As if a storm had torn through the picture, the result of his work of destruction appears to be almost impressionistic. Torn black-and-white pictures from sex magazines are randomly distributed, as if by chance, over the surface of the picture with its base of dirty shades of turquoise and blue. This cold aqueous environment is warmed by only a few pink flesh tones. In contrast to these four-color pictures, the uncolored pinups have white edges which, especially in the upper half of the picture, spread out in a sudden burst of disconnected lines and angles. As if something were falling down. This is a profane fall to hell, plunging naked bodies into the abyss.

For Boris Lurie, this iconoclasm is an act of liberation. An exorcism of obsessive pictures which simultaneously captivated and tormented him. A well-known photo shows the artist lying in bed and critically sizing up a full-bosomed naked woman in a book. The forceful pull of erotic pictures results from the contradiction of attraction and denial. Of women offering themselves and withdrawing at the very same moment. Although they were themselves degraded to objects of male sexuality, the ”girlies” – as Boris Lurie called them – thus gained power over those dreaming about them. For the Holocaust survivor, the naked bodies of the magazines and the dead bodies in concentration camps and mass shootings were linked in a twofold manner: They brought up traumatic pictures – whether experienced in reality or only imagined as in the case of the Rumbula massacre where the victims had to undress to be naked before being shot to death. The “pin-up conglomerations” could thus also stand for the mass graves near Riga, as Boris Lurie acknowledged in an interview. On the other hand, they corrected the tormenting pictures of tortured, emaciated bodies by presenting the sensuality of full and plump breasts, bottoms and thighs. The pinups promised healing but were nothing but commercial wares, as everything in Boris Lurie’s new homeland. ”Sex sells” – itself only a business which made the artist feel an intense rage.

In the 1950s already, the artist had been preoccupied with the subject of naked women – in his series of Dismembered Women. At that time, he had still painted the nudes. But soon already, painting was no longer in line with his unconditional desire to create true pictures. Collages here presented a way out since they enabled Lurie to tie fragments of reality into his pictures. Pinups and pornographic photos were then his preferred material which he processed in very different ways and manners. At times, focused on individual presentations; then again spread out in great number to provide panoramas of desire. In the introduction to an exhibition taking place in 1960, Boris Lurie vividly and strikingly describes how pinups had overgrown the walls of his atelier before he freed himself from their spell while working them into his art. The lines read like a work report on the creation of the work entitled Torn Pinups: "And then at last I had to act. Something had to be done to stop this monstrous growth. There was no time to waste. I arose from my bed. I grabbed the girls from the walls. Onto the canvas they went, around them and over them the paint. They were smothered in it, peeled off, new girls replaced the losses and were choked in paint again. Girls were thrown out, girls came back. Gradually it began to happen. Paintings started coming off the walls. At last I was getting rid of the uninvited inhabitants, the curse, the confusion of bodies, my beauties! I exclaimed: ‘magnificent!’“¹

Thomas Heyden