Defining erotic art is difficult since perceptions of both what is erotic and what is art fluctuate. For example, a voluptuous nude painting by Peter Paul Rubens could have been considered erotic or pornographic when it was created for a private patron in the 17th century. In a different context, a sculpture of a phallus in some African cultures may be considered a traditional symbol of potency though not overtly erotic.
In addition, a distinction is often made between erotic art and pornography (which also depicts scenes of love-making and is intended to evoke erotic arousal, but is not usually considered art). The distinction may lie in intent and message; erotic art intended as pieces of art, encapturing formal elements of art, and drawing on other historical artworks. Pornography may also use these tools, but is primarily intended to arousal one sexually. Nevertheless, these elements of distinction are highly subjective.
For instance, Justice Potter Stewart of the Supreme Court of the United States, in attempting to explain "hard-core" pornography, or what is obscene, famously wrote, "I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced . . . [b]ut I know it when I see it . . . ."[1]
[edit] Historical
Hermit monk performing auparashtika on a princely visitor. Temple of Chhapri, Central India, 12th century. Khajuraho.
Hermit monk performing auparashtika on a princely visitor. Temple of Chhapri, Central India, 12th century. Khajuraho big cock sex.
For more details on this topic, see History of erotic depictions#Early depictions.
For more details on this topic, see Erotic art in Pompeii and Herculaneum.
Among the oldest surviving examples of erotic depictions are Paleolithic cave paintings and carvings, but many cultures have created erotic art. The ancient Greeks painted sexual scenes on their ceramics, many of them famous for being some of the earliest depictions of same-sex relations and pederasty, and there are numerous sexually explicit paintings on the walls of ruined Roman buildings in Pompeii. The Moche of Peru in South America are another ancient people that sculpted explicit scenes of sex into their pottery. [2]
Love of archery, Verma, c~1780.
Love of archery, Verma, c~1780.
Additionally, there has been a long tradition of erotic painting among the Eastern cultures. In Japan, for example, shunga appeared in the 13th century and continued to grow in popularity until the late 19th century when photography was invented.[3] Similarly, the erotic art of China reached its popular peak during the latter part of the Ming Dynasty.[4] In India, the famous Kama Sutra is an ancient sex manual that is still popularly read throughout the world.[5]
In Europe, starting with the Renaissance, there was a tradition of producing erotica for the amusement of the aristocracy. In the early 16th century, the text I Modi was an woodcut album created by the designer Giulio Romano, the engraver Marcantonio Raimondi and the poet Pietro Aretino. In 1601 Caravaggio painted the "Love Triumphant," for the collection of the Marquis Vincenzo Giustiniani. The latter is reputed to have kept it hidden behind a curtain to show only to his friends, as it was seen as a blatant celebration of sodomy. The tradition is continued by other, more modern painters, such as Fragonard, Courbet, Millet, Balthus, Picasso, Edgar Degas, Toulouse-Lautrec, Egon Schiele, who served time in jail and had several works destroyed by the authorities for offending turn-of-the-century Austrian mores with his depiction of nude young girls, and so on.
[edit] Modern
Gustave Courbet's L’Origine du monde (1866), Mus?e d'Orsay.
Gustave Courbet's L’Origine du monde (1866), Mus?e d'Orsay.
Today, erotic artists thrive, although, in some circles, much of the genre is still not as accepted as the more standard genres of art such as portraiture and landscape. During the last few centuries, society has broadened its view of what can be considered as art and several new styles developed during the 1800s such as Impressionism and Realism. This has given today's artists a broader, almost infinite, spectrum with which to work big cock sex.
While we still have the traditionalist such as the erotic surrealist Anthony Christian and his students, who use the same techniques that have been tried and tested by countless artists since the Renaissance, we also have more contemporary schools and techniques, such as Marci McDonald's abstract work and the bizarre drawings of Julian Murphy, which he describes as "Tantric Pop Art," that clearly show the influences modern culture has had on Erotic Art.
[edit] Legal standards
Whether or not an instance of erotic art is obscene depends on the standards of the community in which it is displayed.
In the United States, the 1973 ruling of the Supreme Court of the United States in Miller v. California established a three-tiered test to determine what was obscene - and thus not protected, versus what was merely erotic and thus protected by the First Amendment.
Delivering the opinion of the court, Chief Justice Warren Burger wrote,
The basic guidelines for the trier of fact must be: (a) whether 'the average person, applying contemporary community standards' would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest, (b) whether the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by the applicable state law; and (c) whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.[6]
As this is still, almost by necessity, much more vague than other judicial tests within U.S. jurisprudence, it has not reduced the conflicts that often result, especially from the ambiguities concerning what the "contemporary community standards" are. Similar difficulties in distinguishing between erotica and obscenity have been found in almost every legal system in the world.
The distinction between erotica and pornography (as well as the lesser known genre of sexual entertainment, ribaldry) is difficult to identify, if not completely impossible. Proponents for erotic art argue that such work is intended to arouse aesthetic rather than erotic feelings, and is therefore not pornographic. Opponents see this as a pretentious stand, as they believe that erotic art shares the same purposes as pornography. Stephen Gilbert once remarked "The difference between erotica and pornography is simple. Erotica is what I like. Pornography is what you like, you pervert!"[citation needed] One common joke is that "the only difference between art and pornography is a government grant." Another is: "Erotica is when you use a feather. Pornography is big cock sex when you use the whole chicken."
The issue of whether a distinction can be made between erotica and pornography raises multiple complicated questions. These questions include whether aesthetic and erotic feelings are mutually exclusive, how the level of commercialism and tastefulness in an artwork can be objectively measured, and at what point they make the work pornographic.
In general, "erotica" refers to portrayals of sexually arousing material that hold or aspire to artistic or scientific merit, whereas "pornography" often connotes the prurient depiction of sexual acts, with little or no artistic value.
is the photographing of a model to emphasize the subject, instead of the fashions or products endorsed.
Standards of glamour photography have changed over time, reflecting changes in social morals. For example, in the early 1920s, USA photographers like Ruth Harriet Louise photographed celebrities to glamourise their stature. During World War II pin-up pictures of scantily clad movie stars were extremely popular among US servicemen. However, until the 1950s, the use of glamour photography in advertising or men’s magazines was highly controversial or even illegal. Magazines featuring glamour photography were usually marketed as "art magazines” or “health magazines”.
Playboy was instrumental in changing the world of glamour photography as the first magazine that focused on nude models and was targeted at the mainstream consumer. In December 1953, Hugh Hefner published the first edition of Playboy with Marilyn Monroe on the cover and nude photos of Monroe on the inside. Marilyn's star status and charming personality helped to diminish the public outcry. When asked what she had on during the photoshoot, she replied "the radio." After Playboy broke through, many magazines followed and this was instrumental in opening the market for the introduction of glamour photography into modern society. Today, softcore nude photographs of models appear in publications such as Perfect 10 or tabloid newspapers such as Britain's The Sun's Page 3.
Recently several popular glamour magazines known as lad mags are reversing the trend by emphasizing glamour while showing less nudity, in favor of implied (covered) nudity or toplessness such as the handbra technique. Examples include Maxim, which launched in 1995 and FHM (For Him Magazine) in 1994.
While pornography had seen limited distribution over the Internet in the 1980s, it was not until the Internet became more accessible to the general public that Internet pornography became a widespread phenomenon. The earliest online distribution of pornography consisted mainly of Internet users uploading scanned photos from adult magazines to Usenet newsgroups. This type of distribution was generally free (apart from fees for Internet access), and provided a great deal of anonymity. The anonymity made it safe and easy to ignore copyright restrictions, as well as protecting the identity of uploaders and downloaders. Around this timeframe, pornography was also distributed via pornographic Bulletin Board Systems such as Rusty n Edie's. These BBSes could charge users big cock sex for access, leading to the first commercial online pornography (though not "internet pornography," since BBSes were not accessed via the internet).
The invention of the World Wide Web spurred both commercial and non-commercial distribution of pornography. The rise of pornography websites offering photos, video clips and streaming media including live webcam access allowed greater access to pornography.
[edit] Free vs. commercial
On the Web, there are both commercial and free pornography sites. The bandwidth usage of a pornography site is relatively high, and the income a free site can earn through advertising may not be sufficient to cover the costs of that bandwidth. One recent entry into the free pornography website market are Thumbnail gallery post sites. These are free websites that post links to commercial sites, providing a sampling of the commercial site in the form of thumbnail images, or in the form of Free Hosted Galleries—samplings of full-sized content provided and hosted by the commercial sites to promote their site. Some free websites primarily serve as portals by keeping up-to-date indexes of these smaller sampler sites. When a user purchases a subscription to a commercial site after clicking through from a free thumbnail gallery site, the commercial site makes a payment to the owner of the free site.
Another free source of pornography on the Internet are the Usenet newsgroups that were the first home to such material. Newsgroups tend to be poorly organized and flooded with content that is off-topic or spam. Commercial software and websites are available that allow browsing the images or videos on newsgroups, sometimes with galleries of thumbnail images.
Peer-to-peer file sharing networks provide another form of free access to pornography. While such networks have been associated largely with the illegal sharing of copyrighted music and movies, the sharing of pornography has also been a popular use for file sharing.
[edit] Internet pornography formats
[edit] Image files
Image files, particularly of the JPEG format, are one of the most common formats for distributing pornography. Images big cock sex may be either scanned into the computer from photographs or magazines, produced with a digital camera, or a frame from a video.
[edit] Video files and streaming video
Video files formats such as MPEG, WMV, and QuickTime have been used to distribute pornographic video clips. More recently VCD and DVD image files allow distribution of whole VCDs and DVDs. Many commercial porn sites exist that allow one to view pornographic streaming video including live video taken with a webcam. Recently (mid-2006), some Internet pornography sites have begun offering High Definition Video content in WMV HD format.
[edit] Other formats
Other formats include text and audio files. While pornographic and erotic stories, distributed as text files, web pages, and via message boards and newsgroups, have been semi-popular, audio porn, via formats like MP3 and FLV, have seen only very limited distribution. Audio porn can include recordings of people having sex or reading erotic stories big cock sex.
[edit] Legal status
A standard legal warning to minors seen on most adult websites
A standard legal warning to minors seen on most adult websites
Main article: Legal status of Internet pornography big cock sex
