Arthouse Smut

Challenge accepted!

Finally, the last big art trend predicted for 2026 is watercolour paintings of pigeons. That's what's gonna be in all the big galleries. Don't ask me. I'm just the messenger. I speak the words I have been taught by elite art gallery insiders.

7/7

Anything floral is a good bet. People like flowers, after all. So just, you know, make a picture of some flowers or something. Take it to the mall, the street corner, the dumpster behind Denny's. See if you can find a buyer. Lots of sewer rats like flower paintings.

6/

Fetish art, especially the kind where a beloved cartoon character from the 80s gets slowly transformed into styrofoam, is likely to be HUGE in 2026. And I don't just mean huge because the character is getting inflated like a balloon. But also that.

5/

People are getting tired of bland colours. Expect big-ticket art in 2026 to have bright colours. Experts predict big upswings in sales of art where somebody puts a lot of different colour paints in their orifices and then excretes those colours onto the canvas. If that's you, take note.

4/

Anything visual art where a corporate mascot–Ronald McDonald in particular–can be seen engaging in sexual activities is likely to attract HUGE sales from the kind of big ticket buyers you're hoping to snag. Take note: in 2026 you should make corporate mascot porn.

3/

Anxieties about climate change are predicted to drive demand amongst elite buyers for works with conceptualize and individuate nature, bonds with nature, and the communal aspects of natural living and preservation ontologies.

2/

Textiles are predicted to make a HUGE comeback. With all the AI and impersonal digital bullshit, buyers are desperate for something tactile, something they can lay hands on, something they can plainly see was made with love by a master craftsperson.

1/

Just sat in on a really interesting dialogue with some art market insiders predicting what's gonna be HOT in 2026. They had some amazing insights that I'm happy to be able share here. 🧵

Galleries and auctions are culturally irrelevant. NFTs are dead shit. Let's all go back to laundering money the old-fashioned way: trading soiled mannequin parts in the alleyway behind Chipotle.

Because we don't display urinals in museums anymore, the frontiers of art have moved into obscure forums where throngs of secret fetishists jerk off to thousands upon thousands of nearly identical images of quotidian objects. DuChamp wishes he could have seen the perfection of it all.

a de-armed mannequin contemplates the flaccid cock they have framed and hung upon the wall

every cock is a work of art, worthy of being framed and hung

I miss 70s porn where every movie was like "come into this magical theatre where the mimes enact all your sexual fantasies" and also everyone had crabs.

Somebody give me money and the rights, and I will stage a production of The Bald Soprano that is so fucking horny, you're gonna love it, trust me.

we live our lives in translation, a constant struggle between expression and reception, the pretense of 'meaning' stilling our tongues and drying our throats.

You know that thing where your partner gives all the sperms a name and then you feel really bad about eating them so you just order the veggie burger instead?

a makeshift spermatozoa assembled from detached head and dildo.

Spermatozoa [2025]

The vampire seductress, fresh from the grave. What's become of her right arm? She turns her head to look for it...

There's this idea that the gothic aesthetic is fundamentally about ruined opulence. Victorian mansions and medieval castles were once places associated with wealth and status. Left to crumble into disrepair, these places become gothic. The dead mall trend is a kind of modern gothic aesthetic; it is fundamentally about finding beauty in the decay of what was once associated with commerce, wealth, and abundance. If we accept this, then we must accept that mannequins are modern vampires. Like vampires, mannequins are suspended between life and death. Life vampires, mannequins seduce their victims. Like vampires, mannequins want to drain your essence (although here "essence" means currency rather than blood). And, of course, just like vampires, all mannequins are bisexual.

Mannequins are Vampires [n.a.2025]

I like Richie Hofmann's poems in general, but I keep coming back to this final line about washing your cock in the sink. This image I've never seen in literature before, but feels so human. This thing we've all done, some time in the distant past, in a stranger's bathroom, dawn breaking outside.

A whole lot of people who claimed to believe content warnings are a grave threat to free speech are very quiet now that anti-capitalist / anti-Christian beliefs are terrorism, college kids get deported for op eds, and the admin is bullying late night comedians...

The nude reclines, at ease. Their mind is elsewhere, eyes focused in the infinite blackness. One hand absently strokes the shaft.

nude reclining [n.a.2025]

Exhausted from the sexual act, the nude, in pieces, reclines upon a chest. Their cock is still erect. Body fluids stain the space. The condom dangles precariously.

all used up [n.a..2025]

That's what I imagine for this project, anyway. It will be queer in both senses. And it will deal in fetishes, both real and imagined. This will be an experiment. It will fail. It will evolve. I’m going to have fun.

We're living in strange times.

Let's make some strange porn.

6/6

I think "arthouse smut" is the correct term for the photos I imagine. We all understand that arthouse cinema can be graphic or sexually explicit without compromising its art, for example. And "arthouse" primes the viewer to expect weirdness, absurdity, surrealism, flouted genre conventions, etc.

5/

I'm interested in photos which deal explicitly with sexuality, but are "artistic" in the deeper sense of the word. I'm interested in sexy photos which are about an idea. I'm interested in photos which, perhaps, ask something more of the viewer than simply to enjoy the body of a beautiful person.

4/

Ironically, imagery which falls under the banner of “pornography” is sometimes more conceptually interesting than its “artistic” counterpart. Some queer porn is both sexually and politically provocative, for example. And some fetish art arguably overlaps with the avant garde and conceptual art.

3/

A search for “artistic nudes,” or similar, invariably returns countless indistinguishable B&W images of conventionally attractive women posing in soft light. There may be technical mastery on display, but these images rarely convey any message deeper than “enjoy this beautiful person’s body.”

2/

The usual move is to bin sexual imagery into 2 categories: artistic and pornographic. Art strives communicates some message, we’re told, whereas porn only seeks to titillate. In practice, sexualized photos often qualify as “artistic” only when they’re conventionally pretty and not too explicit.

1/

On photographs dealing in sexual themes. A thesis statement of sorts... 🧵

Porn for a fetish you don't share feels like watching a David Lynch film. A woman, fully clothed, smokes a cigarette for 7 min. No cuts, no dialogue, nothing. And you start to drift, to contemplate the secret meaning of the cigarette, her hands, the white wall. Fetish art is the last avant garde.