@momodot Your 'cultural expression' concept is an interesting twist. I'm curious... There were certain styles of houses and furniture that were popular in the '60s (the styles used in the movie 'The Incredibles" for example). There were certain styles of graphics and font treatments popular in the '70s. Would you consider those things 'art' because they clearly reflect the culture of the time? Does it matter if they weren't considered 'art' at the time of their construction (I suspect not but I'm asking just in case)? Please note that I'm not at all challenging or arguing - I'm just trying to clarify what you mean.

Cigar Store Indians -though an advertising device at the time of their creation, they are now a much sought after piece of Americana.  From a heritage point of view, they would certainly count as works of art today.  So are the few surviving figure heads of the old time clippers (most of which depicted bare breasted females, and could be concieved of as erotic, if not pornographic.  Back then, though I doubt that anyone conceived of a difference between the two, and simply classified them both as 'Lewd').
David P. Hoadley

Quote - There were certain styles of graphics and font treatments popular in the '70s. Would you consider those things 'art' because they clearly reflect the culture of the time? Does it matter if they weren't considered 'art' at the time of their construction (I suspect not but I'm asking just in case)? Please note that I'm not at all challenging or arguing - I'm just trying to clarify what you mean.

No worries. I am not at all sure what I mean. I think what I am thinking is that what distinguishes art from non-art is not intention, and maybe not even reception, but maybe whether or not the thing has meaningful cultural content. A certain spoon might have content due to style while another might not. But merely historic significance in this case does not rate. Something that is perceived as having cultural meaning when it was made might at a future time be found not to have it while something taken for granted as neutral in terms of cultural meaning might be found in another time or in another place to have cultural meaning. 

Cultural significance, cultural meaning... I am not sure what that might mean. The thing conveys substantive information about their culture or have a certain strong or even inchoate resonance in their culture or when viewed by another culture?

Bad art is art by virtue of its relation to culture and its relation to good art... Steven King may be compared to George Elliot or Jackson Pollack on its artistic merits but to compare it to a sandwich is fatuous... unless the sandwich has some cultural significance that is recognized, say in the case of a McDonald's Hamburger.

Kitsch is interesting to consider, it is often created as Art then rejected as Art and then rehabilitated as Art with the admixture of nostalgia or irony and then maybe dismissed again as intellectual fashion changes. The problem with "what is Art" today is irony... irony can invest anything with spurious significance... most people rebel at this but can not articulate why.

I think that where I differ from some people is that I think of art in functional terms... does it serve as art. Bad art serves as art. It allows people to speculate financially, to show off  economically or intellectually, to forge group identity as with the audience for the Avant Guard or for Kitsch, and to fuel ego by rejecting it or valorizing it in the face of opposition by philistines and the unwashed masses. These are the functions of art. I can not see art in Platonic terms since it is not an object like a table or a chair. The functionality of an abstract is different than the functionality of a real object.

An academic standard for art? Stuff normal people hate.

Over and over as an art student art a prestigious institution I was told regular people just were not equipped to appreciate art, I said that they appreciated art a whole lot, they just don't appreciate /your/ Art. I grew up "disadvantaged" but I don't remember ever being in a home that didn't have a calender or a porno centerfold or a picture of Jesus, Mary, Martin Luther King or JFK on the wall.

That's some real interesting food for thought. I appreciate you sharing it.

yes, momodot, make my neurons churn!  :)  the cultural aspects of art are very interesting, and you made me think of another example:  we don't just reach back in time, but we also view and acquire items as art that are no such thing in their contemporary culture of origin, where they're instead purely functional items.  i don't know how meaningful that is -- we often completely shift the meaning of the item when we do that.  maybe something becomes art a lot more easily when its original cultural context is removed?

I don't think meaningful cultural content works. A national flag has that, but isn't art.

If one wants a definition, I would say this: the difference between art and non-art is profundity. Non-art, including, since the matter has been raised, wooden indians and ships' figureheads, is all on the surface. What you see at once is all there is. A work of art you can come back to and see something new. A great work of art, you keep seeing new things the more often you look.

You are absolutly right Phantast! Damn! I thought I had it figured out :)

I can't agree with the exact formulation you have for profundity... I think you can come back again and again to something very simple because its simplicity efects you deeply... so is that profondity in the affect the thing creats in a certain context rather than an inherent deepness of content or form? Also how do you account for bad art, it is niether profound nor does it touch me profoundly but it is not "fake" art it is only "bad" art.

I don't want to give up on this but I am at an impass.

Thank you Phantast, pleonastic, Bobasaur.

I once belived that art had a transendance to it that set it apart from other things... but I lost my faith :(

"I can't define it, but I know it when I see it " - The Supreme Court..;)
I always said erotica was what aroused women, but prawongraphy (we have a parser on our mail at work..fergiv me..;) is what aroused men..;) totally wrong, full of exceptions, but what I thought at the time..;)

I recall the multi-million dollar space probe that failed because one group of engineers had used the metric system and another the English system of measurements.  At least both of those systems are based on replicable physical reality and one or the other would have sufficed for the utilitarian purpose of measurement.  Such objectivity simply does not apply to questions like whether Mapplethorpe's work is art or pornography.

It's fine to believe in some holy grail of artistic objectivity but I don't think it exists.  Entire atristic movements are persona no arta to the academy one day and hailed as great the next.  Eurocentric authorities completely dismissed African and other non European works that are now acknowledged.  What changed, the art or cultural atitudes?  There may well be some validity to artistic evaluation if based on something empirical like perceptual psychology.  You can determine that more people like red paintings than blue paintings perhaps though I still don't think one can honestly define one group as more "artistic" than the other. 

Beyond that, it's pretty much fodder for intellectual masturbation amongst the elites.  The vast gulf between what people really like and what the critics and academicians tell them they should like is the cause of many people saying 'I don't understand it so it must be art.'  Of course, the 'authorities' have every  right to establish their criteria and declare who is in or out but their pronouncements are hardly relevant to the vast majority of real people in the real world.  The fact is that most people asked to explain why they like something are not going to be able to expound in terms that would delight a critic, they just like it period.  Perhaps for them, art bypasses the rational brain and gors straight to the emotional and esthetic - which I would think is the real idea of art to begin with.

As for art/erotica vs. porn, if one can view some explicit images like Mapplethorpe's or Indian temple friezes or whatever as art rather than pornography than a definition based on how graphic an image is becomes unworkable.  Do we say that an image of as man inserting a whip into his anus is art if shot as a profile but porn if the distended sphincter is shown?  And would it be impossible for the latter to be shown in an artistic manner?

Objective, functional definitions may have utility.  A flaccid penis is OK but an erect one isn't; a dildo touching a vagina is fine but the slightest degree of penetration is taboo... Those are things one can work with, things that enable unambiguous communication of information, fairly enforceable rules etc.  Anything else may make for entertaining conversation or rancorous debate but nothing really useful. 

On the contrary, subjective criteria lead to chaos and are always subject to a variety of political, religious and other forces that guarantee that result.  I can't legally rent an 'XXX' rated movie in my county but I can drive a few miles and rent as many as I want.  OTOH, I can go to the local convenience store and buy a magazine with images that depict all the explicti acts that appear in the banned movies.  We used to be able to buy them at a local newstand but they were forced to close because they sold magazines that depicted the same acts between two men that were acceptable if performed between men and women or even two women.  It may be fun to debate smut vs. genteel stimulation or whatever the alternatives are supposed to be but the reality, at least in the US. today is that both are likely to be tarred with the same brush. and the finer points of theory and sensibility have no influence whatsoever.

'I like Andy Warhol's soup cans, but I won't call them art.'

It is art though. Warhol meant to express in this work and in most of his art his belief that commercial imagery had become the art of our times - for the masses anyway. Sometimes you need that understanding of the artist to gain an insight into the artistic value of the piece.

If everything is art then art is nothing so it's understood that there has to be some rules no matter how contentiously those rules are debated. The same is true about pornography and erotica. There have to be some rules of delineation even if that border proves as difficult to find as this thread has demonstrated.

I find that I lean more toward the position of treatment over subject matter because everything has the right to be the subject matter of art. It all depends on how that subject matter is handled.

'"I can't define it, but I know it when I see it " - The Supreme Court.'

Yup :)

I always said erotic was what aroused women, but prawongraphy... is what aroused men..;)
 
Pretty funny! better than "I can't define it, but I know it when I see it "  in my opinion :)

I hate to quote Goering but it might be relevent...

"When I hear the word 'culture' I reach for my gun!"

Does that tell use what art is?

"When I hear the word 'culture' I reach for my gun!"
Which only goes to show that even an opportunistic SOB like Goering had something preceptive to say.  The problem with most art critics, is that they tend to be elitist, and anti-democratic.  Which is why I prefer my own definition that -Art is what I like, and Trash is what I don't like!  For me, Warhol's work are trash, especially if he's trying to make a statement.  Art who'e intention is to make a statement is propaganda -not art, and usually appeals to some with an atavistic yearnings for elitism.  The Nazis were good at it, and so are our own cultural snobs.

Some great works of art do indeed make statements, but that isn't their main motivation.
David P. Hoadley

Hello all Ive been doing poser for about 3 years and I do alot of erotic art. Back in the pass I did the art work for free to show it off to people but to do good erotic art take time and money. So I treat it like a business now. I hate to say it but sex sells.  Iam away buying textures, models,photoshop brushes, ect from here anything to help in my art work.  And to make erotic art it takes passion, time, skill and money  Some people stay away from this type of work and i respect that  but i like making erotic art its a challenge to me. I try to go for the wow factor in my art lol. well that my 2 cent.

Kainxxx2000

Or as someone else once said, "When I hear the word 'gun' I reach for my culture."

Incidentally, about changing opinions in art criticism, you will find exactly the same thing in science. A way of looking at things is discarded when a more enlightened way of thinking comes along. We learn as we go. In the 19thC JS Bach was considered to have little merit as a composer. That changed, now he's considered one of the greats. That will never change - there will never be a time when he goes back to being considered third-rate.

"there will never be a time when he goes back to being considered third-rate." I'm not so sure about that. Anyone who doesn't know about capping a cop or the trials and tribulations of being a thug or ho is considered at least third-rate by many in this generation. Who knows what their grandkids will think.

It should be a TOS violation to excerpt long passages from Wikipedia ;^)

But these clips save you from having to read a pretty long entry and might help... ever since Phantast brought up the flag I am at loose ends. I am hoping some one can set me somewhat at ease or this thing is going to plague me... I know a definition of art is arbitrary but some how I am driven by the idea that it is possible to construct a passable  definition!

Wikipedia:
In addition to serving as a method of pure creativity and self-expression, the purpose of works of art may be to communicate ideas, such as in politically-, religiously-, or philosophically-motivated art, to create a sense of beauty, to explore the nature of perception, for pleasure, or to generate strong emotions. The purpose may also be seemingly nonexistent.

Characteristics of art
There follow some generally accepted characteristics of art:

1. encourages an intuitive understanding rather than a rational understanding, as, for example, with an article in a scientific journal;
2. was created with the intention of evoking such an understanding or an attempt at such an understanding in the audience;
3. was created with no other purpose or function other than to be itself (a radical, "pure art" definition);
4. elusive, in that the work may communicate on many different levels of appreciation;
5. in relation to the above, the piece may offer itself to many different interpretations, or, though it superficially depicts a mundane event or object, invites reflection upon elevated themes;
6. demonstrates a high level of ability or fluency within a medium; this characteristic might be considered a point of contention, since many modern artists (most notably, conceptual artists) do not themselves create the works they conceive, or do not even create the work in a conventional, demonstrative sense;
7. the conferral of a particularly appealing or aesthetically satisfying structure or form upon an original set of unrelated, passive constituents.

Also the following more concise definition from a dictionary:

A human effort to imitate, supplement, alter, or counteract the work of nature. The conscious production or arrangement of sounds, colors, forms, movements, or other elements in a manner that affects the sense of beauty, specifically the production of the beautiful in a graphic or plastic medium or a high quality of conception or execution, as found in works of beauty.

The way to work ugly art into this is I guess is to extend the term "beauty" to conceptual, intellectual, and emotional beauty as well as aesthetic beauty as in the Wikipedia item.

Maybe the best distinction between erotica and pornography is that erotica is whatever gets you off and pornography is whatever gets other people get off    :0)

More seriously, maybe erotica is intended to arouse while pornography is intended to climax. My understand is that in a strip club it is bad form to climax when given a lap dance in the public area leaving me to wonder what the point of it is then!

Or is it that erotica is meant to be stimulating or climax assisting in its absence by creating an evocative mental image and fantasy, it is "art of the past moment", while pornography is intended to stimulate and facilitate climax in its actual presence, it is art of the "present moment"? Can pornography be created without the intention of furthering the pursuit of climax in most of its audience?

 Is the difference between erotica and pornography located with the audience at all? Is it ultimately (community standards aside) mainly a manner of how its creator relates to it? Is it that when an artist attempts to charge their work with the sexual it is erotic work but when the author seeks to devolp sexual visual or literary imagery that may or may not have an aesthetic charge that it is pornograghy?

Is is the pornonogrphic/erotic difference best thought of in terms of intent, function, or social context? Are all of these just too reductive.... it seems it is responsible to attempt some definition given that law and statute are applied nearly everywhere.

"Sex is politics" - Gore Vidal

Is it that we only flatter ourselves when we think art is politics while in fact what defines pornography is that it really is politics?

I think that one thing this discussion has shown is that definitions of pornography based on content/subject fail. It becomes like the silly situation with Indian cinema posters, where if there is 0.05" separation between the heroine's and hero's lips it's OK and if they actual touch it's taboo. Which brings me back to intent. This is relatively easy if you have access to the creator. So imagine three Poser users, A, B and C. All have produced pictures with sexual content.

Me: Mr A, why did you make this picture?

Mr A: 'Cos I get paid by for making pictures of hot chicks with big melons.

OK, so Mr A's picture is pornography.

Me: Mr B, why did you make this picture?

Mr B: It's a work of art.

Me: Why is it a work of art?

Mr B: Err - it just is. Besides, dphoadley likes it, and it says here that anything that dphoadley likes is art, and anything he doesn't like is trash, and you can't quarrel with that, can you?

Verdict: this is pornography being passed off as art.

Me: Mr C, why did you make this picture?

Mr C: It's a work of art.

Me: Why is it a work of art?

Mr C: Well, I was looking to make something that combined formal beauty with subversiveness; allow me to elaborate on the features of the composition ...

Verdict: Well, this is actually some sort of art, and Mr C knows something about what he's doing. But, as someone asked earlier, is it good art or bad art?

Me: Please can you comment on why is the girl looking so very bored, and why is her hair sticking out at that angle?

Mr C: Err - I didn't know how to fix that.

So - it's art, but it isn't good art. It's technically deficient. It may also not convey either the message intended by the artist or any other message. (Those last four words are important.)

Actually Mr. B's response (with dphoadley's belief system applied) would be "because I like it and I think it is." However, even if that didn't define it as 'art' that doesn't mean it's pornography. Essentially what is being said is that it's pornography because 'me' says it is. Furthermore the response to Mr. A is in error as well for the same reason. Being a commercial product doesn't equate to being pornography. Mr. C's response begs the question, is a knowledge of artistic terminology and concepts required for something to be art? What, then, of those that are naturally gifted at expressing themselves visually who don't have the formal training and can't name the concepts (even though others who are educated can see those concepts applied well in their work)?

This is based on hazy memory of a piece in an old photogramphic magazine, late Sixties or early Seventies, and discussing what was coyly described as "glamour" photography; very soft porn, if that. The suggested distinction was whethee the photographer or the model dominated the creation of the picture. Whether the photographer seemed to be recording what the girl was doing, or whether there was a sense of something more. Of course, in those days it was harder to show anything in the UK. Topless models in newspapers were still shocking, and from where I was "Swinging Sixties" was still an ugly rumour about a few hundred people somewhere in semi-mythical London. But the idea had stuck in my mind, and it still seems to suggest something. From what I've seen, pictorial porn still seems to be observation, rather than a creation by the photographer or director.

BTW I hope my comments did not come across as attacking Phantast. This has actually been one of the best art vs. porn vs. erotica threads I seen and I have no intention of attacking anyone.

Phantast, I can not accept the intention of the creator as the basis for determining if something is pornography or art... one can innocently attempt to create art and end up with pornography or innocently set out to make pornography and inadvertently come up with art. It was a truism in art school that in the case of great art it was often the artist who was the last person to have any idea of what they were doing or what they were about.

From my perspective:

"A" might be producing great works of art but certainly if they are successful in his/her mission they will be pornography.

"B" might very well be creating art even if he/she is a blithering idiot. Again one can only hope the stuff is pornography if that is their aim :)

"C" could be creating perfect crap that utterly isn't art even if his/shis response is totally honest... many people believe they are making art while they most certainly are not. My skepticism and experience would lead me to believe that it is far more likely in this case that "B" was making art that that "C" was making art... this based on years of teaching and museum work.

In my experience talented artists, even competent artists, are seldom able to articulate in anyway what they are doing while poseurs are just full of brilliant insight into their work, rationalizations of their technique, and explications of their cultural significance.  I knew an accomplished and hugely serious and talented sculpture who did monumental abstract forms of great workmanship in steel and whenever he was asked what his work was about and how he came to it would respond "Penis fits Vagina". However this was his answer to most querys such as "Do you want a beer?" or "Is your mother coming to visit?"

The case here is that very often in my experience the best artists will insist they are "mere" craftsmen/women, that their work has not content, and they they have no idea what they are doing they just wanted to see how a certain thing would look.

AntoniaTiger's comment is very interesting, in art  is it a matter of the work is "trans formative" in that the work communicates more powerfully then the subject matter? This could be stretched to encompass matters such as spoons or a simple cup. Does this criteria of "trans formative nature" cover both good and bad art, both "communicative" and "blank" art?

I supposed in a cheesecake photograph it could be either the photographer the model or even the printer who is investing the image with its trans formative element. I had not proposed "transcendent" as a measure since that would leave out bad art, but "trans formative" would be more inclusive.... attempts at art which are not in fact art might be failed or bogus attempts at the "trans formative". Can something be truly trans formative without being art? Now we are back to the flag and my bubble is burst!

Reading here I think that "art" must be removed from the consideration of whether something is pornography. Even the US courts define obscenity as pornographic work devoid of serious educational, scientific, or artistic merit. Here they distinguish value from intent, and they suggest that pornography can indeed have serious artistic value. Maybe if we except these things we must eliminate artistic merit as a means of distinguishing erotica from pornography. We are left again with a functional cultural standard of may this image be sold at a mainstream book store or shown on television or is the subject matter and representation beyond the limits that the community will accept in the public as opposed to private realm. Will the public libraries be aloud to purchase it, could a politician discuss their appreciation for it etc. without negative repercussions. Then pornography would be material proscribed from public view but permitted in discrete private consumption and obscenity that which the community would seek to ban even from private use.

???

BTW you are not gonna see any pictures of woman topless in any American newspaper!

In the big city where I live in North America the public pool provides times for person's who are not permitted to be present with persons of the opposite sex in the pool. Some children from religious homes swim with their entire bodies except their hands, feet and, face swaddled in a combination of Lycra and loose fitting cloth. I am always horrified/amazed to see women attempting to have a coffee and a donut by sliding the food up under the veil that covers all their head but their eyes. Last summer in the park I saw a woman in a thong bikini skate by a woman in full black chador with only one eye peaking out... I wondered if they were each jealous of each other ;) In the place these very modest immigrants come from I understand that you can sell a Victoria Secrets catalog on the black market for almost $100 US! Here somepeople put even three year old girls in chador such is their concern for modesty. I am allowed to comment since I come from this ethnic group only many generations assimilated to Western life. meanwhile ther is another ellement here that so demonizes the body that spouse change into pajamas alone in the bathroom and a multitude of mitts and gloves are sold that permit you to bathe without touching yourself :) But probably the pornogrophy made here is as rude as made anywhere :)

what defines pornography is that it really is politics?

what defines it for legal purposes, sure, i think so.  beyond that my favourite sarcastic definition is:  Sexually oriented material that is not considered acceptable to the viewer; the same material when judged subjectively acceptable is often referred to as "erotica".  because that's my impression of the majority opinion after decades of listening to these types of discussions.  and those people vote for the politicians who make the law.  heck, we only have the term pornography to discuss today because in the 19th century some people in power decided that sex was bad for the masses, it sapped their precious energy which was needed to make the new industrial society run run run.  anything that distracted from that was dangerous.  and what better way to control people than to control their most primal drives?  i think gore vidal hit the nail on the head when he said "sex is politics".

Phantast, judging by intent doesn't work for me at all -- because first and foremost it requires access to the artist.  that's right out.  unless if we had access to all artists everywhere, and could raise the dead for this purpose, and assure all artists of safety from prosecution, and invented the perfect truth serum that can not only detect lies but also when people fool themselves, and give everyone the power of erudition, we would still require some external validation of that intent.  until then the jury will remain out.

and the US legal code's definition of obscenity fails for me as well because it can't stand on its own -- somebody has to be elevated to over the rest of us judge what's literally, artistically, politically, or scientifically valuable.  and those values change as society changes.  so at best we have a definition that relies on subjective criteria, "community standards", and an "average person". that definition is intrinsically bound to its time, place, and culture (as momodot so aptly pointed out with remarks about that ethnic/religious group).

i don't mind elevating experts to judge when it comes to relatively clearly measurable factors -- the FDA is a good idea (though there too one can easily see how experts might fail when the factors become complex).  i do mind it a lot when it comes to what i may or may not look at, or share with my friends, or do with my own body.  the repression of sexual imagery really bugs me because it vilifies a basic human need.

on a tangent, has anyone else noticed how the word "porn" has been taken over by some people to use in non-sexual contexts, to indicate some form of sensually loaded consumption?  there is a "food porn" community on livejournal, for example, where people talk and share pictures about great meals.

Quote - If Renderosity is so PG then I wonder why there are soooooo many nudes here?  Seems like a PG site would completely ban all nudity.  If a film has nudity it gets an "R" rating, doesn't it?

erm, no.
there are many places where artistic nudity is completely acceptable and natural. erotic is nowhere near synonymous with nudity. an erotic image can be non-nude, and a nude image can easily be non-erotic. artistic nudity, or even pinup and fetish style images (within reason) are generally totally acceptable to most people, while erotic imagery generally does not intermix well in these galleries.

that said, i honestly dont care what people do with my products. i stay away from sites like renderotica lately because while i have no problem with nudity or erotic imagery, i have an aversion to some of the mutilation, gore and other wierd stuff that proliferates there. also, a site with very few rules and low moderation generally attracts the dredges of the internet - who thrive in such an environment.

as for the debate about 'what constitutes pornography'....
everyone here damned well knows what constitutes pornography. the fact that it is even being debated is absurd.

Quote - as for the debate about 'what constitutes pornography'....
everyone here damned well knows what constitutes pornography. the fact that it is even being debated is absurd.

I honestly don't! With pornography I do "know it when I see" it but that doesn't satisfy my intelectual curiosity. I don't care for the unreflected life. My curiosity forces me to search for a way to characterize pornography... not to simply use the term to classify but instead to understand and classify the term. This started for me with the issue of whether art and pornography were catagorically compatable... my impression is that pornography and art are catagorically different rather than reflecting qualities on a spectrum, this is why things can be one both or neither of the two. I want to know not what belongs to the class "Pornography" but instead what constitutes the concept "Pornography"... if all I wanted was a guide to catagorize representations and subject matter I could "kow it when I see it" or more simply just read the TOS. Instead, how can I learn the characteristics of pornography? Not the characteristics of those things that are catagorized as pornography but of the catagory. My difficulties are plain as was shown by Phantast pointing out that I could not define "Art" in such a manner that wasn't neccessarilty inclusive of the class "flags" :(

After posting earlier this morning I went to the big ethnic food market in the neighborhood and experenced something I am embarsed to admit I often experience. When i see women in western atire I don't  "scope" to much, I am notorious for not noticing even extremes in bust size of women who I might even know well... I do check out other things to be utterly honest but overal my relation to women is pretty matter of fact... I was a dancer and then work many years in a woman dominated field. BUT when I was in the market I was so acutely aware of the sexualized body of the women in chador. Women covered all but thier eyes I felt lavasious in looking at when I spoke to them, the eyes seemed utterly intimate and I was concerned about how my gaze might seem (the girls I am thinking of here were in their mid-twenties), women in chador that showed the face seemed almost lewd, and I was very uncomfortanble going past these ladies in the naerrow isles. Freeky! Now some girls are pretty hot, and I'll look at pretty much any lady in a swim suit but with that kind of Western nudity I don't feel the erotic charge to the body that I feel when I am around traditionalist. It isn't a forbiden fruit thing at all I don''t think.... it is the identity self representation... the chador clad women is participating in the representation of the female body as lewd while the girl in the beach thong is participating in the representation of the body a normalized and common place... inocent!

OT

Word shift... "food-porn", "realestate-porn", etc.

"Gay" is being used in a few new way now, not just for something being weak like "That idea is sooo gay!" but also for when some one likes something a lot like "Man! Is your dad always so gay for your mom?" or "He is so totally gay for hockey" or "Yeah, I like the Sopranos but I'm not totally gay for it."

I saw a Simpson's cartoon where some 10-12 yearld kids catch a boy they know with his girlfriend and they say "Kissing a girl! That is so gay!"

OT

Quote - I saw a Simpson's cartoon where some 10-12 yearld kids catch a boy they know with his girlfriend and they say "Kissing a girl! That is so gay!"

heh

Quote - my impression is that pornography and art are catagorically different rather than reflecting qualities on a spectrum

i think the easiest way to categorise it is that while artistic nudes may contain nudity, and may even be arousing, their primary purpose is not to arouse the viewer.

pornography's sole purpose is to arouse the viewer. any artistic value is merely an afterthought.

although they can overlap, i suppose. some pornography has quite a bit of artistic value (whereas most is just hastily thrown together crap)... and some artistic nudes, taken out of context, can be viewed as pornography.
renderosity's TOS seems to filter out most porn-type art though, and thats good enough for me. not that i mind seeing it, just that its not very conducive to a work environment or this type of community.
 

Quote - [...]. some pornography has quite a bit of artistic value (whereas most is just hastily thrown together crap) 

Excuse me, but it's pretty obvious here that you haven't actually looked at any of the pictures that can be produced here. Not touting my own horn, but on Raunchyminds there's a LOT of pictures that, although undeniably pornographic by the definitions established in this thread, are also very very beautiful and far from "hastily thrown together crap". I suggest you take a look before you say something that categorically.

Also RM has very few rules and low moderation, but ... strangely enough we're not plagued by the scum of the Internet over there. It's all about general attitude I s'pose. "Smile and the world smiles at you" kind of thing...

I think this debate has been truly one of the best here for a long time. People has been debating with an open mind, and it's interesting how similar, yet different people view the difference between nudity, erotica and porn. Of course it's 3 different things, but again, sometimes they overlap.

That is a nice thing.

 - - -

Blackhearted... good to hear from you.

Where does erotic fit in? You have the "artistic nude" not designed to arouse (tooo much) which might be William Bouguereau? Manet? Degas? or maybe not?? and pornography designed "sole" purpose is to arouse the viewer... Egon Schiele? later Picasso? George Grosz did work that is certainly pornorphic in every sense but I dont suppose it was intended to arouse anyone sexually. Then there is pornography (art?) by someone like Jeff Koons or Cindy Sherman that seems specifically engineered to prevent somone from becoming aroused.

There is an essay "The Nude and the Naked" by Keneth Clark which is well known in art history studies. Clark said, "the nude is not the subject of art but a form of art." He said the naked figure was a figure "deprived" of clothes. Are naked people pornographic and nude people erotic?

My own criteria for "artistic nudity" in my own work is nudes that are not particularly sexual or having of sexual inuendo. Nudes that are frank :)  But that doesn't really tell me what erotica or pornography really are. A test case-by-case for thumbs up or down doesn't really satify my desire for un understanding of what are the precise determning factors.

"The Male Nude in Contemporary Photography" by Melody D. Davis is a very interesting political analysis of representations of the nude form.

ABOVE: I found a Bouguereau image that doesn't violate RMP TOS!

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I heard once somewhere the opinion that porno publisher Larry Flynt and televagilist Gerry Falwell were in the same buisness... making sex dirty.

Quote - > Quote - [...]. some pornography has quite a bit of artistic value (whereas most is just hastily thrown together crap) 

Excuse me, but it's pretty obvious here that you haven't actually looked at any of the pictures that can be produced here.

if its pornographic, its not here.
although ive seen several submissions in the rosity gallery which are blatant eroticism, theyre far from pornography.

artistic nudity = PG, erotic art = R, pornography = XXX

and i should clarify my earlier statement that 'there is no debate about what constitutes pornography':

you can debate whether something is erotic art, or artistic nude... fine art nude, eroticism, whatever the terms are. two people can look at a painting of a nude woman and one might see it as erotic, another might see it as a simple artistic nude.
but there is no real debate -- in renderosity gallery terms -- about what constitutes 'pornography'. by bringing in classic painters and how they were viewed you simple muddle things -- keep in mind that just a short while ago catching a glimpse of a woman's ankles was considered naughty. i am referring to current gallery submissions.

the rosity gallery has various forms of erotic art and artistic nudes created by people with varying tastes, skill levels and interests, but in the last 6 years i havent seen anything i would call outright 'pornography'.

Quote - Incidentally, about changing opinions in art criticism, you will find exactly the same thing in science. A way of looking at things is discarded when a more enlightened way of thinking comes along. We learn as we go. In the 19thC JS Bach was considered to have little merit as a composer. That changed, now he's considered one of the greats. That will never change - there will never be a time when he goes back to being considered third-rate.

Pretty sweeping generalization there.

Take more modern examples with music.   Some of the early rap and hip-hop acts were considered not worthy of musical attention and was largely ignored.  Now there's more appreciation for their work with the popularity of the genre as their contribution is recognized.  But if the genre loses its popularity at some point no one is going to care and they'll sink back into relative obscurity.

So yes, I can see Bach going back to be considered third rate.

Quote - the rosity gallery has various forms of erotic art and artistic nudes created by people with varying tastes, skill levels and interests, but in the last 6 years i havent seen anything i would call outright 'pornography'.

Real-life bit of artistic history that shows things aren't so clear as you make them out.   In the 1950s and 1960s there was a Montreal-based photographer who specialized in male physique photography:  shirtless, very fit men taken in usually outdoorsy settings.  The pictures were advertised in certain magazines and could be mail-ordered.

It was only in the 1970s and 1980s that is was finally realized what this was: the photographer was gay and he was supplying the pictures for a gay audience.  It was porn, at least the porn that they could get away with by disguising it as something else which gave them plausible deniability.  Nowdays, of course, where gay porn and erotica is far easier to get there isn't the need to disguise it they can be explicit.  But back in the day those semi-clothed male models (many of whom weren't gay themselves) was what they had.

Now there's appreciation of said photographers work: porn disguised as art now considered as art that used to be porn.

General question:
If my male figues are depicted in a sexually aroused state, that would condemn my 3D renders as pornographic ?  Even if done with tasteful setting, decor and lighting  ? 

And if they were shown in non-aroused state, same environments, it would be erotica ?  Or, considered just nude art like the grand masters of the Western tradition 1500s-1800s ?

I would except the erection picture as erotica if the mood is matter of fact rather than coy or lavascious but I don't think any formal guidlines or TOS would except the erection as not pornographic. I have painted the artis's model with erection but no lewdness... I know it can be done... but "The Male Nude in Contemporary Photography" by Melody D. Davis discusses in a very interesting way how the male hedimony tries to control representations of the erection and why!

As an art student I avoided painting women because at the time I was very sensitive to issues of exploitation but my images of men in classical poses was considered subversive and even enraged some people... when I was first exhibited comercially in New York city there was an attempt to pidgen hole me as a Gay Artist although my nudes were not sexual. Some gay men seemed somehow "disapointed" when they realized I was not gay... but what was really so powerful was that reaction by some people to my nudes back in art school: anger! I had chosen the male also because I wanted to not fall in the trap of making the figure beautiful or being erotically attracted to the model, but when I gave up exhibiting and became a teacher I started painting women... pretty women.

Quote -
If my male figues are depicted in a sexually aroused state, that would condemn my 3D renders as pornographic ?  Even if done with tasteful setting, decor and lighting  ? 

And if they were shown in non-aroused state, same environments, it would be erotica ?  Or, considered just nude art like the grand masters of the Western tradition 1500s-1800s ?

male nudity in a movie might give it an R rating. a male erection in a movie will give it a XXX one instantly.
a nudist colony or beach generally has hundreds of nude people - men women and children. it is an environment thought of as natural and non-sexual by most people there. they dont go there to get their rocks off, but rather to relax and become comfortable in their own skin. see how long you last walking around one with an erection. they have strict policies against photography, overt public affection/sexuality, hitting on people, bringing in pornography, sexually explicit language, even suggestive jewelry.

these days in most cultures nudity in itself is not pornography. suggestive nudity can cross the line into erotic art. i define pornography as involving sexual acts. pornography can be artistic, but this is generally an afterthought and not the primary purpose.
things change with the times. these days i wouldnt even call Playboy pornography -- but rather a mens magazine with some nudes.

Quote - So yes, I can see Bach going back to be considered third rate.

Utter fluff. Bach will never be considered "third rate" by anyone who knows what they're talking about.

Quote - > Quote - So yes, I can see Bach going back to be considered third rate.

Utter fluff. Bach will never be considered "third rate" by anyone who knows what they're talking about.

That's the Fallacy of Circular Reasoning.

"I am right, and anyone who knows what I'm talking about knows I'm right, so if they say I'm wrong they clearly don't know what they're talking about."

It occurred to me that we are not differentiating personal taste from quality. Sometimes one can recognize quality without liking what is depicted (for example I highly respect the music of Steely Dan and it's clearly very well done but I don't personally enjoy very much of it). To that end I'm throwing these definitions up as ideas. Art Self expression through some medium that is separate and distinct from the artist. (includes visual arts, sculpture, writing, music etc.) Good/bad art The degree that the self expression conforms to the aesthetic standards and principles of the culture. Liked/disliked art The completely subjective degree to which an individual viewer values the art. Erotica/porn Artistic expression that elicits sexual arousal. The difference between the two being the degree of arousal that is elicited and the explicitness of the content. Since sexual arousal is a very subjective thing the difference between the two is also very subjective.

Quote - > Quote - > Quote - [...]. some pornography has quite a bit of artistic value (whereas most is just hastily thrown together crap) 

Excuse me, but it's pretty obvious here that you haven't actually looked at any of the pictures that can be produced here.

if its pornographic, its not here.
although ive seen several submissions in the rosity gallery which are blatant eroticism, theyre far from pornography.

Of course not. The post was referring to Raunchy Minds. And the "here" wasn't meant as a place pointer, more like the first "here" i the sentence. If I said "Now listen here" I don't mean you have to go to Denmark to meet me and hear me actually say it either...

Quote - i define pornography as involving sexual acts. pornography can be artistic, but this is generally an afterthought and not the primary purpose.

Now that's way too broad.

If "involving sexual acts" is defined as pornography than you've just lumped in the majority of modern film and television, most novels, and the Bible.  All of which contain suggested or explicit "sexual acts".

Pornography isn't involving sexual acts, it's meant to cause a sexual action (sexual release through masturbation, or some form of excitement related to sex).  That's why porn is largely in the eyes of the beholder.

Meanwhile you have sexual acts that are portrayed for many other reasons, including those involving an erect penis.  The glowing condom "dueling penis" scene from the Blake Edwards film "Skin Deep" is utterly hysterical and clearly meant as comedy, not as pornography.

For the uninitiated, John Ritter is having sex with a woman in a completely dark room, but he's wearing a luminous condom.  You see it appear and disappear a few times with appropriate sounds...and then the door opens and in walks the woman's significant other, unaware that she was cheating on him.  And he's ready for action, hot to trot, ready and willing, pick your phrase.  And he's wearing a glowing condom as well.  And sees (because of the glowing condom Ritter is wearing) that he's being cheated on.  What follows is a physical scuffle the viewer hears but only sees throught the movement of these two glowing condoms like some demented lightsaber battle before Ritter flees the room and the ticked-off guy.

Let's see, there's the rape seen in "A Clockwork Orange".  Meant not for sexual titillation but to express how demented Roddy MacDowell's character was and provide justification for the revenge carried out on him later by the couple.

"American Beauty", where everyone is cheating with everyone else and the repercussions thereof.

And so on and so forth.

Now, when it comes to the galleries here there's not an issue with certain guidelines being set about what is allowable or not through some criteria.  But don't pretend that means you've clearly defined pornography because there are plenty of images, some with people not nude at all, that could be used to the same ends.

i think that even you will admit that the above is more the exception than the rule.  your above example from skin deep also lacks nudity, which i believe - in some form - is an essential component  of pornography.
its a pretty safe bet that most often nudity + sexual acts = pornography.

nothing in this world can be defined by an unwavering, straightforward definition. there are always exceptions.
that said, i should refine my personal 'opinion' though:
erotic art is meant to arouse, and pornography is erotic art that depicts explicit sexual acts. i left that out above.

while i think erotic art (in advertising, marketing, media, etc) definitely has its place in our everyday world, pornography is better left behind closed doors. renderosity is a community trying to reach the broadest public - family - audience. if anything, as they market to a wider audience the gallery and marketplace restrictions will get tighter, rather than laxer.

bobasaur - thats an interesting point. if one were to go to renderotica, for example, and select 50 images at random from  the  various softcore/hardcore galleries there...
then assign each image a ranking of 1-10, with 1 being innocent artistic nudity, 5 being eroticism, and 10 being shameless pornography.
then give each of the same images a 1-10 ranking on quality and artistic merit, with 1 being the lowest quality and 10 being the highest, i am willing to bet that you would notice an inverse relationship between explicitness and quality.
of course this is a massive generalisation, but based on my past experiences id be willing to bet its pretty accurate. there are of course exceptions -- ive  seen some very talented people there put out work that is pure pornography and in total contrast to what i just said. but overall in my experience there, here at rosity and in other galleries the above relationship is more or less accurate.

the conclusions you draw from it, of course, are highly debateable.

I know I'm not Bobasaur, but I still object to your idea that "blatant explicitness = crappy render" - quite the contrary in my expirience. Again, I'm not referring to Rotica because I look far too rarely at their galleries, so perhaps we're just lucky and have all the great artists over at RaunchyMinds? I dunno, but I DO know that there's a lot of the pictures there that are technically perfect, yet still are very very explicit porn.

There are crappy renders too (though actually not very many, and some of them will likely be mine) - but look in any Poser gallery, whether or not it's consisting of NVIATWAS or not, and you'll see a lot of beginners doing pictures, and intermediate, and then the people who can really do magic in Poser and create stunning pics. Just because the subject is porn doesn't mean people spend any less time on them, quite the contrary. I know one artist who PAINTS the most amazing female genitalia, as postwork, because there aren't any of the Poser oens that are REALLY good enough for closeups. And that is not something you just slap on in a matter of minutes. It takes a LOT of time. And IMO it's art. But it's also porn.

We have an Image of the Week gallery there where the best picture of the week is selected by the admins. It means we have to look at all new pictures posted within the last week, so in essence it means we do look at all the pics there. And if you look at which pictures are chosen there you will see that, allthough they're all of a very very VERY high standard, artistically, there's also a lot of them (not all, but well it IS an erotic themed site) that are porn by most definitions.

Heh, this discussion has moved so rapidly it's hard to catch up! So a few summary points -

Bobasaur - I didn't take your comments as a personal attack, but I think you misread my last post. I was taking it that the pictures of A, B and C were all sexual in subject and so could be considered pornography if they weren't art.

Blackhearted - I think we agree pretty much. If the primary purpose of a work is to cause sexual arousal then it's pornography. But the emphasis has to be on primary. I would say that a work of art could cause arousal but still be primarily art - in which case it isn't pornography. Back to intent.

And as to whether this is a useless distinction because one can't ask dead artists about their intent - well, I was giving the easy example where A, B and C can be cross-examined. In the case where you can't ask the artist, you have to form your own judgement as to what the intention was. The work itself should provide an abundance of clues for those who can read them.

Keith - sorry, but xoconostle is right, and it isn't a fallacy. It's a matter of understanding.

Ernyoka1 - you are being hard on Rotica; there is some excellent stuff posted there, of very high quality. There is also some chaff, but you get that at any community site. Equally, I can't speak about RM, which I know I should visit more, but I find the layout of the site off-putting.

Waaaay too serious, all this!

IMO, you may get some erotic pleasure from Poser if you roll up the manual and...

:D

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Ernyoka1 - you are being hard on Rotica; there is some excellent stuff posted there, of very high quality. There is also some chaff, but you get that at any community site. Equally, I can't speak about RM, which I know I should visit more, but I find the layout of the site off-putting.

If you think so, then you haven't read my posts properly.

I merely said I didn't KNOW about Roitica because I browser their galleries too seldom. That's not being harsh I think.

I said, which is true, that there's a lot of awesome and stunning art/porn on Raunchy Minds. I know that because I've seen it. That's not saying the same thing isn't true about Rotica, again, I just said I didn't know.

I like Renderotica but due to time restrictions I don't go there much. it's definately not for lack of ..er.. lust...

Quote - as for the debate about 'what constitutes pornography'....
everyone here damned well knows what constitutes pornography. the fact that it is even being debated is absurd.

Ain't that the truth!

no, it ain't the truth.  witness that despite the bald assertion that even debating it is absurd, blackhearted is now up to his neck in precisely the same discussion that the rest of us have previously managed to have without throwing out malarkey such as that.  here's a thought:  if you think a discussion is absurd, don't participate.  i'm gonna stay out of this turn of the debate because it's just the same old stuff that i've heard a million times over (which doesn't imbue it with any more insight or truth).  it's hard to have a good discussion in forums that digs a little deeper, and i appreciate that several of you hung in here this long and tried to look at things from different points of view.  that was really interesting.

Bobasaur, you tried to define art as:
Self expression through some medium that is separate and distinct from the artist. (includes visual arts, sculpture, writing, music etc.)

why separate and distinct from the artist?  what about dance?  singing, for that matter?  spoken poetry?  acting?

and does "self expression" relate only to things intrinsic to the artist's personality (which is how i normally interpret that term)?  for me there is more to it than that -- i am almost more interested in expressing things that aren't part of me at all, but that affect me in some way.  are my ideas about the world still categorizable as "self expression"? 

Maybe Blackhearted is just trying to throw some cold water on a heated discussion...maybe?

Good questions. I had included singing and poetry because the artist is using something else - words and music rather than him or her self. I hadn't thought about dancing though, and I do consider that artistic. Maybe it would have been better to say something like, "an intentional attempt to convey meaning through aesthetics" but that's probably too abstract. I'll have to think about that. Hopefully the importance of the distinction between quality vs. "liking it" made sense though. That often gets blurred together when people are talking about good/bad art. As far as the "self-expression" part, in my mind expressing things about something that affects you is still expressing yourself. You would be expressing your views, thoughts, feelings, impressions on whatever it was.