Art or Pornography?

Gustav Klimt

I have a lot of art books, it became a borderline addiction when I started buying books weekly and not having even finished the first one. Yet an interesting concept struck me as I was reading about the artist above. In the book about his life, a chapter was devoted to his "Erotic" works. What was interesting is that Klimt rarely spoke about his art which did not help when these erotic drawings were found. Some see this as more of his great artwork, insisting that he constantly challenged the boundaries of the art world. Others insisted this was his personal collection of self made pornography (From what little we know of klimt, we do know he was quite the ladies man.) Still another group believes these were specific requests from some of his many buyers.

Egon Schiele

What is also interesting is his protege pictured above, seemed to have the same mindset of erotic portrayals of models. Should we chop this up to artists being sex driven maniacs, as this is a common stereotype due to artists such as Diego Rivera or Picasso. Or maybe they were trying to push the boundaries of sex and art in a way that had not been done before. Erotic artwork is not a new idea, and the objectification of both men and women have been around for as long as there was art.

This statue called the Venus if Willendorf is one of the oldest found sculptures in history. Though abstract and not having very prominent facial features, the viewer can deduce that this is a woman due to the enormous breast and hint of a vagina below the bellybutton. Again with little to work with historians can only assume this was a symbol for fertility in our early human times. Yet, who really knows, this could be some statue a horny young boy crafted for his self stimulating pleasure?!?

What is erotic art and what is pornography seems to be more simple these days. One is meant to stimulate you on a intellectual level and one is meant to stimulate on a more primal level. Yet the porn business took a strange turn with a movie that became a huge cult hit, and destroyed the idea of porn having no value beyond the "Perverted"

I wont go into the history of the film "Deep Throat" but I will say that its popularity made porn not only widely accepted, but fashionable as well. So there is obviously a grey area concerning some pornography and some art, but where does it lie? to be continued...