John Hunt

Ten erotic vignettes from eight different directors.

Lisa Lyon won the first World Women's Bodybuilding Championship in 1980. She was a pioneer in this area, and went on to appear world-wide as a proponent for women's health, and paved the way for a new generation of female bodybuilders. This video portrait was produced in 1982 and it went on to win competitions in Europe, and was shown on Italian TV. Director John Hunt won Best Director at the Los Angeles Erotic Film Festival awards. The original music score is from Steve Roach.

In this show, Lisa speaks poetically about her "Female Spirit" and about her destiny; she exposes the audience to her “ritual and her agony”. As she explains, it is a reaction to the abstract art movement, which had removed the human form, and it was her attempt to return to a more classical vision of art today. In her work, she elevated the gymnasium up to the art gallery. Six other bodybuilder/artists perform routines for the audience.

On January 25, 1984, at Long Beach State Art Gallery, Lisa called this performance Graphite Woman, as she was coated in this substance, and she recreated her world championship routine for a small audience of art lovers. Accompanied by the Shakuhachi flute, behind a low wall of gold bricks, Lisa again demonstrates her ideas of the body as art. This is something she promoted in her work as she saw herself as an artist whose canvas was her whole body.

During Lisa Lyon's short career, she became known around the world, and actually had a talk show in Japan at one time. Artist Tadanori Yokoo made a series of woodcuts using Lisa as his model. Filmmaker John Hunt gathered a few of them in this video.