Posted: Mar 15, 2010 8:23 pm
j.mills wrote:Federico wrote:Art is not made for the purpose of arousing some and disgusting others by the explicit depiction of sexual organs and/or sexual acts, and, at the most, leaves you bored or uninterested. Pornography's purpose, on the contrary, is exactly that of shocking some people and of inducing sexual arousal in others.
Well, here's one by Charles Mengin of Sappho. I saw it somewhere (Tate? Manchester?) and the little explanatory card said that paintings like this were essentially crypto-porn* for respectable nineteenth-century gentlemen. So I don't think you can convincingly draw a line by asserting (as you seem to) that art is unerotic. It's another example of the entropic erosion of workable boundaries between systems in communicative flux.**
(* That's my term. Quite like it.)
(** That one's Norbert Weiner. Which I only know 'cos it's quoted in a Gerry Rafferty song!)
I have never understood the assertion that pornography can't be art, what a baseless idea. It assumes that sexual arousal is somehow beneath class, something to be ignored, shunned, despised. Well, from a christian perspective, that is to be expected. For most, artistic value isn't of great importance, but that doesn't mean it can't be there. I also don't understand why there isn't art in the quality of the arousal itself, forgetting the 'artistic' quality of the image/movies in themselves. Porn unfortunately suffers from a well organized, centuries long smear campaign to deligitemize its very purpose.