WORKING GIRL - Sophia Giovannitti
TRIGGER WARNING - THIS REVIEW (AND BOOK) SPEAK FRANKLY OF SEX AND SEX ACTS
Giovannitti has been both a sex worker and an artist. For her, the lines between the two are often blurred and sometimes intersecting as she worked (in both fields) to make a living. Many artists struggle define the difference between themselves and their art - where does the art stop and the 'self' begin? This is a question that Giovannitti faces but with the added complication: where does the art stop and the selling of sex begin and where is the separator between self and sex service?
It's an interesting question. I've met many artists (in different mediums) who say that they have to sell themselves before they can sell their work. Of course 'selling themselves' doesn't have the same connotation as it does when referring to a sex worker. Or does it?
While the idea of what Sophia Giovannitti is selling here - her thoughts - is fascinating to me, the writing is a hot mess.
There are a lot of good thoughts within the covers of the book (I think I've highlighted more here than in just about any other book I've read in the past decade) but the book feels like a stream of consciousness writing and/or that Giovannitti had so much to say and she couldn't figure out what to say first and tried to say it all at once.
She writes a lot about her art but it is never really clear quite what her art actually is. Sometimes it's paintings (?), sometimes it's writing, and sometimes it's sex. And while she waxes on and on about the similarities between art and sex work, we definitely get the sense that she's 'practiced' her sex work ("That’s what fucking like a whore - like an artist - is, doing the work to make both seem good at it. There’s no secret save for willful deception, bought into by both parties. An American dream.") but when has she spent time on an art in order to not have to sell sex so that she can sell art? Other than a moment she writes of spending time with a man/client because he led her on with the possibility of selling her art, we really don't get the sense of Sophia Giovannitti the artist. But even she questions this:
Am I a real artist? Does my identity as a creative change how I engage sex work (politics)? Does poverty? … I’m wondering what it means to be pursuing sex work as a means to an end. There's a long history of creatives moonlighting as whores or in related professions in order to achieve their goal of making their creative work their main source of income. Does my experience matter? Should I abandon my writing in favor of pursuing erotic labor vis-a-vis authenticity?
And:
We might pursue sex work to support an art practice that is allegedly, at first, independent of sex work, but it often becomes inextricably linked to or entirely about it. In other words, by internalizing the idea that all we have to sell is sex, it also happens that what a lot of us end up creating, or creating about, is, in one form or another, sex.
And she looks back on some of her escort/prostitution in an art context:
Once in a Midtown hotel, a client arranged me on the bed and directed me to masturbate for him. I felt a bit like a painting, albeit one in motion, but barely - the composition just so, only one appendage slowly moving. He stood off to the side, watching. I don't remember if he was touching himself or not; I was consumed by my own experience as a prop.
The thoughts reflected in these quotes really capture the general tone of the book - the blurring of the lines.
Mixed within the jumble of thoughts, Giovannitti does make some interesting connections between the worlds. One of the best comes out in a discussion about an art dealer who was well known to have taken advantage of his position as a powerful dealer/gallery owner to sleep with artists in exchange for possibly showing in his galleries. She writes:
The difference between the whores hired by dealers, collectors, mega-artists, and cultural tastemakers and the gallery girls, assistants, and unpaid interns at their beck and call is that the former are paid to be sexualized, objectified, and sometimes degraded, while the latter are not even paid adequate wages for what’s in their job description, let alone harassment tacked on. The refusal to acknowledge sexual labor as such, alongside the conspiratorial dickriding between those on top who need to sell and those on top who might buy, simultaneously produces and relies upon webs of quotidian violences at the expense of pools of workers rendered disposable, replaceable, and lucky for the opportunity.
A few times, Giovannitti references a 'better known' (still relatively unknown to the general populace) artist whose art was sex in some form, such as Lynda Benglis's "dildo-adorned self-portrait" ("the image is more humorous than erotic, but it is also bold and arresting") and Vito Acconci's performance art piece in which he masturbated under a foot-ramp in a SoHo gallery for viewers. But these works she references are from fifty years ago (1974 and 1972 respectively). I'm not sure that looking at 'art' (some will see these as art, some will not) during a time of real cultural upheaval is a good comparison to make today.
Looking for a good book? Sophia Giovannitti has some important points to make in Working Girl, but finding them among the jumble of thoughts may take more effort than it's worth.
I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.
2-1/2 stars
* * * * * *
Working Girl: On Selling Art and Selling Sex
author: Sophia Giovannitti
publisher: Verso
ISBN: 9781839766725
hardcover, 192 pages
Comments
Post a Comment