Eros & Architecture took place at the Torch Gallery in Amsterdam and was curated by the artist Wink van Kempen. Wink was part of what had become my Amsterdam family and the bridge between New York and Amsterdam was Dutch artist Willem de Ridder, former boyfriend and mentor to my bosom buddy Annie Sprinkle who shared Willem with me when he came to New York to spend time with her in 1981. Then Willem’s friend Wink visited from Holland, and Willem introduced him to us. Like many Europeans as opposed to Americans, both men believed that human sexuality was a valid tool in the artist’s palette. Wink talked to us of post art art, a term that stuck when we titled our next home made porn magazine.
In his introduction to Eros & Architecture Wink van Kempen the show’s curator wrote: “Veronica Vera…deals with the body temple mystification. Her driving ‘Catholic-girl’ regression propels her writing much further than your average horny letters column, and her images are just as simple and complex as her writing.” Wink had learned of my “driving Catholic-girl regression” some years earlier in a different collaboration.
In 1983, Willem had returned to Holland and was curating that year’s Holland Festival, a muti-media art show with a stage show of performances. He invited me to participate in a show he called “Portable Vaudeville.” (A story for another share). This was also an opportunity to renew my friendship with Wink who I found very sympatico and very attractive. When he
invited me to his studio for a photo session,I cheerily agreed. Collaborating as a model is a sensual experience and if I am physically attracted to the photographer the atmosphere is super-charged and the results can be phenomenal. Wink’s studio was full of props but the most outstanding was a gold sunray frame that had been part of wall clock vintage 1960’s. I thought this would make a perfect halo for saintly me. I had come prepared with a few props of my own, including a bright red, skin tight dress that had been sliced to reveal my charms and opera length black leather gloves, a tribute from a generous fan who loved to be called my slave. There was a whip – a cat-o-nine tails- that came from Wink’s collection, for he loved being “the master.” That may be why we didn’t have intercourse, because we couldn’t decide who would be on top. But we did create art and that can be orgasmic in itself.
We each reached deep into our psyches. Wink had a thing about feet. He told me and Annie that as a boy he had witnessed a kitchen knife fall from the table and pierce his mother’s bare foot. At the sight of her blood, he’d had what he remembered as his first orgasm. I had brought a pair of patent leather maryjane’s as well as a pair of shiny black stiletto heels. I slipped on a pair of white ankle socks, then donned one of the shoes on each foot. The foot with the mary jane represented my initial discovery of pleasure through masturbation; the high heeled foot stood for my re-creation as a sexpot. I lifted my skirt to my waist, laid on my back and brought my feet together over my naked pussy, which was truly the center of it all. Internet censorship means that I can’t show you that uncensored version of this photo, or the one with my vulva lips holding the wooden cross, though the latter has appeared in art galleries and is titled ‘Whips & Time.’
Thank you, Wink. And Willem and Cora Emens and Annie and so many others in this holy congregation.
Here is the text and photo that comprised my contribution to Eros & Architecture plus some additional iconic images and erections.
“I’ve always felt at home in a church or a temple or even a building that reminded me of one by its spaciousness, its adornments…And always the temple has been for me a place of intense eroticism because from a very early age god and my sexuality were linked. This occurred the first time I reached my tiny fingers into my underpants and was chastised with the words, “God does not like that.” At the same time I was told that my body was a temple, but it seemed to me a temple with closed doors. I was not supposed to enter this temple and god forbid that I let anyone else enter my temple.
Motivated by my natural curiosity, a healthy libido and an innate belief that I was essentially good, I refused to believe that my desires were bad and I decided I would have to find a new god. The first place I looked was my body temple because that seemed the heart of the matter. I redesigned my body temple from frightened girl to uninhibited sexpot. Garters and stockings were the uniform of my quest. I played in my body temple at buildings that reminded me of churches. I found them all over the world and throughout my life: The New York Stock Exchange, within whose sacred columns worshippers revere the golden calf; the Taj Mahal, a monument to love, each precious tile inlaid with the care of a cathedral built by twenty thousand workers over twenty years; Show World sex emporium, flickering with the light of its gaudy neon stained glass. In Khajuraho India I found Tantric temples where sex was not just tolerated as an urge to be overcome but sex was revered as the vital energy of life. My body temple and my spirit temple could be at home here. I felt at peace in this reinforcement of my body temple, my spirit temple, my emotional temple. I am my own goddess, architect of my world. I live in a portable temple.”
These varied temples connected me to people, and today I understand that these churches that give me sustenance are not buildings made of bricks but communities of people. They are in different locations and seem to originate for different purposes, but all value love, art, sex, freedom and compassion – essential steps on my path as an arthole.
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