proud.
The Dirty Show, now in its ninth year, has grown from the office space of Vile's now-defunct Orbit magazine to an enormous warehouse theater in Detroit's Eastern Market, and seems to be getting bigger all the time. A Valentine's Day tradition, Dirty features over 300 mixed-media works of art along with topless cage dancers, backyard burlesque troupes, and live "demonstrations of the flesh." The big party went down over the weekend, but the show, which features the work of Bunny Yeager (famous for photographing Bettie Page) and modern industrialist H.R. Giger, among others, will continue to be on display through the 16th.
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16:43 EST, 13.Feb.08
12:31 EST, 13.Feb.08