Erotic art
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Erotic art covers any artistic work including paintings, sculptures, photographs, music and writings that is intended to evoke erotic arousal or that depicts scenes of love-making.
Definition
Some believe defining eroticism may be difficult since perceptions of what is erotic fluctuate. For example, a voluptuous nude painting by Peter Paul Rubens could have been considered erotic or pornographic when it was created for a private patron in the 17th century. Similarly in the United Kingdom and United States, D. H. Lawrence's sexually explicit novel Lady Chatterley's Lover was considered obscene and unfit for publication and circulation in many nations thirty years after it was completed in 1928, but may now be part of standard literary school texts in some areas. In a different context, a sculpture of a phallus in Africa may be considered a traditional symbol of potency though not overtly erotic.Difference with pornography
A further distinction needs be made between erotic art and pornography, which also depicts scenes of love-making and is intended to evoke erotic arousal, but is by definition not fine art. However, no such objective distinction exists; the (lack of) distinction is sometimes facetiously summed up as "That which I like is erotica; that which you like is pornography."Ancient erotica
Paleolithic
Among the oldest surviving examples of art are paleolithic cave paintings and carvings. Among the more common images of animals and hunting scenes, depictions of human genitalia, thought to be fertility symbols, may be found. For example, a recently discovered cave art at Creswell Crags in England, thought to be over 12,000 years old, includes some symbols thought to be stylized versions of female genitalia. However we have no indication that these were made for erotic stimulation, it is far more likely that these were objects used in religious rituals. [link]
Greece
The earliest clearly salacious depictions of sexual behavior can be found on ancient Greek ceramics. Some of them are renowned because they contain some of the earliest known depictions of same-sex erotic behavior.Pompeii
Another famous example comes from the Roman town of Pompeii which was simultaneously destroyed and preserved by the eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79. Several of the houses excavated had rooms with detailed and sexually explicit murals.
Kama Sutra
The Kama Sutra is a famous sex manual written in India. It is still used today and shows many positions and techniques to enhance the enjoyment of the intercourse.
Modern erotica
In Europe, starting with the Renaissance, there was a tradition of producing erotica for the amusement of the aristocracy. In the early 16th century, the text I Modi was an woodcut album created by the designer Giulio Romano, the engraver Marcantonio Raimondi and the poet Pietro Aretino. In 1601 Caravaggio painted the "Love Triumphant," for the collection of the Marquis Vincenzo Giustiniani. The latter is reputed to have kept it hidden behind a curtain to show only to his friends, as it was seen as a blatant celebration of sodomy. The tradition is continued by other, more modern painters, such as Fragonard, Courbet, Millet, Balthus, Picasso, Edgar Degas, Toulouse-Lautrec, Egon Schiele, who served time in jail and had several works destroyed by the authorities for offending turn-of-the-century Austrian mores with his depiction of nude young girls, and so on.
Today erotic artists thrive though the genre is still not as accepted as the more standard genres of art such as portraiture and landscape. We can thank the "Sexual Revolution" for reducing the limitations imposed on artists through censorship. Plus during the last few centuries society has broadened its view of what can be considered as art; several new styles developed during the 1800s such as Impressionism and Realism. This has given artists a wider spectrum to work with. We still have the traditionalist such as the erotic surrealist Anthony Christian and his students who use the same techniques that have been tried and tested by artists since the Renaissance, but we also have more contemporary artists such Marci McDonald's abstract work, and the bizarre drawings of Julian Murphy that clearly show the influences modern culture has had on Erotic Art.
Influence of technology
Technology has also had its role to play in the evolution of erotic art. The most obvious example of this would be the invention of photography. Victorian erotic photographers preferred to stay anonymous as sexual imagery was still considered indecent, but today they are free to operate openly and combined with the recent popularity of the internet there is now a wide range of work available. It should also be made clear that erotic photography is not to be confused with pornography though the line between the two is not so much thin as it is blurred, since it's really down to personal opinion of what is considered "indecent" and what is artistic.Eastern erotica
However, the Europeans pale before the great erotic artists of the east. Unencumbered by Christian dogma, Japan, China, India, Persia and other lands produced copious quantities of art celebrating the human faculty of love. The works depict love between men and women as well as same-sex love. In Japan, the erotic art found its greatest flowering in the medium of the woodblock print.
The style is known as shunga (春画 pictures of spring), with some of its greatest practitioners (Harunobu, Utamaro, etc.) producing large numbers of works. Painted hand scrolls were also very popular. The Chinese tradition of the erotic is extensive, with remarkable examples of the art dating back as far as the Yuan period (元)(1280-1367).Robert van Gulik reproduced a fine collection of 24 erotic paintings made in Ming dynasty in his book "Erotic Colour Prints of The Ming Period". Chinese sexologist Liu Dalin also reproduced a number of Chinese erotic paintings in his book "Pictorial History of Erotica in China".
Legal standards
Whether or not an instance of erotic art is obscene depends on the standards of the community in which it is displayed.In the United States, the 1973 ruling of the Supreme Court of the United States in Miller v. California established a three-tiered test to determine what was obscene - and thus not protected, versus what was merely erotic and thus protected by the First Amendment.
Delivering the opinion of the court, Chief Justice Warren Burger wrote, "The basic guidelines for the trier of fact must be: (a) whether 'the average person, applying contemporary community standards' would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest, (b) whether the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by the applicable state law; and (c) whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value."
Erotic artists
Painters
Literature
Graphic novels
See also
- Erotic literature
- Fetish art
- Homoeroticism
- L'Origine du monde
- Sex in advertising
- Nudity in art
- Shunga
- Erotic museum
- Lesbianism in erotica
- The erotic male in photography
- Sex in film
- Early erotic photography
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