Eroticism and sexuality permeate the art of Victor Majzner from the 1980s onwards. Sexual imagery has, of course, the potential to transgress social boundaries and to upset stereotypes of identity, and this becomes one aspect of its appearance in Majzner's work. There are, though, various levels on which his work engages with themes of eroticism and sexuality, ranging in meaning and expression from the pornographic to the sublime, the ironical and satirical to the celebratory. Majzner is critical of societal attitudes that seem open and tolerant to conventional expressions of a sensuous, even promiscuous, heterosexuality, and yet are quite oppressive and puritanical when it comes to certain other forms of sexuality, particularly gay sexuality, that are perceived as being 'taboo, forbidden, hidden' or deviant.1 Much ofMajzner's sexual imagery thus references the contrast between these 'liberal, feel-good' and 'puritanical' extremes by bringing them into abrupt, unexpected and often bizarre conjunction. When discussing his use of erotic imagery in 1986, Majzner was led to reflect, along almost Freudian lines, that 'our whole culture is based upon a rationalisation of the sexual drive and the sense of moral control of it' .2 The process of rationalisation seemed clearly manifest in the iconography of traditional Judeo/Christian religion. He became fascinated by 'the paradox of the underlying guilt and sexual suppression, on the one hand, and [on the other] the incredible sensuality and phallic association of so many Christian images ... '. One of his strategies is to combine explicit sexual imagery with traditional religious images and symbols.3
The Kiss shows Majzner purposely exploring the coexistence of different layers of meaning in the experience of love, sexuality and eroticism. The title makes an obvious... The rest of this article is available to subscribers of Eyeline