In 1966 Ed Kienholz exhibited an installation entitled, Backseat Dodge ’38, in which two figures are sexually engaged in the backseat of a car parked in the woods at night. The door of the car is open, the interior light is on, and there are several beer bottles on the ground. The work represents a personal memory of the artist’s seduction of a girlfriend on a date in his father’s 1938 Dodge. It’s about youthful love and lust and though controversial for its time, is ultimately quite innocent and nostalgic.
            Mr. Libido Wears a Blue Tuxedo, on the other hand, is an allegorical date in which seduction is the point—dating as a leisure activity. It draws on our culture’s visual iconography of lust in the same sense that Hallmark draws on the visual iconography of romantic love. The creation of the installation was driven by questions like; how do our romantic rituals function, where is the line between love and lust, can the two conditions be isolated from one another, what does sexy look like, and how and why do certain visual cues effect our libido.
            The installation defines a loose narrative of an orchestrated seduction that begins with a night out on the town and culminates in the boudoir. Its elements evoke a comfortable sedan, a bar or nightclub, and a Las Vegas style penthouse bedroom—the accoutrements of seduction. I like to imagine that Dante is somehow involved in this seduction—channeling suggestions to the girl in the video through the karaoke machine—then having an ethical crisis in his Inferno.