My visit to the 'Dirty Show' Detroit 2007 Text from MetroTimes Detroit | Photos: Adam Layne

It's Saturday night and the cavernous Bert's Theater Warehouse is slammed for the latest version of the Dirty Show, that much-abhorred, much-adored "erotic art exhibition" that still makes stuffed shirts crow and common-folk woozy. An international erotic showcase for artists from as far as Israel and Australia is fairly stunning. The Dirty could be the largest erotic art show on earth now

At 11 p.m. on a Saturday night, it feels like there must be 2,000 people here.

Artist V. Castiglia, 'Dirty' creator Jerry Vile, Agent L. Barany

Brian Viveros Paintings

The Dirty Show 2007 succeeds in creating a little world full of dark and funny sexual dynamics. When it comes down to it, American standards simply forbid this show to get really, really nasty (there's no shit-play, for example, no triple anal insertions, etc.), but Dirty creator Jerry Vile (in the red jacket) manages to evoke that precious aphrodisiac quality through an air of softened and hardened decadence, a sense of artful sexual frolic and overt coital inanity.

Rich Rethorn painting

"First, the Dirty Show is not that controversial," Vile says. "At least to the people who come. They have seen sex before perhaps a couple of them have even tried it. I, too, have heard sex was fun, which is probably the biggest reason people come to the Dirty Show ... it's fun. They tell their friends, who tell their friends, and that's why we are so fucking huge."

Dressed to impress

Dressed to undress

Beyond the Money Shot Twins, Saturday's show is crammed with a microcosm of Detroit folk all colors, sizes and sexual orientations, fat, skinny, short, tall, queer, straight, old, young, ugly, lovely, disfigured, drunk and sober. A few packs of can't-get-laid mooks with Marine cuts wish on handfuls of curved women in various states of disrobe. At least two attendees roll in wheelchairs. Suburban divorcees grind ass on new, younger boyfriends while staring at certain pieces something you don't see too often. Sculpted, shirtless gents and a couple in full-body PVC mill about, and above the room's main bar a porn reel loops; right now it's male-on-male sucking and fucking.

A woman of 60 or so in a fur cap and shocked expression holds her coat tightly to her belly as she steps carefully from one piece to another. Through her eyes we see a fresh view into an idea of what can disturb, provoke and make one lose sleep. Arm in arm with her gray-headed hubby, who smiles wryly and shakes his head slowly at each viewing, she navigates through the throng. Inside the huge room, more than 300 pieces of art (paintings, sculpture, photography, etc., juried down from more than 2,000 entries) hang in clean aesthetic lines for quick and easy viewing

Photo Jim Young, Model Iris Dassault

An Alien by the Giger wall

The Dirty showcases names too, such as 90-year-old Detroiter Pablo Davis (Kleinbordt) whose lovely and graceful oil on carbon depicts a man fucking a woman standing up. The piece was done, Vile says, in 1954. Davis worked with Diego Rivera on the "Detroit Industry" murals at the DIA. And Swiss surrealist HR Giger's prints of sex-machine schtupping is ripe commentary on industrial age and (now) Internet dehumanization.

The Art of Samarel

Sure, women are objectified and pedestalized. So are dudes. Men are pissed on, laughed at and smothered under huge female ass. Grand Rapids' Melissa Arpin Duimstra's mixed media on wood shows a nude woman in boots on her elbows and knees surrounded by sketches of dogs, some licking chops.

Me, holding a live piece of art

Les Barany, holding another piece of art

Vile says the biggest complaint about the Dirty Show is that not all the art is good. "You ask 10 people and you will get 10 answers what the art is," he says. "When art is stripped of its identity and has to sell on its merit rather than the artist's name it ain't as pretty and certainly isn't important. But I guarantee you most people would call Picasso crap if it was just hanging there without a brass tag telling them it's a Picasso. It takes balls to call something art if you get enough people to believe it, then it will become art. And if enough believe, you get rich."

Here's the thing: Vile has the level of sensitivity to understand that the Dirty show isn't about porn, art or dirty sex as much as it's about investigating one's inner, deeper sexual flickers. There's something difficult to describe, too, about the shared sexual stimuli that can bring those flickers to the surface (including the conservative suburban soccer-mom-type who was not all that quietly begging her date to fuck her on the spot). Vile wears a sort of porn-positive/Dirty Show 'tude on his sleeve but is loathe to attach any deeper meaning or significance to many of the pieces hanging or what they do to the audience. "Often, I think the shriek of public reaction to the pieces are more important statements than the work itself."

Model, Exotic Dancer Shay Lynn

Responding to erotic art...

Art by Pawlowski & Hanno von Bran

Art by Brian Viveros

Les Barany and Adam Layne who brought me to Detroit

The Art of Georgie Tier

The Art of Lisolette

The Art of H.R.Giger

Jacki (right) and Sarafina (left) seducing the artist...

Lochai - rope artist/photographer

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See you dirty next year?

The Dirty Show - Erotic Art in all mediums including Photography, Painting, Illustration, Mixed Media, Multi-media, Dance, Burlesque, Spoken Word, Theater & more. Featuring 350+ works by hundreds of artists from across North America and around the globe.

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