Bukkake at the Shelburne

"Creme Brûlée" by Ivan Alifan (photograph by Hallie Cohen)

“Deserted” (2016) and “Crème Brûlée"(2015) are his and her paintings that are part of "Sweet Tooth: The Art of Dessert" exhibit at the Shelburne Museum, just down the road from Burlington. Both are what in the porn world is known as Bukkake which are facial cum shots employing icing and whip cream imagery with almost classical sexual nuance. There’s nothing new to making an alluring body delicious. Here is what the Russian artist Ivan Alifan has to says about his works: “To have a painting that can exist as an alluring object and shift into an eroticized figure disarms and naturalizes the modern gaze, decriminalizing sex in art. Whether the individual sexualizes the figure, or becomes embarrassed and nervous, by the mere suggestion, this is all a process which occurs independently from the painting, breaking down barriers in the different modes in which the body can exist in social spheres and contemporary art.” When you think about it, it all makes a lot of sense, but then again as Freud putatively said, "sometimes a cigar is just a cigar."