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...

That is a nice thing.

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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.