Pulling Rankin
A Scandalous Gallery on Melrose

Your reputation in the art world is legendary.

Your middle name is Warhol. Banksy often tags your fridge. You recently gave a lecture on Timberlake and Gaga’s haunting collaborative masterpiece, “Liquorville.”

So when one of the world’s most esteemed photographers of bare skin sets up shop in LA, you need to know immediately.

Welcome to Rankin Gallery, the first US gallery from the English-born authority on all things naked and fleshy, debuting to the public this Friday.

Finally offering a definitive, permanent answer to that age-old question of whether highbrow art can also be kind of smutty (answer: yes), this is a deceptively simple square of a space: a white-walled, glass-fronted gallery that, from the street, looks like any other.

Until you step inside to see the inaugural exhibit, Open Rankin, which culls 61 photos from Rankin’s last 20 years of celeb, fashion and/or naked-people shutterbugging. There you’ll glimpse into the true face of modern art. It involves Heidi Klum getting hot and bothered in a chocolate bath, Liv Tyler pining hard for a wall and...

Well, let’s just say the word “nubile” is a useful descriptor.