2012-12-12
Explanation
This single-panel comic is titled "Never Sleep with an Artist." It shows two men in bed after an apparently unsatisfying sexual encounter. One says: "That wasn't bad sex! That was a performance piece about how modern life is too rapid to be fulfilling." He is reframing a poor sexual performance as intentional art, using the pretentious language of modern performance art criticism.
The joke plays on the stereotype of artists -- particularly avant-garde or conceptual artists -- who can rationalize anything as a deliberate artistic statement. The phrase "performance piece" is doing heavy lifting here: it transforms a personal failing into something supposedly profound and intentional. The meta-commentary about "modern life is too rapid to be fulfilling" works as a double entendre, since "too rapid" aptly describes both the sexual performance in question and the supposed artistic theme. The comic satirizes how the language of art criticism can be used to retroactively justify almost anything, turning embarrassment into pretension.