But is it art?

Nymphs and satyrs.

Today’s dilemma is the hoary old chestnut where art ends and porn begins. I suppose I’d say that it depends on the purpose or intention. If titillation, then porn; if not, then art or instruction (e.g. The Lover’s Guide series). But I can imagine that I might be confused by, say, style, because if someone put the effort in, you could do porn in the style of art. For example, it might be sepia pictures with a nice studio background, but the participants neither engaged with each other nor the audience. It just has to appear sophisticated in the right way and the content becomes acceptable because you can start talking about the composition and symbolism.

It also works the other way. If an artist made pictures of people having sex out of vegetables or glitter or ground-up crayons, we’d judge that to be art. It’s curious (perhaps) that the less realistic the depiction, the more acceptable it is. To use two real live humans in photographs would be least acceptable of all, I think. In other words, if our blushes are largely spared, we’re OK with it.

Tomorrow, we’re into the world of pop music. Think of the children!