It's porn! No, it's art!
[LONDON] The hotter-than-hot ticket in London these days is "Seduced: Art and Sex from Antiquity to Now", an exhibition at the Barbican Art Gallery. Because it "contains work of a sexually explicit nature", the Barbican has implemented an "Over 18s only" policy — the first time an age limit has been applied to an entire show at a major gallery. What a brilliant marketing ploy! Everyone wants to see the show now.
As one would expect, The Guardian hailed it as "The bravest and most intelligent exhibition of the year", but we prefer to make up our own minds here, so, grabbing a few minutes from a hectic schedule, Rainy Day, clad in furtive raincoat, hurried along through the evening dusk to the Barbican. And what did we see? Well, a video of a man receiving oral sex, for instance. But because the exhibit is titled "Andy Warhol (1928-1987) Blowjob, 1963", it's not porn. Then there's a pink neon sign, 34 x 158 x 10 cm, by Tracey Emin titled "Is Legal Sex Anal?" That's art, surely. Lots of this guy, too. Very rough stuff, indeed. 
But just in case you think it's all contemporary, there's an erotic etching from 1659 by Rembrandt van Rijn titled Jupiter and Antiope. Now, that's art with a capital A. By the way, one of the most popular items in the exhibition is the 50cm-high stone fig leaf commissioned to cover the privates of a cast of Michelangelo's David presented to Queen Victoria.
The Barbican's head of galleries Kate Bush (not the singer) told the press at the opening of the exhibition: "It's not a show for someone to get their rocks off on, but a serious scholarly undertaking." Maybe. But note that the show closes at 6 pm on Wednesdays. That left us with just 30 minutes to view 2,000 years of explicit depiction. Hardly enough time to get the raincoat off, that. Ends 27 January. Five stars.
