I started out on the journey that brought me to this web site in the Autumn of 1998. The central concept of the book that I had decided to write, and which (to my thinking) the public interest demanded be written, was a guide to erotic art in the National Gallery in London. Then as now I strongly held the view that art collections, regardless of whether the building in which they are housed is called a gallery or a museum, are exceedingly boring to most visitors. The tedium could be alleviated, I thought, by identifying those pictures with an erotic content. Such pictures were less likely to be boring to the average male. And, for all I knew, to the average female, likewise. Looking for erotic paintings in the National Gallery seemed to me to be a task akin to hunting for truffles in the Sahara desert, the more worthwhile for the challenge that it presented.

Having reached this conclusion it was but a step to seeing the merit in providing itineraries for the use of short stay visitors to London who were engaged in the standard tourist preoccupation of eyeballing all the available iconic images to the extent necessary for them to be able to give a good account of themselves on their return home. Beyond the mandatory requirement of a visit to the National Gallery which is common to visitors of either sex, there is a divergence between the needs of of the two sexes. Women (who must expect to be thoroughly de-briefed by their hairdressers, manicurists and fellow guests at bridal and baby showers) feel compelled to look at everything there is to look at. Accompanied men, trailing along after their wives past wall upon wall of Holy Virgins, landscapes, seascapes, fruitscapes, flowerscapes and facescapes, cannot but welcome concise directions to the most expansive bosoms and delectable bottoms. They do not need to be able to debate whether or not Mrs Arnolfini was pregnant when she got married.

THE DECIMA FOUR

To implement such a scheme it was necessary to devise a system whereby the physical attributes of the subjects depicted in the Old Master paintings were individually rated for their erotic content and then ranked in order of merit. This was clearly a task best entrusted to youngsters and it happened that, about this time, I chanced upon a group of recent art graduates who were struggling to establish an art gallery in Bermondsey, south of the River Thames and hard by London Bridge. Their gallery was called the Decima Gallery after Decima Street where it was located. Parts of Bermondsey are fairly sleazy and Decima Street not the least. Although geographically it is not a very long way away from Cork Street, Mayfair, where the most fashionable galleries are situated (and the Atrium bookshop of blessed memory once was), the contrast in the local environments could hardly be greater. My suggestion that these young people might care to undertake the assessment of the works in the National Gallery collection for me, paying each of them the handsome sum of £4 per hour, met with the same enthusiastic response as might have been expected by a mid 19th century Montmartre café owner offering a square meal to impressionist painters starving in nearby ateliers.

The membership of the Decima Four, as I came to think of them, was made up by David West, Alex Chappel, Derrick Welsh and Karen Morgan. Karen, I seem to remember, was co-opted onto the team for the project and was less of an anarchical character than the other three.

Previous to our coming together David and Alex had had a lot of fun with a pantomime cow called Diana who made a number of high profile street appearances including a cow walk from St Paul’s Cathedral on the first anniversary of her Royal namesake’s untimely death. They were also responsible for a number of media hoaxes, among them Fuck Art and Pimp and the Dennis Nielsen Tour Company . Alex’s recent credits include a pop video for the notorious poet Micalef whose works bear such titles as No Pussy without Pork Scratchings and We Like Harold Shipman ’cause he kills Old People. Derrick Welsh was described as the Decima Gallery’s resident artist although his role there seems to have been not only permanent but leader de facto. His recent works have parodied corporate brands such as Nike and Tate Modern.

Congratulating myself on finding a group of young people who, if not quite in my own image, were possessed of the independence of thought that I deemed necessary for the task in hand, I prepared three different kinds of questionnaire. Each was individually numbered and ring bound into volumes, a hundred to a volume.

THE PICTURES

In the first set of volumes, labelled “Pictures”, boxes numbered 1 to 50 were provided for ticking according to the salient erotic features of a particular work. The object of collecting this information was to enable the identification of which pictures had the most female breasts, nipples, bottoms and genitalia on view, the size of the portrayal (lifesize, plus or minus) and whether the subjects were human or mythological beings such as satyrs or centaurs, or angels or putti. Male attributes could similarly be noted. Boxes were also provided for the name of the painting and its collection number, the observer’s first impression, any other remarks, and his or her initials. In addition there was a box for a sketch map showing the exact location of the work in the room in which it was hung in relation to the entrances and exits. Men who are short of time, I reasoned, do not want to hunt for an erotic fix among scowling canvases of long dead princes and prelates and the living rooms of dull middle class Dutch dry goods merchants.

THE SUBJECTS

The second set of volumes, labelled “Subjects”, contained pages that could be cross-referenced to the works recorded in the first volume and allocated on the basis of one page per subject of interest. Thus a typical Rubens might have up to half-a-dozen pages, one for each naked female. Each of these “subject” pages contained 67 boxes, just over half of them requiring a subjective 1 to 5 rating to be awarded by the observer. Features such as lips, eyes, neck, fingers, breasts, nipples, areolae, navel, thighs, under-arm hair, pubic hair and genitalia all had their separate boxes as did attributes such as “20th Century Realism”, “Sensuality”, “Provocativeness” (either vis-à-vis another subject or the viewer), “Shyness”, Exhibitionist, “Availability” and “Social Status”. As with the judging of ice skaters, you can see at a glance from the number of fives and fours whether or not you are on to a good thing. A box for remarks was again provided but to describe those which were proffered as “laddish” would be to elevate them to an unjustifiably high literary status. Karen’s perhaps less so, but her remarks were anatomically explicit nevertheless.

THE DRAWINGS

The pages of the third set of volumes, “Drawings”, cross-referenced as before to the first volume, were devoted to a simple line drawing of each of the pictures. These were executed by one or other of the Decima Four team who initialled the page. These line drawings were thought necessary because at that time there was no comprehensively illustrated catalogue of the National Gallery’s collection and there was not much of any use available on the Internet. It was clear to me that the guide would have to have illustrations of the “pictures of interest”. This expression, incidentally, is borrowed from the police who use it to describe a suspect who they are convinced is guilty of the crime that they are investigating but have not yet caught. It will crop up from time to time in postings to this web site.

To ensure that the National Gallery did not get an inkling of what was afoot the covers of the volumes in which the Decima Four were to be seen scribbling as they stood day after day in front of the Gallery’s paintings were suitably cryptic: The Depiction of the female form in classical art - Preliminary Survey. To the extent that the Decima remit covered male subjects as well as female subjects the title was a misnomer. It was, I thought, definitely preferable to something along the lines of the probable title for the book which, at that time, was The Complete Guide to Tits and Arse in the National Gallery

The Decima Four started their work at the beginning of November 1998 and were in the National Gallery every day for a period of six weeks with a day or two off when the Gallery was closed over the Christmas and New Year period. To this day I marvel at the dedication that they brought to their task. It would have driven most people mad. Obviously, with so much imagery now available on the Internet, one would do it differently today but their meticulous assessment has provided a unique and valuable resource without which no guide to erotic art in a gallery could do justice to its subject.