What Justin Bieber Is Thinking About

Have I ever imagined going down on Selena Gomez? Yes. Have I bought canvas and oils and painted that particular fantasy? No. But Brooklyn artist Alexandra Rubinstein has done it on my behalf, so that’s fine.

The series is called Celebrity Cunnilingus—paintings of famous men performing oral sex, each given a title representing what the man is supposedly thinking in the moment. Leonardo DiCaprio, face buried, asking What’s Gilbert Grape Eating? Drake, certain: Best I Ever Had. David Beckham going at it under the motto Eat It Like Beckham. And Justin Bieber attending to Selena Gomez with the caption Is it too late now?—which is honestly the funniest thing I’ve read all week.

Rubinstein says the work is meant to draw attention to the shortage of pornography made with women’s desires in mind. Don’t ask me how I know, she adds, which is the best possible way to end that sentence. What I like about it beyond the obvious jokes is that the paintings are actually good. These aren’t cheap provocation pieces dashed off to generate headlines. There’s real craft in them, and a genuine sense of play that makes the whole project feel closer to pop art than shock content. The celebrity framing is the hook, but the underlying question—about whose fantasies get taken seriously, whose desires get depicted—is more interesting than the premise suggests.