Ryder Ripps’s “ART WHORE” In the Running For Most Offensive Project of 2014

This month, a bizarre streak of misogyny has been flaring up amongst the influential men of the art world. Richard Prince’s recent Instagram show expressly fetishized hot young women; immediately following a glowing review of that show, Jerry Saltz weirdly Instagrammed a shot of a woman’s severely-whipped ass (since deleted); and Ken Johnson, in typical fashion, pejoratively referred to Michelle Grabner as a “soccer mom” in a review of her art. At best these incidents are possibly-performative (at least, in Saltz’s case), but the ends are unclear.

Coming in at the most abhorrent, though, is Ryder Ripps’s “ART WHORE”, a project which has, at this writing, inspired a 235-comment thread on his Facebook page. The project, which is documented on Ripps’s livejournal, consists of Ripps soliciting sensual masseuses from Craigslist (whom he consistently refers to as “sex workers”) to make drawings for him in order to demonstrate that he’s being exploited as an artist.

“I was asked to be an artist in residence for a night in the hotel – which entails a free room for a night and a $50 allowance for art supplies,” his story begins.

This is followed by detailed email correspondences with Ripps’s real-life excursions into the sex world of Craigslist to, I guess prove, that he actually did go on Craigslist to source his artists. He hired two people to make a series of drawings, then adds that he paid more than the $50 for the art supplies. “I ended up paying each $80 for about 45 minutes of their time drawing.”

Documentation includes several photos of the drawings, and concludes on a self righteous email to the Ace Hotel.

Asinine comments like Ripps’s above “I choose sex workers because great art is like great sex” follow all over the 235-comment thread on his Facebook post. The thread immediately opens with criticism.

As this goes on, the conversation seems to devolve into a large number of men arguing over the definition of exploitation, (standing up for how “they” “sex workers” deserve to be treated by us) with a sprinkling of women. Meanwhile, in private, women-only Facebook groups like “Starwave”, the response to the work was equally quick and negative. As a private group we’re members of, we’re not able to reproduce the comments verbatim, but we do find the trend of women cordoning off their outrage behind closed doors on social media troubling. Their voice is heard loudly amongst each other, but disappears in public—hardly pushing the dialogue forward.

It’s this comment, which Kate Meizner has chosen to repeat over and over, which reveals all of the assumptions made by “ART WHORE”.

It’s completely acceptable to identify and define other people solely as “sex workers”; it’s okay to use that label to further your own successful career capital; and, most offensive, it’s okay to refer to yourself a “whore” when the artist must compromise to voluntarily buy some crayons and outsourced labor.