Natalie Frank's first museum show, in 2015, presented drawings based on the unexpurgated Brothers Grimms fairy tales as translated by the scholar Jack Zipes. In a series of bold, expressionistic gouache and pastel drawings, she explored subjects present in the original writings including incest, rape, physical violence and other taboo themes that have been suppressed since the Victorian era.

More recently Frank has turned for source material to what is arguably the most controversial novel of the 20^th century: Story of O, published in 1954 under the pseudonym Pauline Reage, later revealed to be a prominent literary figure in Paris named Dominique Aury. “Upon reading O, French philosopher Albert Camus announced that a woman could not have written it: Women, he said, did not posses such erotic imaginations—nor were they capable of such immorality,” writes Frank in the introduction to the catalogue that accompanies the exhibition that opened Wednesday at Half Gallery.

For Frank, a committed feminist whose work continuously undermines stereotypes, this must have been the bait that caught her imagination. Aury, Frank says, “wrote it for herself to show that this is what she and women can do. Women can seduce through means other than with sex—which is the great humor about this book—superficially it revolves around sex, but it was written to flaunt the much more powerful eroticism—of the mind.”

In the gritty and luminous gouache and pastel drawings on view at Half Gallery, Frank engages the intersection of body and mind, reality and fantasy, choices and boundaries explored in the novel. In Frank's  signature image of O being taken by her lover into an S&M cult at a chateau outside Paris [left], the heroine is shown disheveled and frightened as she embarks upon a metaphoric journey from which she ultimately won’t return. The novel's plainly written but heated narrative suffuses this dual portrait of a woman in thrall to her older lover, seen here transformed into the shadowy yet domineering figure who would henceforth order her life.

The drawings are tightly framed, roiling with activity and lurid atmosphere. Dense with jarring color and bizarre secondary figures that include a confused-looking canine bystander and an acrobatic monkey, they portray a claustrophobic world of curiosity and desire. Drawn through close observation of her model for O, and the depths of her imagination for the rest, Frank's series does not require a full understanding of the novel to be appreciated. But the catalogue that accompanies the show includes a publication history and synopsis of O that will reward the reader, together with all of the drawings, beautifully reproduced.

In a Q&A with Lawrence Weschler in the catalogue, Frank says, “Susan Sontag wrote about the differences between art and pornography, using O as an instance of one and not the other. O develops as a woman, she has an interior life, she feels more and more alive. The sex and violence in the book are a means for her ‘ascent through degradation,’ as Sontag explains—this was such a revolutionary little book because it was the first erotic book written by a woman about sex, violence, and women’s interior lives and their transformative desires. It also essentially explored a spectrum of relationships that challenged conventional norms. And it Is such a send-up of pornography because ultimately O develops intellectually, which doesn’t occur in pornography.”

Natalie Frank | Story of O continues at Half Gallery through June 16^th. 43 East 78^th Street, NY, NY Info More about Natalie Frank here

There is a curious backstory to this exhibition, which I quote from the catalogue: Story of O  was banned upon publication. Dominique Aury herself might have been intrigued that the original gallery venue for this exhibition declined to show these drawings [Ed note: in the wake of the MeToo Movement’s escalation last fall] because of the power of this text and the images it has inspired. I stand by all individuals who have spoken out, and I will continue painting and drawing about the interstices of sexuality and power.—Natalie Frank

More along similar lines:

Sade: Artists Under the Influence, through June 29 at UBU Gallery, 416 East 59^th Street, NY, NY Info The influence of the Marquis de Sade (Donatien Alphonse François de Sade, 2 June 1740 – 2 December 1814) is keenly perceived and felt in the works of the Surrealists, who sought to liberate and give expression to the mysterious and aggressive drives lurking within the unconscious mind. Surrealist artists, such as Hans Bellmer and Man Ray, made use of ideas, themes, and scenarios based on Sade’s writings, attempting to emulate Sade by giving free rein of expression to all manner of psychopathological impulses and wanton paraphilia, including rape, murder, sodomy, coprophilia, and blasphemy.

More in a different but related vein:

Mistaken Identities | Images of Gender and Transformation: Vince Aletti & Brian Wallis in Dialogue, Saturday, May 19, 2 pm. The Walther Collection Project Space, 526 West 26^th Street, Suite 718, NY, NY RSVP: 212-352-0683 or email contact@walthercollection.com

Vince Aletti and Brian Wallis discuss archives of vernacular portrait photography concerned with gender identity and self-presentation in relation to Mistaken Identities: Images of Gender and Transformation, the second exhibition in a multi-year series entitled "Imagining Everyday Life: Aspects of Vernacular Photography" at The Walther Collection. 

Vince Aletti is a critic and curator based in New York. He was the art editor and photography critic at the Village Voice from 1990 until 2005, when he began writing weekly exhibition reviews for The New Yorker. He contributes a column on photo books to Photograph magazine and writes regularly for Aperture and Artforum. Photographs from his collection of male images have been collected in Male, Rodeo, and Untitled/Anonymous. 

Brian Wallis is Curator for the Walther Collection, New York / Neu-Ulm, and was formerly Deputy Director and Chief Curator at the International Center of Photography, New York. He has written and edited numerous books, including The Order of Things (2015), Weegee: Murder is My Business (2012), and Miroslav Tichy (2010). He is currently organizing a series of exhibitions focused on vernacular photography