Channeling Picasso and de Beauvoir
Inter Connectivity of Art

Kofi Fosu Forson

As a seven year old I stuck an Ever-Ready battery in the underwear of Regina. I was trying to get her pregnant I confessed when I was caught.

Male / Female politics has always been pronounceable in my life for as long as I can remember. Much of this was inspired by an upbringing whereby I was influenced by the female from my mother to others including neighborhood girls, extended family members, love interests and professors.

Pornography was immediate in my childhood from flirtation to sex games I played with girls. Here in New York I discovered Playboy among many other adult magazines. Cable television introduced me to pre internet porn hustlers and adult television programming.

Advertising in men's magazines pushed the edge between men and women. Much of this was featured in campaigns for cologne, underwear or just about any product. I had a particular fondness for models both male and female. They seemed like artists and celebrities in their own right. I was very much the pre poseur often mugging for the camera. At this point I had acquired my very own style acquiring the name GQ.

The 90's presented a heightened sense of fashion, drugs and sex. I took a particular interest in sadomasochism after Sharon Horodi, Israeli video artist presented me with Venus in Furs by Masoch. We had met at a Kathy Acker reading.

Design Porn was quite common in advertising campaigns. A modernist style of fashion and sex in commercials and ad campaigns inspired by Man Ray and Helmut Newton. Fetish and other sexual behavior permeated society.

It was at this point I sought after model and actresses to work with me. Donna Benfatti, a college student was my first model. I remember our session as polite and innocent. I promised not to undress her or have her pose nude. She struck poses as I drew portraits and even composed a song for her which I sang accompanied by drums. This was the first merging of my art with a model.

Heaven a neighborhood cafe was frequented by young highschool students at a point in time when the barely legal was introduced commercially. I staged a play Black Birds in Leather Pants, about two characters who dabbled in sadomasochism. Two young women I met in the cafe were my actresses.

The muse became an understanding in my art as I worked with models and actresses in my independent practice.

At The Riant Theater I was able to write and direct actors in showcases. This was my emergence as a professional writer and director.

Currently I meet with Dianne Bowen New York City artist and writer. We confer on art as well as politics of the day. It is seemingly becoming a channeling of who and what the luminaries i.e. Simone de Beauvoir, Picasso and Hemingway were to Paris in the 1940's.

The 90's was the last decade to express such an interest in language and an interplay of discourse.

Modern society is cursed by a narcissistic conscience and the alienation of self.

Dianne Bowen and I offer each other the availability of language, a mutual respect, the inter connectivity of art and continue to inspire each other as artists. Most important of all we become more human.

Without the person and his or her inner turmoil art becomes fanfare.

This is what we suffer from today.