1000 Erotic Works of Genius. Victoria Charles
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Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, USA/ ADAGP, Paris
© Rudolf Schlichter
© Karl Schmidt-Rottluff Estate, Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, USA/ VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn
© Ulo Sooster
© Antoni Tàpies Estate, Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, USA/ VEGAP, Madrid
© Vladimir Tatlin Estate, Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, USA/ ADAGP, Paris
Tom of Finland 1986 © Tom of Finland Foundation
www.TomofFinlandFoundation.org
© Suzanne Valadon Estate, Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, USA/ ADAGP, Paris
© Elena A.Volkova
© Kees Van Dongen Estate, Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, USA/ ADAGP, Paris
© Marcel Vertès
© Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts/ Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, USA
Art © Estate of Tom Wesselmann / Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY
Introduction
Erotic art or pornography?
“That which is pornography to one person is the laughter of genius for the other.”
The term ‘Erotic Art’ is muddied by a miasma of ambiguous terms. Art and pornography, sexuality and sensuality, obscenity and morality are all involved to such an extent that it seems almost impossible to reach an objective definition, which is not unusual in the history of art. How is it possible to speak of erotic art?
This much is certain: the depiction of a sexual activity alone does not raise a work to the nobility that is erotic art. To identify erotic art only with its content would reduce it to one dimension, just as it is not possible to distinguish artistic and pornographic depictions only by describing their immoral contents. The view that erotic works are created solely for sexual arousal and so cannot be art is erroneous as well. Does the creative imagination brought to erotic art distinguish it from pornography? Yet pornography is also a product of imagination. It has to be more than just a depiction of sexual reality, however, or who would buy it? Günter Schmidt states that pornography is “constructed like sexual fantasy and daydreams, just as unreal, megalomaniacal, magical, illogical, and just as stereotypical.” Erotic daydreams – they are the subject of erotic art as well. Those making a choice between art and pornography may have already decided against the first one. Pornography is a moralising defamatory term. What is art to one person is the Devil’s handiwork to another. The mixing of aesthetic with ethical-moralistic questions dooms every clarification process right from the start.
In the original Greek, pornography means ‘prostitute writings’ – that is, text with sexual content – in which case it would be possible to approach pornography in a free-thinking manner and equate the content of erotic art with that of pornography. This re-evaluation would amount to a rehabilitation of the term.
The extent to which the distinction between art and pornography depends on contemporary attitudes is illustrated, for example, by the painting over of Michelangelo’s Last Judgment in the Sistine Chapel. Nudity was not considered obscene during the Renaissance. The patron of this work of art, Pope Clement VII, saw nothing immoral in its execution. His successor, Paul IV, however, ordered an artist to provide the Last Judgment with pants!
Another example of the difficult relationship between society and erotic art is the handling of the excavated frescos of Pompeii which were inaccessible to the public until recently. In 1819, the Gallery of Obscenities was established in the Palazzo degli Studi, the future National Museum where only people of mature age and known high moral standards had access to the locked room. The collection changed its name to Gallery of Locked Objects in 1823. Again, only those with a royal permit were able to view the exhibited works. The reactionary wave after the unrest in 1848 also affected the erotic collection of the museum. In 1849, the doors of the Gallery of Locked Objects were closed forever. The collection was transferred to a still further removed section of the museum three years later, with even the doors leading to that area being bricked up.
Not until 1860, when Guiseppe Garibaldi marched into Naples, was reopening of the erotic collection even considered. The name of the collection was then changed to the Pornographic Collection. Over time, many objects were removed from this collection and returned to the normal exhibits. The history of the Gallery thus provides an overview of the mores of the last three centuries. Not every age is equally propitious for the creation of eroticism and its associated matters. It can even become its confessed enemy. For example, the libertine environment of the Rococo period created a very favourable atmosphere for eroticism and erotic art. Erotic art, however, is not only a reflection of achieved sexual freedom; it can also be a by-product of the suppression and repression with which eroticism is burdened. It is even conceivable that the most passionate erotic works were created not in spite of, but rather because of, the cultural pressures on sexuality. In nature, the instinct-controlled sexuality of animals is not erotic. In eroticism, however, culture uses nature. Whereas sexuality as an imperative of nature – even in humans – is timeless, eroticism is changeable: as culturally conditioned sexuality, it has a history.
Eroticism thus would have to be understood as a socially and culturally formed phenomenon. In which case, it is the creature of moral, legal, and magical prohibitions, prohibitions which arise to prevent sexuality harming the social structure. The bridled urge expresses itself; but it also encourages fantasy without exposing society to the destructive dangers of excess. This distance distinguishes eroticism from sexuality. Eroticism is a successful balancing act that finds a precarious equilibrium between the cold flow of a rationally organised society – which in its extremes can also cause the collapse of the community – and the warm flow of a licentious, destructive sexuality.
Yet, even in its tamed versions, eroticism remains a demonic power in human consciousness because it echoes the dangerous song of the sirens – trying to approach them is fatal. Devotion and surrender, regression and aggression: these are the powers that still tempt us. The convergence of desire and longing for death has always played a big part in literature.
Insofar as eroticism consists of distance and detours, the fetishist constitutes the picture-perfect eroticist. The fetishised object, in its fixed, tense relationship with what is immediate, is more significant to the fetishist than the promise of fulfilled desires represented by the object. The imagined body is more meaningful than any real body.
Collectors are eroticists as well. While the lecher or debaucher is active in real life, the collector lives with a chaste heart in a realm of fantasy. And is it not true that the chaste heart can relish the delights of vice even more deeply and thoroughly than the unbridled debaucher?
Distance permits freedom. Art, too – which can also represent a fetishistic production for the artist – affords freedom. It affords the freedom to play with fire without being burned. It appeals to the eye; it allows toying with sin without having actually sinned. This freedom through distance can be noted when observing the different reactions of viewers when looking at sex magazines and works of art: have you ever seen the viewer of a porn magazine smile? A quiet cheerfulness, however, can be observed frequently in viewers of works of art, as if art brings forth an easing of the compellingly sensual. Those, however, who in a derogatory manner pronounce a work of art pornographic prove nothing more than that they do not have any appreciation of what is artistic in the object depicted. Turning away in disgust does not necessarily have to be a characteristic of a special morality. Such people have a non-erotic culture. Eduard Fuchs, the past master of erotic art, whose books were accused of being pornographic during his lifetime, considered eroticism the fundamental subject of all art: sensuality is said to be present in any art, even if its objective is not always of a sexual nature. Accordingly, it would almost be a tautology to speak of ‘erotic art’.
Long before Fuchs, Lou Andreas-Salomé had already pointed out the true relationship between eroticism and aesthetics: “It seems to be a sibling growth from the same root that artistic drive and sexual drive yield such extensive analogies that aesthetic