IOWA CITY, IA — A University of Iowa professor raised eyebrows and a small ruckus last week when she paid a painter and graphic artist who has worked in the adult entertainment industry to present a lecture to students at the school.Zak Smith received a speaker’s fee of $2,000 from the school’s visiting artist fund, which is composed equally of student-paid and state-appropriated education monies. Associate professor of art and art history Susan Chrysler White said Smith’s professional credentials in the fine-arts world qualified him to address art students, and his youth and “broad range of sensibilities” enabled him to relate to students in terms they could understand and appreciate.
Smith, 32, received a bachelor of fine arts degree from Cooper Union in 1998. Thereafter, he studied at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture and received a master of fine arts degree from Yale University in 2001. He is best known for his acrylic and ink portraits, drawings and abstract art of women, most often with an emphasis on eroticism within the mundane. His illustrative series “One Picture for Each Page of Thomas Pynchon’s Novel Gravity’s Rainbow was featured in the 2004 Whitney Biennial at the Whitney Museum of American Art and is now in the collection of the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. Smith’s works also reside in the public collections of the Museum of Modern Art and the Progressive Corporation.
In addition, Smith’s work is the subject of two books, Pictures Showing What Happens on Each Page of Thomas Pynchon’s Novel Gravity’s Rainbow (Tin House Books, 2006) and Zak Smith: Pictures of Girls (Distributed Art Publishers, 2005).
It was his work in the adult industry that stood out for critics, however. In February 2006, Smith, under the nom de porn Zak Sabbath, made his porn debut in VCA’s Barbed Wire Kiss by director Benny Profane (who, interestingly, took his name from Pynchon’s modern-classic novel). He also appeared in Eon McKai’s directorial debut, Girls Lie (Vivid Entertainment, 2006), Bullets and Burlesque (Independent Adult Cinema/Bad Seed Productions, 2008) and Hospital (Vivid Alt, 2008). Although Smith, as Sabbath, crowed on Fleshbot about making “big money” in porn, he donated most of his porn income to the activist group Food Not Bombs.
Administrators and conservative campus-watchers questioned whether the university inappropriately spent public funds to pay for a personal appearance by a porn star.
White, who noted she received less criticism for the visit than she expected, argued Smith’s porn career is unrelated to and should not overshadow his significance as a modern artist.
“It’s interesting to see somebody with that kind of energy,” she told the university newspaper Daily Iowan. “He’s not someone who goes to a studio and hides out. He’s out in the world. It’s good to have somebody that’s provocative.”
Several on-campus groups agreed. UI Lecture Committee Chairman Mike Currie said Smith’s porn alter-ego was irrelevant as long as his lecture addressed a pertinent topic.
Dan Stiles, a representative of Campus Crusade for Christ, told the Daily Iowan, “If the art department feels he’s qualified, who am I to say otherwise?”
