If beauty is in the eye of the beholder, admirers of Saturno Butto’s show at the Mishin Fine Arts gallery in San Francisco might want to get checked for astigmatism. Anyone with proper prescriptive lenses will see that Mr. Butto tries very hard. Tries so hard, in fact, to be dark, shocking, and above all, interesting, that the viewer is left wincing with boredom. Butto’s world is a sort of anti-Renaissance: whorish Madonnas, devils dominating angels, and all manners of naked and semi-naked bodies in bondage. But rather than disturb, his assorted S&M practitioners illuminated by a garish red Thomas Kincaid-style light call to mind the adolescent fantasies of small-town Goths. The faces of Butto’s beastly beauties are uniformly trite – the painted equivalent of so many airbrushed 80s Maybelline cosmetic ads: full lips, thinned eyebrows, pert noses. It’s hard to tell if Butto is trying to evoke innocent sluts or slutty innocents, but after viewing a few of these paintings one would be hard-pressed to care. Despite his dark and sexual subject matter, Butto somehow fails to reveal even a glimpse of the darker side of human sexuality – but he does succeed in making banalities of ball gags, bound breasts, and whipped behinds.
One work, perhaps the most honest piece in the exhibit, depicts an obese, shirtless man, leaning forward in a convalescent chair like a Hawaiian king. More gross than grotesque, he is hooked up to an IV and wears black leather devil horns on his bald dome. He grins and gazes off to the side. The work reads true because you can readily picture a man like this buying a Butto – hell, even calling it “beautiful.”
Imagine a Bunga Bunga party thrown by Silvio Berlusconi, with a guest list that includes Herman Cain and the greasy proprietor of an off-the-strip Vegas titty bar, and you start to see who makes up Butto’s fan base. Actually, Berlusconi probably has better taste than to adorn his walls with a Butto.
The piece de résistance of the exhibit is a portrait of a nude woman, reclining on a bed and propped up on her elbows. With legs spreading, she directs a look of nonchalant relief down towards a gravity-defying stream of [real] rhinestones that project from the vicinity of her vagina. Is Butto celebrating female ejaculation or testing out his new Bedazzler? No matter; the effect is dull.
Mr. Butto tries hard to shock his viewer. I’m afraid he only gets a yawn.
Mishin Fine Arts is located at 445 Sutter St., San Francisco. Call for information: 415-391-6100 or visit www.mishingallery.com.
Images courtesy Mishin Fine Arts.
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