Now don’t get me wrong, I am not easily scandalized by art or performance. And I certainly don’t think I’m prudish. After all, I’m one of those New Yorkers who thinks he has seen it all. Yes, I’ve raised an eyebrow when I watched Karen Finley penetrate herself with yams in her installation at the club Area in the early 90s. Okay, I was startled when HIV-positive Ron Athey dripped blood over the audience (not his blood) at P.S. 122 in ‘94. But I’ve wondered what the big deal was when I saw Chris Ofili’s painting “Holy Virgin Mary” at the Sensation exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum in 1998–the painting that caused such an uproar in the Giuliani years in part because it was painted with dung. I’ve been to several “controversial” Mapplethorpe shows over the years. I wouldn’t be surprised if I was the first on my block to read the Marquis de Sade’s novels and I was but a teenager when I first saw Pasolini’s film Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom. Surely I’ve been around the block when it comes to obscene and transgressive art and art that aims to unnerve bourgeois sensibilities.

But nothing prepared me for the 1627 Poussin painting “Venus (or a Nymph) Spied On by Satyrs.” I witnessed the seemingly x-rated image at the Metropolitan Museum on the last day of the exhibit “Poussin and Nature.” There is a masturbating woman in the foreground! Her left hand is between her legs, her back is slightly arched, her head is tilted back. A satyr is removing a white sheet from her and is staring intently at her private parts, given a perspective that is denied the viewer. Behind a tree, another satyr looks on, one hand also moving to his crotch, apparently pleasuring himself. A smaller figure lies behind Venus watching her. She radiates heat. Venus may be oblivious to her voyeurs. Or she may be energized by the intensity of their gazes upon her. In either case, she is in a posture of expressive pleasure. It is clear that God does not provoke her ecstasy—instead the sexual enjoyment of her own body enraptures her.

Of course this whole spectacle may be staged for the male viewer (and indeed museum-goers crowd around the painting as if part of a homage—it is clearly a favorite) —but for now I will evade this debate. Yes, displaying the painting at the Met (and not the Museum of Sex) caught me off guard. Nevertheless I wasn’t prepared for Poussin’s baroque circle jerk. I was truly shocked.