Seductive donation celebrates new wave of doll eroticism


The Kinsey Institute Library & Special Collections—housing one of the most extensive collections of erotica in the world—recently accepted sixty resin plastic dolls used by the acclaimed miniatures photographer, for their recent exhibition, “Intimate Alchemy: David Levinthal’s XXX Polaroids,” at the Grunwald Gallery at Indiana University Bloomington. 

Claude Cookman, PhD., professor emeritus of photography at Indiana University and a former trustee of the Kinsey Institute, said Levinthal is known for “arranging toys, dolls, and model figures in fabricated settings, then animating those plastic objects through careful lighting and shallow focus.”

The event’s press release states, “The Kinsey Institute is the sole holder of the complete XXX series and this gift completes an already unique collection following a previous substantial gift of Levinthal’s original photography and doll figurines donated from acclaimed Houston-based art collector Don Sanders in 2017.”

Levinthal’s other sexuality-related series include Modern Romance, Hell’s Belles, and Bad Barbie.

I was plastic. I needed the work. 

The dolls used in Levinthal’s XXX series stand from 13-18 inches tall and were created from kits. An associate painted and assembled them. Levinthal then photographed them as if they were strippers, models, or sexworkers. 

But Levinthal is not the only photographer to be fascinated by the erotic possibilities of dolls. According to retailer VSDoll, sex doll photography can be a satisfying hobby or an artistic calling for those who enjoy them. 

According to their user guide to sex doll photography, these dolls offer, “endless poses and expressions,” “consistency in appearance,” “exploration of themes and fantasies,” and—perhaps more important for an amateur than a professional—“no need for model release forms.” 

RECOMMENDED READ: Off the Scale: Miniature Artificial Companions May Equal Large Pleasures

In fact, according to the VSDoll guide, “With sex dolls, there are no legal or ethical concerns, providing photographers with peace of mind and more freedom in their artistic pursuits.” 

The website cautions, “Approach sex doll photography with respect and sensitivity. Be aware that this niche may be controversial, and consider your audience when sharing your work. Strive for artistic expression while respecting boundaries.” 

The implication is that sex doll photographers who follow these guidelines will have greater opportunity to display their work in social media forums, communities, and websites and even in some stock photo websites.

However, one thing is certain: it’s going to be more expensive to photograph one or more full-sized sex dolls than it will be to work with dolls 18 inches or smaller!

Fantasy or reality: what’s in a doll?

Dolls, as fantasy creations, have always been potentially sexually fascinating—at least for some—so it is odd that Brenda Love’s groundbreaking 1992 Encyclopedia of Unusual Sex Practices does not mention sex dolls or any other kind of doll. But this academic omission has certainly not deterred burgeoning consumer, manufacturer, and research interests. 

However, unlike artists and photographers who depict dolls as erotic icons, and the users who respond to them with fantasy desires, researchers in a 2018 study took a utilitarian view, “Sex dolls are a type of sex toy that represents full, rather than partial, bodies.”

In 2023, one of those same researchers, Nicola Döring, and her colleagues Kenneth R. Hanson and Roberto Walter, “collected the measures of all 757 full-body sex dolls marketed by the US retailer SexyRealSexDolls.com” in order to see how the new realistic dolls compared with actual human bodies. They concluded:

“Body measures from the US population were extracted from scientific literature. Descriptive and inferential statistical analyses were performed… All hypotheses were fully or partially confirmed, which indicated that sex dolls marketed in the USA are not realistic depictions of the US population but hypergendered, hypersexualized, and racially fetishized.”

This is not surprising, as the researchers admit, since sex dolls are toys explicitly designed to elicit sexual arousal and pleasure.

Arousal, not realism

This kind of exaggeration and focus is not unique to sex dolls. From Japanese Shunga paintings of enormous phalluses to the submissive purple prose of Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, many forms of erotic expression have ignored standards of realism. In fact, the special collections at the Kinsey Institute most likely contain hundreds if not thousands of such examples. The point is arousal, not realism.

Besides, if sex dolls were held to realistic standards, there might be more confusion of the kind chronicled in a recent issue of Forensic Science, Medicine, and Pathology: a sex doll mistaken for a corpse in Germany and a corpse mistaken for a sex doll, also in Germany. 

The former is an example of the blight of public “sex doll dumping.” By the way, here’s an article on the right way to dispose of an unwanted sex doll.

Big or small, play with dolls and love it all

When I think back to my student days at San Francisco’s Institute for Advanced Study of Human Sexuality, I remember a number of wonderfully mutated Barbie and Ken dolls in display cases, playful representations of sexual and gender diversity. 

These were the creations of one of my instructors, Dr. Jerry Zientara, who was also the institute’s librarian. At the time, I didn’t quite get it, but now I look back with amusement and awe at his clever, miniaturized subversions of mainstream-approved, sex and gender stereotypes.

Like Levinthal’s photographs, I can only hope that one day these dolls—creations of a significant though little known figure in San Francisco’s many waves of sexual revolution—make their way into the Kinsey collection.

As for those of you who seek to expand your erotic and artistic horizons: go ahead, grab a doll, large or small, and begin to tell the visual stories that amuse and arouse you. You might find the world opens up to you in unexpected ways.

Image sources: A.R. Marsh using Ideogram.ai

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Special retrospective highlights a range of celebrated speculative-erotic artists 

Running until January 19th, 2025 at his Los Angeles gallery, contemporary art curator Jeffrey Deitch’s Los Angeles gallery is revisiting his first 1992 Post Human exhibition with a selection of new, equally provocative artists—all of whom pose intriguing questions about how human sexuality might evolve in the years ahead.

“A new breed of human”

Deitch’s current exhibit begins with a quote from Robert Rosenblum’s 2004 Artforum article on the impact of the original exhibit at Switzerland’s FAE Musée d’Art Contemporain, “Post Human was virtually a manifesto trumpeting a new art for a new breed of human.” 

This sentiment was echoed eighteen years later in Rosi Braidotti’s Posthuman Feminism, which applauded Deitch for revealing “the avant-garde spirit of the age by foregrounding the role of technology in blurring binary boundaries between subjects and objects, humans and non-humans.” 

Braidotti later went on to say it also “showed also that art assumed a much more central role as it merged with science, computerization and biotechnology in further re-shaping the human form and perfecting a flair for the artificial.”

Who’s who of erotically provocative imagery

Both statements are clearly evidenced by how many of the thirty-six initial Post Human artists are now known for thought-provoking, sexuality-themed artwork.

RECOMMENDED READ: Lust for Life: Get Ready for the Wild New Erotic Arts Revolution

The 2024 Post Human exhibition includes the cyberdelic-fetishistic work of Japanese illustrator Hajime Sorayama; the frequently unsettling preserved animal sculpture of Damien Hirst; the whimsical, retro-futuristic inventions of Pippa Garner; the playful science-fiction furniture of Anna Uddenberg; and the work of Chris Cunningham, known for his Björk music video “All Is Full of Love” which remains a pinnacle of robot-sexuality cinema.

Once sci-fi, now reality

Deitch acknowledges a lot has happened over the last thirty-two years, citing the proliferation of surveillance technologies, the idea that virtual reality could eventually supplant real experiences, and how, “AI’s ability to fulfill our creative and specialized needs has reached mass fruition, artists are confronting the impact of what was once considered speculative science fiction, an everyday reality.”

Now 2024’s Post Human show envisions a sexually bleak dystopia in the years ahead pointing out how the new and returning artists “embrace notions of plurality, metamorphosis and multi-beingness. Cyber-futuristic, surgically improved, commodified, stereotyped, and politicized, the ‘cultured body’ lends itself to reflect on a variety of concerns that define our age.”

Painting a luxurious, passionate future

One aspect every Post Human has shared is that sex, in whatever form it may take, is here to stay.  Paul McCarthy, for instance, is upfront and direct with his sex toy-celebrative collages; Cajsa von Zeipel’s sensually ornate figures seem to dance backward and forward in time; and even Jeff Koons’ inflatable-appearing works have a distinctly erotic feel to them.

At the conclusion of Rosenblum’s Artforum review, he notes that while the future-sexual world envisioned in 1992 may somewhat resonate with 2024’s speculative dreams, “As usual, new art changes old art, and the present rewrites the past. The sex machines and robots of Duchamp and Picabia, Léger and Schlemmer may now seem Old Testament prophecies, as do the mostly prosthetic German war veterans depicted by Grosz and Dix.”

Post Human—2056

Using our fertile imaginations, what might the next Post Human exhibition be like?  As Rosenblum observed, will we look back at 2024 with nostalgia or embarrassment—or as some of 1992’s speculations remain with us thirty-two years later—maybe 2056’s exhibition will have more and not less in common with its past?

It would be interesting if our follow-up Post Human embraced the technologies Deitch appears to be concerned about. Perhaps by then, artificially intelligent artists will have graduated from curiosity to either mainstream acceptance or even having their work hung alongside the Mona Lisa. 

So too, virtual reality will likely provide a new, exciting, and nearly limitless digital canvas for artists—or anyone with an imagination—to step into.

Artificial companions might be the subject of artistic speculations, but why just depict them when they could also lend a helping, creative hand? Just as VR could unleash limitless artistic possibilities, so too can sculptors use advanced robotics to imbibe their work with human-like movements.

We may or may not see these possibilities in the coming decades, the only certainty being just as we’ll always pursue new pleasures and erotic experiences, so will we forever need to make exciting, disturbing, pleasing, thought-provoking, or just plain simply beautiful art.

Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons

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