Sabrina Jung : Madonna Psycho Slut, Grimmuseum, Berlin

Madonna Psycho Slut
curated by Despina Stokou

Ada van Hoorebeke, Alicja Kwade, Alisa Margolis, Annika Larsson, Angela Liosi, Anouk Kruithof, Catherine Lorent, Danae Nagel, Despina Stokou, Elna Hagemann, Hadassah Emmerich, Iris van Dongen, Kimberly Clark, Kirstine Roepstorff, Nuri Koerfer, Olivia Berckemeyer, Rallou Panagiotou, Sabrina Jung, Sibylla Dumke, Yvonne Roeb, Wafae Ahalouch

29. Januar - 27. Februar 2010
Eröffnung: 28. Januar 19 Uhr

GRIMMUSEUM Berlin
Fichte Strasse 2
10967 Berlin

He says: “I am not the one-nightstand kind of guy.” I say: “I am not the one-nightstand kind of girl either.” He says: “I just cannot do it.” I say: ” Well…you know, it is not as if you plan these things…it just happens sometimes; mostly you don’t even know it is going to be just one night,
until after, well, that first night.” I laugh. He stares in his glass. He says: “How often has it happened to you then?” I say: “How often is often for you?” He hesitates. I hesitate. He looks upset. I say: “How often would you like it to have happened then?” He says: “I would prefer you
were a virgin.” I talk to this guy at the bar, I say: “Ah, you are in the movie industry; that must be interesting!” He says: “Oh well, actually I am more into the money making part of movies” I say: “Oh I see.” He
says: ”Well, you know; I am mostly doing ads.” I say nothing; He says:“OK! I am a money making whore!”
What has become known as the Madonna-Whore split was first introduced by Sigmund Freud in 1910 in two of his essays; “A Special Type of Choice Made by Men” and "On the Universal Tendency of Debasement in the Sphere of Love." Luise Grimm* was a child of 10 year old at the time, moving with her newly wealthy family to their villa in Charlottenburg. The grandparents of the artists of this show were born around the same time.
In his essay Freud claims that male sexual behavior in the Civilized (Western) World bears the stamp of psychical impotence. A man, usually as a result of an unresolved Oedipal conflict, almost always feels his respect for a woman act as a restriction on his sexual desire. Thus it is
only possible for him to develop full potency with a debased love object.
Freud has been often accused of developing a phallocentric psychoanalytical theory by ignoring the female genitalia and their separate importance in a child’s development and simply transferring his male theories to women with slight adaptations (penis envy, castration fear); thus giving voice and at the same time more power to an already patriarchal society. In this essay, however, he (accidentally?) succeeds in defining a very common sexual double standard, used to control women’s role in all religious and social systems since ancient times, as a problem in male sexual development.
The essay failed to generate further psychoanalytical investigation and the Madonna-Whore complex came to be known with a name that makes women blush, not men. Some of the most popular examples of this complex in recent history are Elvis, The Catcher in the Rye and Trey
from Sex and the City.
At the age of 24 Luise asked her father how she could promote her paintings in the art market. He told her to let those in need worry about that; she can rely on the family money. Four years later the family business collapsed. Luise earned her money painting flowers and portraits on commission, arranged by her second husband. She divorced her first husband in 1939, three years into their wedding, when he proved to have a strong sympathy for the Nazi regime. Then same year Freud, suffering from oral cancer, committed suicide with an overdose of morphine in his London exile.
In 1963 following her second husband’s death, Luise moved into the floor upstairs on Fichte Str. 2 and started working in a factory to complement her pension. The same year the later popular British artist Tracey Emin was born in London. The parents of the artists of this exhibition started
meeting each other. In 1972 Luise finally secured a living and started working on a series of her most important works; they were exhibited under the title Eins in her first big gallery show in 1983 in Berlin. During those 10 years most of the artists of this exhibition were born around Europe, Russia and Morocco. None of them lived in Berlin during Luise’s lifetime. In 1991most of the artists of the show were facing puberty. One of them traveled to Moscow with her school, one of them completed the Annapurna Trek in Nepal, one of them flew vomit free for the first time, one gave up ballet for basket ball, one played football non stop, another
masturbated nonstop, one loved the Cure, one loved the Bangles, one won the first price in her catholic girl school for covering John Lenon’s Imagine. The youngest of them turned three years old; Luise Grimm died. A year earlier, in 1990, the Turner Prize nomination of the now 36year old Tracey Emin is announced during her first solo exhibition in New York. The show includes a neon sculpture announcing the dimensions of her boyfriend’s penis and a huge appliquéd blanket of bright felt titled Psycho Slut. I saw a picture of this work, while preparing for this exhibition in the catalogue I have: Women Artists of the 20th and 21stcentury. I am kind of embarrassed owning such a catalogue. I bought it half price. These were some of the reactions to the title of this exhibition: Some women laughed out loud, some drew their breath in. Some men giggled, some men stared. “Does the work have to be
about women as sluts?” “I mean…who the hell is a psycho slut?” “Art should be cleverer than that!” “This psycho slut is proud to join in” “ I like Madonna, especially the early songs” “Think I will have to make a Tracey Emin rip off, in Batik” “Madonna Super Slut!” “Madonna Psycho
What?” “Are you trying to reclaim the term?” “Are you serious?” “I want to make a ducking stool for this show, a common punishment in Middle Age for a troublesome and angry woman who broke the public peace...Amen!” “We will make a double bed burned on one side!” “ You certainly don’t want any feminists coming in there” “Is this a women show about men or a men’s show about women?” “Excuse me…not even Madonna sung Like a psycho slut! She sung Like a virgin looking like a slut- do you see the difference here? “You have to leave your art ego aside at some point…” “So proud for this to be my first show!” “A bit too provocative…” “ I know it’s a women’s show, but I am gay, it should be women and gay! “Hard but fair…” “I don’t know, too vulgar” “I cannot explain it, it is like the title is giggling their balls or something, I resent that” “I say pigeon but I mean dick” “I know girl…Chauvinism is hot!” “Well Madonna IS a psycho slut”

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