Text by Susan Reiter, Penthouse Magazine

 "I'd much rather have been handcuffed by the sheriff, because I'd know what I'm up against there," said Luis De La Cruz. "Here, I don'!." The walls of the Los Angeles art gallery in which he stood were utterly bare. Paintings,. collages, and photographs rested on the floor, facing the walls. Cheap black plastic bags covered the sculptures.

De La Cruz and his wife Theresa were the curators of the Fifth Annual Sensual and Erotic Art Exhibition, which opened at the Desmond Gallery last September-and was closed three days later by the company that oversees the mall in which the gallery is located. The company cited its contractual right to protect the property's image. The black humor of the artist Gillian Burrows serves as ironic commentary. " 'Cock-a-Leekie Soup," her image of body parts afloat in a bowl of soup, is typical, says De La Cruz, of "how, when a lot of people enter a room, they see sex,"

The exhibition opened on a hot Saturday night at the very mouth of the Sunset Strip. People leaving the Virgin Megastore or waiting for a movie to begin upstairs at the Laemmle five-plex seemed happy to stumble across an art happening in the unlikely retail space on the small mall's bottom floor. It was the first time the exhibit, which purports to be the largest erotic-art show in America, had been brought to Los Angeles, but it had already premiered in San Diego a few weeks earlier without incident. The sudden demand for closure by the representatives of 8000 Sunset Ltd. came as a surprise. And as I talked to De La Cruz several days later, he strode through the hot, close air in the gallery, turning several of the artworks around from the wall. "It needs to be seen by the public," he told me. "Contemporary art is the most relative to its society when it's fresh and alive." One compelling illustration of what De La Cruz means can be found in the creations of Daniel Miller, a Utah artist who has worked on major motion pictures, amusement parks, and casinos, whose images are 100 percent computer-designed.

"These images are familiar," De La Cruz tells me as he stands in front of a colorful oil of a large, ejaculating penis by the expressionist Luis Monsalve. "They are all of our fantasies, on the wall now and more accessible. That's what the power of art is, to give us the mirror of ourselves." The power is dramatically illustrated, also, by the work of Moline of Tucson, a well-known erotic collagist, who says, "I never consider any of my work finished."

The Sensual and Erotic Art Exhibition is funded and produced annually by the Lifestyles Organization Ltd., based in Anaheim, California. Born as a swingers' society in the early seventies, L.S.O. has evolved from a free-love party into a free­thinking advocacy group (which still throws some reputedly wild parties) under the guidance of its founder and president, Robert McGinley, Ph.D. Five years ago, McGinley joined forces with De La Cruz, a longtime player in the very private world of erotic art. The two shared the dream of making explicit contemporary art accessible to the public, and assembled a show that they displayed as a part of L.S.O.'s annual three-day convention. Encouraged by the response, they decided this year the time was ripe to take the art to a wider audience. The Desmond Gallery agreed to run the Sensual and Erotic Art Exhibition for one month. L.S.O. insured and shipped the art and planned to hire a guard to ensure that no minors wandered in. The show was expanded slightly with the addition of more artists' works, including those of feminist Bernadette McNulty and large, Pop-style images by Mickey Kaplan. Everything was ready to go.

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L.S.O., McGinley explains, is very concerned about "the growth in strength of forces calling for censorship." By creating a public forum for erotic art, his organization hoped to create a First Amendment haven "Art liberates," adds De La Cruz. "It's also a catalyst to other thinking. If you can start thinking freely about s.omethlng you are safe with, because art is safe, then it adds to more, freer, thinking. And that's exactly what medieval kings and priests wanted to stop-free thinking-and the way they did that was to oppress sexuality, amongst other things." He explains that the unique power of visual images serves the cause of liberation. When erotic art, which originates in the hidden recesses of an artist's imagination, is released to the public, a chain reaction begins. The viewer who recognizes his or her secret-his or her private fantasy brought to life on the walls of a gallery-may begin to think more freely about sexuality, as well as art. The artist whose work is heralded in the light of day may begin to loosen the bonds of self-censorship so subtly imposed by social mores.

"The transformation of people's liberties is amazing," says De La Cruz. He offers the example of Lee Thomas, whose erotic terra-cotta sculptures saw public light at the very first erotic art show sponsored five years ago by L.S.O. At the time, she was an apprentice in a convent. Today she devotes herself to sculpting and selling her sexually figurative artworks. "This whole thing about free thinking is not about forcing things down people's throats," says De La Cruz. "It's about taking down fences, and that's what the erotic-art show does. It takes down fences"

If the viewer relates to these works of art, De La Cruz maintains, they are successful. "This is not a show stating what's erotic art and what's not. It's a show stating what America's viewpoint of erotic art is. It's a survey of our temperaments about eroticism."

Exactly what happened last September in Los Angeles is the subject of some dispute. According to gallery staff members, before opening night a representative of 8000 Sunset Ltd. flashed a "thumbs up" after a preview tour. But in a subsequent con­versation with McGinley, the management company's representative denied having seen or approved anything in the show (As of this writing, the representative has not returned any of Penthouse's phone calls.)

Three days after the show opened, Desmond received a letter from the management company. The letter reportedly said that the building management found the content of the show "denigrating" to the mall's interests and therefore demanded its immediate removal. The letter did not indicate who made the decision, or what precisely was unacceptable about the show. Nevertheless, the gallery staff immediately complied with the demand. Why? The Desmond Gallery, it turns out, has quite a favorable lease with 8000 Sunset Ltd., under which it pays, according to one gallery insider, "basically nothing" for its commercial month-to-month rent. When the management company's letter cited a provision of that lease, Desmond personnel knew better than to make a fuss.

The abrupt closing of the Sensual and Erotic Art Exhibition, the de facto censorship of 200 works of art by 32 established artists, is, - says McGinley, "an illustration of the prevalent attitude that erotic art should not be made available to the American adult public, and that one man can make such a decision. There do not seem to be constitutional rights involved," he continues. "There are legal and moral issues, however, and a very real threat to freedom of expression."

The current attitude of the management of 8000 Sunset Ltd. toward erotic art is clear. The closing of the exhibition was not an isolated incident. Since it happened, the management of 8000 Sunset Ltd. has prevented a one-man show of photographs by longtime Penthouse contributor Ken Marcus (some of whose work was featured in the earlier exhibit) from opening. Meanwhile, according to a well-placed source, 8000 Sunset Ltd. has come up with a protocol that the gallery must follow for any and all future art shows-a procedure that essentially gives the management corporation total veto power over the content of the gallery's exhibits.

Ironically, the Laemmle movie theater upstairs from the Desmond has been screening Heavy Equipment, a 3-D gay porno movie, on Friday and Saturday nights. What makes that acceptable and an art show not is anybody's guess, but De La Cruz has a good idea. "Art is supposed to challenge you, to give you the catalyst for your own free thinking," he says, adding that the erotic-art show will go on next year and in other venues. "If we're not challenged," he says, "if we're not given the opportunity to make up our own minds, I don't know what you call it. I call it censorship. Hidden censorshlp.". Penthouse.