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 :)