No Pictures

Abstract

In the central action of John Duncan's controversial performance Blind Date (1980), the artist had sex with a female corpse. Enacted as a ritualistic self-punishment for the failure of a long-term relationship, this performance marked Duncan's association of male sexuality with aggression, abjection and death. He intended to videotape the action, but when he arrived at the morgue, the mortician strictly forbid image-making. Instead, Duncan audio-recorded his action and photographed a later action in the performance, a vasectomy procedure. Yet his core abject sex act remained invisible, revealing the profound isolation at the heart of Blind Date: the impossibility of visualizing abject masculinity in the context of patriarchy. With his unseen act—penetrating the dead woman's body—the artist identified male sexual activity with death. In Blind Date, Duncan culminated his decade-long critique of male gender socialization, enacting the irreconcilable tensions of traditional American post-World War II masculinities and performing both aggressive male sexuality and male victimhood. This article analyzes key early works to frame how the artist's prolonged, critical engagement with issues of gender and power shaped the forms and content of Blind Date. Throughout his 1970s art practice, Duncan developed a harsh critique of masculinity rooted in his childhood experiences as a victim of male sexual predation. From his perspective as a male survivor of sexual abuse—the physical and psychological target of aggressive masculinity—Duncan observed first-hand the confluence of violence and sex with authoritarian, patriarchal power. He advanced this early deconstruction of masculinity during his crucial encounter with feminist artists in Los Angeles in the early 1970s. Through critical attention to both of these foundational experiences, this article traces the formation of Duncan's ideological project and its culmination in Blind Date.

Notes

¹ Unless otherwise noted, quotations from the artist are from Duncan and Gonzalez Rice (2009). My interview with the artist took place at his home and studio in Bologna, Italy, 2–7 August 2009.

² Duncan's insights into the sources of male sexual aggression were confirmed by psychologists in the 1990s, including David Lisak, who pioneered research with male survivors of sexual abuse (Lisak 1993, 1995, 2005, 2006 and Lisak, Hopper and Song 1996).

³ While I recognize and affirm the multiplicity and complexity of masculine identities, Duncan and other survivors have described the process of gender socialization as extremely rigid. For these men, masculinity appeared monolithic.

⁴ Kristine Stiles briefly addressed the relation between Blind Date and If Only We Could Tell You in 1998 (Stiles 1998: 240–3).

⁵ In the 1960s the Viennese Action artists, including Günter Brus, Otto Mühl, Hermann Nitsch and Rudolf Schwartzkogler, confronted audiences with transgressive actions and self-harming imagery.

⁶ Duncan's text has been lost, although short excerpts were documented by Lewis MacAdams (1981a, 1981b).

⁷ For a brief summary of audience response to Blind Date, see Gonzalez Rice (2014).