Walton Ford

“It shows a female chimp with her genitals all swollen and a male chimp is on the ground. It’s a bonobo, actually, and they’re the most sexual of animals, but it’s a matriarchy and the matriarchy is enforced by promiscuous behavior on the behalf of the females who blur lines of paternity by having so many different lovers that the males no longer have any political power.

Space Monkey

Space Monkey
2001
Walton Ford
Michael Kohn Gallery

These female chimps figured out that if they had multiple partners, nobody could figure out whose kid is their kid and therefore can’t kill their rival’s offspring. My feeling about it was that until you had these female primatologists out in the field, you never would have found this out. The bonobo was an invention of feminism on some level. So, the painting is called Space Monkey, which is a Patti Smith song, because I’m thinking Patti Smith is the reason these monkeys were found, on some weird level, right? It’s not just because I feel like painting a hard-on on a monkey. I had a thesis that I was trying to work out in my own head and all the paintings that have that kind of behavior had a thesis like that. It’s not like this would be a better picture if one of the animals is fucking the other one — they’ve got to have a pretty good reason.” – Walton Ford

Patti Smith-SPACE MONKEY