Jimmy Desana (1949-1990) Television, from the series Submission.

Lot description

JIMMY DESANA (1949-1990) Television, from the series Submission. Silver print, the image measuring 324x222 mm; 12¾x8¾ inches, the sheet 356x238 mm; 14x9⅜ inches, with DeSana's signature in pencil on verso. 1977-1978. Throughout his career, DeSana produced imagery informed by and exploring S&M culture, often using both his own body as subject (most notably an infamous self-portrait as a hanged man). While other artists also used S&M imagery in their work, DeSana's imagery interrogated the intersection of the body, desire, and sexuality alongside consumer and suburban culture in new ways that were both witty and playful as well as dramatic and tension filled. In the late 1970s, DeSana collaborated with a dominatrix named Terence Sellers, photographing her practicing S&M with consenting clients. However, while the images made with Sellers were collaborative in nature, in his series "Submission" DeSana here took the theme to new realms, choosing to compose his images in a heightened theatrical and performative mode, using posed and sometimes contorted bodies. He positioned his figures within suburban environments, a theme taken up and developed throughout his career, and titled the works to reflect the setting, rather than the sex act depicted. DeSana's examination of S&M culture considers the relationship between domestic interiors and desire as well as the tension inherent in the practice, "the paradox of wanting and not wanting," as William Burroughs wrote in his introduction to Submission. Reproduced: Drew Sawyer, Submission (Brooklyn Museum, 2022), p. 94.