09-25-2006, 02:16 PM
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Do Fun Shit.
Industry Role:
Join Date: Dec 2004
Location: OC
Posts: 13,393
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Why the graphic sex in Destricted isn't porn.
Quote:
Artists have been making erotica for about as long as they've been making art. There are copulating figures on ancient Greek pottery, raunchy Caravaggios, and an astounding canvas by Courbet called The Origin of the World, which now hangs in the Musée d'Orsay in Paris. Picasso made priapic drawings almost compulsively, and for more recent examples we have Mapplethorpe's notorious X Portfolio and Jeff Koons' explicit paintings of himself and his (now ex-) wife, Cicciolina, engaged in marital pleasures.
I don't think that moving pictures have quite the same double history: Truly pornographic art films and videos are few and far between. There are brazen works by, for example, Carolee Schneemann, but they're not prurient; Jack Smith's brilliant and beautiful Flaming Creatures was banned for obscenity, but by XXX standards it's pretty tame, as are Warhol's Factory films. Only the Viennese Actionists really went all the way, and their work has remained obscure. All in all, there's very little in the way of high-toned smut, at least when it comes to moving pictures?and maybe the politics and aesthetics of motion are the reason why: Mapplethorpe's photos are as graphic as pictures get, but they fit comfortably in a museum. The same kind of work filmed in 16 mm would be a tougher sell. An explicit still image is a nude, but an explicit movie is hard-core.
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http://www.slate.com/id/2150338/
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