I assume some of you have caught up with this study. Not only are poets
unhinged, they have very exciting sex lives. (Presumably Hildegard von
Bingen doesn't enter this picture...)

All best

A

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,17458076%255E1
6947,00.html

Maestros of jolly rogering
If we think poets and painters have hotter sex lives, it may be because they
are good at persuading us, writes Ben Macintyre
December 05, 2005 

"SEX and art are the same thing," declared Pablo Picasso; this was one of
the greatest chat-up lines ever, from a master of the art.

Finally, a scientific survey has proven what everyone has long suspected
(which is what scientific surveys ought to do): creative artists, it
appears, really do have more exotic love lives than the rest of the
population. The new study, published this week in Proceedings of the Royal
Society, suggests that artists, from poets to painters to puppeteers, have,
on average, twice as many sexual partners as non-artists.

Promiscuous Picasso, Lord Byron the philanderer, Dylan Thomas the boozy
womaniser: these were not simply bonking bohemians, it seems, but artists
doing what their genes told them to do. According to the researchers the
greater the artistic endeavour, the larger the sexual appetites. (There are
some obvious exceptions to this rule: Julio Iglesias claims to have had sex
with 3000 women, but has never yet sung a decent song.)

The authors of the study also suggest a link between artistic sexuality and
schizophrenia. The genes linked to schizophrenia appear to be particularly
common among poets and artists: the illness may contribute to artistic
individuality and a uniquely imagined view of the world, but it may also
explain the attractiveness of artists to others, and thus why those traits
have been passed on.

Indeed, artistic ability may have evolved as a form of mating display, a
courtship technique to attract partners. In his 2001 book The Mating Mind,
Geoffrey Miller argued that intellectual and artistic ability were a form of
human plumage, designed to entice sexual partners. "Come up and see my
etchings" may be a central statement in human evolution.

Artists have more sex, of course, because that is what they are expected to
do. As rule-breakers, they are assumed to act on impulse, unconstrained by
the mores that apply to the rest of society. When 83-year-old Lucian Freud
is discovered to be stepping out with yet another nubile lovely, even
straitlaced middle England bottles its outrage, accepting this side-effect
of genius. 

Artists (Freud excepted) also tend to die young, making it imperative that
they gather ye rosebuds while they may. Poets, in fact, die younger than any
other sort of artist, and younger than almost any other type of
professional, including deep-sea divers. When Andrew Marvell wrote To His
Coy Mistress, he was speaking for all artists who sense time's winged
chariot hurrying near, and want to get laid, a lot, before it runs them
over: 

Had we but world enough, and time,

This coyness, Lady, were no crime.

Artists are not only expected to have sex more, but also to write, paint,
sing, compose and talk about it, endlessly, preferably in smoky bars. For
Picasso, sex was a prevailing theme: a recent exhibition in Paris, Picasso
Erotique, displayed 330 paintings, drawings, engravings and sculptures
portraying sexual congress, or what Gertrude Stein called Picasso's "dirty
side". Picasso was genuinely interested in sex all his life, but most modern
artists feel obliged to include sex in their portfolios, as a matter of
form. Tracey Emin's installation Everybody I've Ever Slept With: 1963-1995
is a very good joke, but also a wry reflection on the modern artist who is
obliged either to celebrate sex or to fake it. The Bad Sex Awards, presented
annually to the most embarrassing description of the sexual act, is never
short of contenders.

Artists may not actually have wilder sex lives than mere mortals; they may
simply be better at misrepresenting what they do in bed. Jerry Seinfeld once
remarked: "Everyone lies about sex. People lie during sex. If it weren't for
lies, there'd be no sex."

And artists, being imaginative types, can lie better than anyone else. On
the other hand, it is de rigueur for a great artist to claim that sex is
boring ("The biggest nothing" -- Andy Warhol), thus implying that they are
at it like rabbits. "Nothing nauseates me more than promiscuous sex in and
out of season," wrote D.H. Lawrence, simultaneously yawning and panting, to
Ottoline Morrell. 

The portrait of the artist as a young stud-muffin may have some scientific
basis, but it is also a long-running conceit, based largely on wishful
thinking. 

As the artist Dinos Chapman, of the notorious Chapman brothers, pointed out
this week: "The truth is that artists aren't that special. People just like
to think so -- especially artists."

But the legend of the artistic and literary libido refuses to die, perhaps
because for many people sex has become so desperately cheapened and
unromantic. 

On the day the sex lives of the artists was unveiled, another, much grimmer
report appeared under the less than enticing title, Who Pays for Sex?. Based
on a survey by the Medical Research Council, this showed that the number of
British men paying for sex has doubled during the past decade, with nearly
one in 10 of all males admitting that he had done so during the previous
five years. 

The rise of sex tourism, access to sex via the internet, migrant sex workers
and rising divorce rates have contributed to a massive growth in commercial
sex. London alone has an estimated 4000 massage parlours and escort
services. Pornography remains the most heavily researched subject on the
web. 

The general devaluation of sex surely explains why, more than ever, we need
to associate sex with art, glamour and the carefree misbehaviour of a
Picasso or, for that matter, a Kate Moss. Three weeks after Byron died in
1824, The Times declared him "the most remarkable Englishman of his
generation"; this, it should be remembered, was an Englishman who had
rogered practically anything with a pulse, including boys, various grandes
dames and his own half-sister. He was mad, bad and dangerous to know; and,
as an artist, he was feted for it.

The image of the artist as Don Juan, glamorous and faintly unhinged, with a
tangled and athletic love life, owes more to myth than science, but it is
one of the oldest and most cherished of our cultural stories. This may be no
more than escapism; but so is art.

The Times 



Alison Croggon

Blog: http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com
Editor, Masthead:  http://masthead.net.au
Home page: http://alisoncroggon.com