Abstract

This essay explores the work of “New York’s most famous unknown artist,” Ray Johnson, contending that his complex relationship to sadomasochism provides a key switch point for Pop’s sexual and racial imaginary. In the register of sex, Johnson’s sadomasochism contests the stability of the relationship between homosexuality and Pop, offering instead a queerer object that opens out new models of collaborative artistic production. In the register of race, sadomasochism enables Johnson to articulate a monochrome world, attempting to void the binarized color-line’s fissuring force. While this strategy from our contemporary vantage feels politically suspect, I see it is part of a larger project of political and social reparation whereby the explicitly sadomasochistic themes of Johnson’s work imagine a rebuttal to and reconfiguration of the racist exclusionary forces of the art world.