Lamp mouth and penis sofa: the art of Nicola L., “the last woman object”

Every week in "Les 400 Culs" , Agnès Giard, an anthropologist attached to the University of Paris Nanterre and a specialist in Japan, examines contemporary sexual discourses and practices with a skeptical and detached analysis, informed by the latest research in the human and social sciences.

“It was like a kind of rage at first.” As she recounts in interviews, Nicola L. makes “holes ” in her paintings, to force people to “walk into them. ” Nicola Leuthe, her full name, who created the so-called “penetrable” paintings in 1964, is famous in the United States for her major contribution to pop art. Born in 1932 in Morocco and died in 2018 in Los Angeles, this French artist had never before had a major exhibition in Europe. A traveling retrospective now retraces her entire career. Opening at the Camden Art Center in London, then moving to the Frac Bretagne , the retrospective is now on display at the Kunsthalle Vienna until September 14. After that, it will move to the Museion in Bolzano, Italy, its final destination. “Although the works are always the same, they are