Ida Applebroog: The Ethics of Desire

A self-proclaimed ‘image scavenger,’ Ida Applebroog spent her career conducting a sustained enquiry into the polemics of human relations. She explores themes of violence and power, gender politics, women’s sexuality, and domestic space, employing images reminscient of comics that are at once beguiling and disturbing. This publication presents works from Applebroog’s series The Ethics of Desire, its title a reference to Plato’s philosophical and ethical exploration of the many questions raised by our desires and the ways in which they shape our lives. Applebroog’s figures—men and women, dancers, cowboys, rendered in ultrachrome ink on thin, ethereal mylar—strut and pose, yet they are also handcuffed or injured, sporting casts, crutches, and prosthetic limbs, a depiction that both reflects the desires of contemporary existence and provokes questions about the virtues and values of the society that creates them.