Our tablemates are a tousle-haired artist and his wife, whose orange pageboy, bright lipstick and striped tights remind me of a Raggedy Ann doll.
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| Sure enough, if you Google 'bondage Raggedy Ann,' this is what you get |
Very much to the contrary, she's the model for Axel's new series on Sex and Aggression, which makes me even more appreciative of Max's paintings in the S&M B&B in Venice.
Like most modern artists, Axel can't resist the post-Freudian urge to tell you what his images are trying to say—when of course the truth is, if he could actually paint, the work would speak for itself.
His canvases feature snatches of Krafft-Ebing and Sacher-Masoch plastered above paintings of his wife, who's naked except for bondage straps and pictured in various degrading poses: bending over naked, eating out of a dog bowl and so on.
As in life, her wide eyes are startlingly blank, though in art, she also has a corresponding lack of genitalia: the belt crisscrossing her groin forms a kind of labia.
Flipping through the samples, and sitting next to his apparently mingeless muse, I'm finding it surprisingly hard to make conversation.
WANNA RIDE?
The question I really want to ask—is that really what your bits look like?—probably isn't socially acceptable, even in this crowd.
So I opt for the boringly conventional: 'Sooooooo… how did you two meet?'
Judith tells me a tale reminiscent of Schnitzler's Dream Story, the Viennese source of the film, Eyes Wide Shut.
At twenty-five, Judith found herself married with two children when she realized that—Grosser Gott!—she'd never had an orgasm.
So she took up with Axel, who constructs real-life fantasies for her involving his acquaintances.
'Axel might arrange for me to go to a restaurant, and I'll say, "Is there a taxi driver here?" And a stranger will stand up, and I then go with him.'
Presumably they avoid cabbie hangouts.
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