h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

ok, I've read a bit more about this picture.

6 years ago the CPS couldn't do anything about it - has something in the law changed in the meantime?

Or is the Northeast of England particularly "sensitive" to this kind of thing?

Even innocent pictures of children can become porn in some peoples hands
When i worked for C&E material seized in cases that was being distributed by paedophile networks included pictures of their own children as well as more obviously pornographic pictures

I sometimes thing that the categories that arise in debates like this obscure rather than clarify.

The title of the thread, "when does art become porn", does seem to presuppose that "art" is good and okay and "porn" is bad and not okay. I don't know if this is Captain Black's view (I rather doubt it), but the question does carry those kind of assumptions.

Better questions to ask are:

"Are there any limits to what it is acceptable to do in the name of art, and if so, what are those limits?"

This doesn't just refer to borderline pornography, but about artworks that might be deemed offensive for other reasons, such as the Myra Hindley picture, and whichever celebrity it was who got himself into trouble for admiring the aesthetics of Nazism (architecture etc).

So the question in the example that prompted this thread shouldn't be "is this art or pornography" but "is it acceptable to exhibit this in this way?"

When does art become porn? When it's in focus!

Genuine

Years ago, whilst doing basic training in Plymouth, me and a couple of mates wandered into a small art gallery down a sidestreet. On display were oil paintings of a naked lady (hence the attraction). As we went round the gallery, the pictures got steamier & steamier as the model (it was the same woman in all the paintings) started doing "things" to her "lady-bits" with other "things". These were the most explicit images any of us had seen in our lives to this point (we were 17). The last painting involved the model and an "excited" horse doing something that I am sure is anatomically impossible. As our jaws hit the floor and we tilted our heads to the side in unison, the lady at the till asked if we had enjoyed the exhibition. To our utter shock, she was the model in the paintings. We all got highly embarassed and exited as fast as we could.

Now was that art or porn?

I wonder if that gallery is still there?

Nothing these days, now people are falling into Tate's enormous crack.

Catherine ?

>>Now was that art or porn?

Both, obviously. IOt sounds like you were privileged to experience a prime example of conceptual art. How come I never (ahem) come across anything like that in Pompey?

'Cos it was in Guz?

Martin Amis pointed out somewhere that 'pornography' translates literally as 'whore art'. (not quite. 'graphos' = writing or drawing). It's a curious value judgement that we have in our society that there needs to be a dividing line between porn and art. Why should the realms of the erotic or titillating not be a fit domain for art? That said...with most of the porn around, it doesn't fulfil the criteria for decent art, merely the minimum requirement to qualify as a masturbation aid. Nothing wrong with that in itself - but it does get boring.

The libertarian John Mortimer, who acted as QC in many obscenity trials, defined pornography thus:
"Something capable of giving an elderly High Court judge an erection."

>>Cos it was in Guz?

I even confuse the two when reading.

My dear sha***ng monkey:
Have you read my post? I´ll rephrase it and add something else.
I´ve said that we shouldn´t confuse paedophilia with pornography. It was the reason for that photo to be seized. Although the photo wasn´t neither porno, paedophilic or artistic.
When I first read the title, My mind read eroticism instead of Art, I thought that was the topic of this thread: When does Eroticism become Porn?
I would say that eroticism is artistic porno, or destiled sublimized pornography. I don´t consider pornography something wrong. Perhaps, it lacks of "content", it´s boring for me. But I understand that it serves most of men. You are quite primary about that, or just easier to get *honey* through visual stimuli. It´s your nature.

I wish there would be porno for women. At least, as I mentioned in my previous post, we have comics books. And books, of course. there are quite a few that I enjoyed a lot reading and even more putting them into practice... I don´t want to be *moderated* I hope I haven´t raised anything...unappropriate Err, maybe this smile is not appropriate here neither
oh! and that?
better I

I just heard something on the radio which is most appropriate for here.

A quote from a modern burlesque queen "What turns me on is erotica - what turns you on is pornography."

There is an art exhibition in Lund, Sweden by that "artist" who also made a picture of a cross in a glass of urine. It features some quite hardcore pornography, the kind you wouldn´t find in mainstream porn movies.

>>I´ve said that we shouldn´t confuse paedophilia with pornography.

Indeed. All photographic images of sexual acts with children involve, by definition, accessory to rape. These are distinct to images of consenting adults engaged in sexual acts.

A grey (very, very dark grey) area is in non-photographic images which are created from the imagination. Some might argue that no child is harmed in their making. However...the reports of child abusers is that their pathology is one of reward/reinforcement. Fantasising and the rewards of masturbation entrench a sexual interest in children. The fantasiser progresses if not to being an abuser than to being an accessory by his use of rape material.

This gives us a problem. The vast bulk of images of children found on the hard drives of offenders are tame, often showing children innocently playing, fully clothed. Sad to say, an innocent picture of one's toddler in the bath could be used by some as a masturbatory trigger.

The key to the question is the use to which images are put. I don't pretend to have an answer.

Art is a bit too promiscuous, it goes to bed with anyone.

But Art is so naive, it thinks: oh! an artist is calling me, I´ll go and be kind with him/her... and then... We, the audience must suffer watching such tough perfomance.

Those who lack creativity provoke using the easiest form to do it. Gore, repulsive images. IF you get shocked or just upset, they consider it´s a proof of their success.

Yeah - the last artist to be simultaneously genuinely shocking and artistic was probably Marcel Duchamp.

Here's a shocking piece of pornography by Caravaggio, commissioned by one of the Medici.

Do you know about Golden Section? The head of Christ would usually be expected to be found at the upper left junction of the major horizontal and vertical sections. Take a look at what's smack bang on the lower right junction here:
http://www.abcgallery.com/C/caravaggio/caravaggio29.html

That's vintage Ed: using "shocking" in a context that makes it look as though he means "dreadful"; only when you know it's Ed you realise he means "tremendous".

Oh dear. We are precisely back in the sixties and the Lady Chatterley's Lover trial. As I recall, the defence pointed out that things that arouse the susceptible even more than Lady Chatterley's adventures were to be found daily in the pages of The Times.

Similarly, the most politically subversive texts are to be found in the Bible.

So censorship is a losing game. It simply can't be done right.