Pipilotti Rist
[Artist, b. 1962, Reinthal, Switzerland, lives in Zurich and Los Angeles.]
Women are less interested in watching two people having sex than in understanding how and what these people are feeling when they are having sex. If you kiss someone, you want to know what the other person is feeling. So I want to find pictures that express what the other feels.
Robert Mapplethorpe
[Photographer, b. 1946, Floral Park, Long Island, d. 1989, Boston, Massachusetts.]
I don’t think that there’s that much difference between a photograph of a fist up someone’s ass and a photograph of carnations in a bowl.
When I have sex with someone I forget who I am. For a minute I even forget I’m human. It’s the same thing when I’m behind a camera. I forget I exist.
Marilyn Monroe (Norma Jeane Mortenson)
[Actress, b. 1926, Los Angeles, d. 1962, Los Angeles.]
It’s like being screwed by a thousand guys and you can’t get pregnant.
(On what happens between her and still cameras, to photographer Ernst Cunningham.)
Anaïs Nin
[Writer, b. 1903, Neuilly, France, d. 1977, Los Angeles.]
I will not be just a tourist in the world of images, just watching images passing by which I cannot live in, make love to, possess as permanent sources of joy and ecstasy.
Nobuyoshi Araki
[Photographer, b. 1940, Tokyo, lives in Tokyo.]
I would say my sex drive is weaker than most. However, my lens has a permanent erection.
Edward Weston
[Photographer, b. 1886, Highland Park, Illinois, d. 1958, Wildcat Hill, California.]
By all means tell your Board that pubic hair has definitely been part of my development as an artist, tell them it has been the most important part, that I like it black, brown, red or golden, curly or straight, all sizes and shapes.
(To Museum of Modern Art curator Beaumont Newhall, after being told the museum was reluctant to show nudes revealing pubic hair.)
Chuck Close
[Artist, b. 1940, Monroe, Washington, lives in New York.]
No one makes a nude if they’re not going to get turned on, and if they claim that they are making it for other reasons it’s an absolute lie.
