Art Gallery Hosts a Swingers Club

An art gallery in Austria is giving visitors the chance to act out their sexual fantasies. The Secession art gallery in central Vienna is hosting a nightly swingers club. It is part of a two-month project that is aimed at provoking debate about scandal in art. During the day the visitors, who are 18 and older, can walk through the empty scarlet rooms filled with black sofas. At night when the exhibit closes the club opens to dim lights, mattresses, a spa bath and provides a sex haven for visitors, 18 and older. The club gives people the chance to overcome their inhibition and to act out sexual fantasies ranging from leather and latex to a dance floor, body painting and a sado-masochism chamber. The project is the work of Swiss artist Christopher Buchel. Buchel wanted to draw parallels between the controversial Gustav Klimt’s Beethoven Frieze paintings. Klimt’s 1902 painting was once considered obscene and pornographic because of the way women’s bodies were portrayed. The painting is on display in the basement of the Secession and visitors must pass through the swinger’s club to see it.

Austria’s far-right Freedom party is denouncing the project. Gerald Ebinger. Local Freedom Party politician says, “It abuses artistic freedom. The significance of Austria as a country of culture and of Vienna as a cultural capital is being dragged in the mud.” Vienna’s Mayor, Michael Haeupl, is saying he did not approve the club. But the outrage from politicians and newspapers are playing right into the artist’s hands.

I actually heard about this story when I was driving home from Monday’s night class. I was very much caught off guard because this is something you would never hear about in the US. I mean a swingers club at the Met, not going to happen. The exhibit is suppose to draw a parallel between a 1902 painting of a naked woman, that was deemed pornographic, to people acting out sexual acts at night in the gallery. I’m not sure where the sex in art aspect is. Maybe, for the fact that the swinger club is taking place in an art gallery.