X-Ray Erotica

If beauty is skin deep, then sexy is everything below. So leave it to science to help find the sexy below. In the hands of both scientist and artist, the x-ray and the MRI are being used to expand the dirty picture universe.

First, the responsible use of the MRI to increase knowledge. The penis is shaped like a boomerang during intercourse. This and other newly discovered sex facts from the British Medical Journal's online article titled "Magnetic resonance imaging of male and female genitals during coitus and female sexual arousal". How the pieces fit together has been a source of curiosity for some time, with even Leonardo da Vinci circa 1493 rendering his vision of how they came together. Leave it to the home country of Monty Python to provide the answers. From the article, "We thank our volunteers for their cooperation, laughter, and permission to publish intimate MR images of them; those hospital officials on duty who had the intellectual courage to allow us to continue this search despite obtrusive and sniffing press hounds..."

Artist Wim Delvoye has randy friends and access to x-ray equipment and has the pictures to prove it. As part of his "Gothic Works" installation, Delvoye added to his edgy body of work with black and white x-ray erotica. The striking images were hung as individual panels and collaged together in back-lit stained glass panes. The acts of affection and depravity are made both alien and intimate with the ghostly nature of flesh and the solidity of the bone below. And in a show where the sexual nature of the works of the x-rays could have outshone any other work, Delvoye included a large industrial Caterpillar Model in the manner of Gothic architecture that complements the stained glass works quite nicely.