DATE: Saturday, October 4, 1997             TAG: 9710030118

SECTION: DAILY BREAK             PAGE: E1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY ERIKA REIF, STAFF WRITER

                                            LENGTH:   68 lines

IS IT ART OR SMUT? HAMPTON AUCTION FEATURES ALL THINGS EROTIC

IF A ``NO CHILDREN PLEASE'' sign on the Phoebus Auction Gallery door in Hampton doesn't catch the eye, the items under a glass counter near the cash register might.

They are six ornamental, Japanese netsukes, tucked in a red-lined box but ready to be worn dangling from a girdle. Carved from a mammoth tusk, these erotic netsukes are figurines of women intimately entangled with a goat, monkey, tiger, snake, horse and octopus.

So, is it art or smut? And what about the bundles of 1960s and '70s Playboy magazines stacked on the floor at the Hampton auction house? Those, explains employee Bill Welch as he prepares for Sunday's Erotic Art Auction, were brought in by someone who wanted to make a few bucks for a local synagogue.

Themed auctions are fairly common, sometimes featuring certain types of antiques, jewelry, military or even black memorabilia. The Phoebus auction house made a name for itself regionally over the summer when it sold some Watergate-era items.

But an auction showcasing strictly erotic art is rare, especially outside of big cities, say local auctioneers.

It could be good business, says Norfolk auctioneer Mike Henson. Aside from a few 8mm videotapes sold at estate sales, he hasn't heard of anyone else saving erotic items for a publicized auction.

Sellers will probably get good prices because collectors and other int erested buyers will attend, Henson says. Selling individually to private dealers would pay less because dealers have to turn around and sell the item at a profit, he says.

The auction is also a venue for local erotic artists who have trouble getting their work admitted into galleries, Bill Welch says. Highly erotic works are often kept in a gallery's back room until a customer specifically asks for it.

At the auction house, Welch points to a mixed-media piece by Williamsburg artist Nancy Sheheen. Inside the frame, a three-dimensional, naked female figure rests in a hammock hanging from the background.

``When she sells her stuff up in Williamsburg, they consider her pornographic,'' Welch says about Sheheen's work. ``It's community standards.''

Sunday's auction also will include big-name items such as a signed Picasso print and signed prints by modern fantasy artist Olivia De Berardinis.

There will be erotic prints a soldier brought back from Germany after World War I that his daughter is now trying sell; a late 19th-century French book of sketches; and old movie posters and promo photos, greeting cards, postcards, playing cards and stereo cards made to use with a hand-held viewer.

Books for sale range from a collection of works by D.H. Lawrence to a ``Dictionary of Aphrodisiacs'' to ``A History of Orgies.''

Pin-up girls grace the covers of tavern matchbooks from the '50s, ``a little politically incorrect for this day and age,'' Welch says.

And in one cabinet are what Welch describes as ``stuff you pick up at Stuckey's on your way to Florida.'' Naughty ashtrays, engraved penknives and mugs with a naked woman looking up from inside.

``Some of this stuff is less than classy,'' Welch admits.

But that depends on what the buyer wants. Small-time art and antique collector Steve Iorio of Newport News has previewed the wares in the Phoebus gallery. He was taken with certain Persian paintings that he considers to be technically superior hand-renderings.

``There's a gentleness, there's a floatingness, there's a buoyancy to all that work,'' Iorio says about the Persian art. ``It's not splashy. It's not cheap.

``It's more of a celebration of sex as a religious act,'' he says. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo

This Pablo Picasso lithograph printer's proof...

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