F. Scott Hess

Generation, the fourth painting in The Seven Laughters of God, places our young man in a booth at a sperm bank, proudly handing his donation to a waiting nurse. Young painters must earn a living somehow, and this “creative solution” parallels the act of artistic creation. His “fifteen minutes” are over, his Warhol-inspired Campbell’s Soup T-shirt a play on that bon mot. His pornographic inspiration, a DVD of Sperm Bank Nurses, sits atop the TV, while the almost middle-aged nurse eyes him longingly. The clock in the hallway (behind her head) ticks loudly.

I researched this painting in a Los Angeles sperm bank owned by a collector of my work. As I waited in the lobby for our appointment, I paged through the catalogue. There was sperm available from many young men; soon to be doctors, lawyers, and engineers. Over a hundred choices, but only one of them was in the visual arts! My true value to humanity thus assessed, I toured the facility, saw the cubicles, the tanks of frozen sperm, the porn collection, and even sperm under the microscope. I was not asked to donate.