Is this art or porn? *NSFW*

[JAG.]

that kinda brings up another point: a better description of porn could be to say 'the EXPLOITATION' of the human body' could be considered porn.

the human body is a beautiful creation, and theres nothing wrong with appreciating it and displaying it naturally [naturally being the keyword there]

remember that book a while back, had a bunch of photos of nude mothers holding their new babies? a bunch of werid ass photos exploring the intimate connection between a mother and her child bla bla bla..

just cuz there were nude women holding nude babies you're not gonna say thats child porn [unless you're on psych-medication]. its about a mother and her baby and their wonderful connection and the beauty of it all.. ok sure i'll buy that. its natural [sorta]

but if i show a woman sticking a cucumber up one hole and a water hose up the other while sucking down [whatever].. wtf?? how is that in any way 'natural'?? thats just dirty ass porn. end of story.

displaying the body is ok, exploiting the body and showing it.. well thats when it gets 'sticky'. but maybe im just talkin outta my ass.. - JAG

[Seedling]

However you believe that an artists work always extends past himself and on to others....this is terribly false....

Yes, this is what I believe. Every scrap of art I leave behind me will eventually fall into someone else’s hands if I do not lock it in a box under my bed and then take it out back and burn it before I die. Every last insane doodle and haiku in my sketchbooks has been and will be looked at by others, not because I necessarily wrote or drew it for anyone other than myself, but because I can’t stop the world from looking every single time.

Your implication that the bulk of my work is done for "recommendation", "patting" or "interpretation" is both wrong and rude. Would you like to be told some wrong and rude things about why you make art?

...we can only convet it within our own self indulgence and rest assured we will never fully interpret it. "but it's always nice to pretend."

“Convet”? You stopped making sense entirely in this sentence. I have no idea where you intend to go with your rant, but it has wandered too far from the topic for my taste.

[Flake]

I'm pretty sure most of my stuff will go into a skip or landfill somewhere.

[sve]

that kinda brings up another point: a better description of porn could be to say 'the EXPLOITATION' of the human body' could be considered porn.

the human body is a beautiful creation, and theres nothing wrong with appreciating it and displaying it naturally [naturally being the keyword there]


but if i show a woman sticking a cucumber up one hole and a water hose up the other while sucking down [whatever].. wtf?? how is that in any way 'natural'?? thats just dirty ass porn. end of story.

displaying the body is ok, exploiting the body and showing it.. well thats when it gets 'sticky'. but maybe im just talkin outta my ass.. - JAG

Dear Jag...what if that's what this woman wants. what if it is she who exploits her body and has a gratification from it... What if nothing else works for her? What if she doesn't feel a pain and even if she feels it that's her goal? What if she is an adult and no one is hurt in this case, but everyone is happy?
What if she feels very desirable and beautiful in this moment?
If all sides are adults and humans and it is their conscious decision and everyone is happy... there is no dirt there, IMO.
Natural? you mean like it happens with animals in nature? hehe. our bodies are a bit different from animals' and our hands have more freedom.

[Rabid]

To put the covet more clearly....plain and simple, what we see is changed ultimately by how we interpret it...you or I could take any piece of ours show it to the other and get completely different notions. People often just tend to take what they interpret it as granted and factual (covet or comforted by their absolution that what they think the piece is is correct). They are unaware of their lack of knowledge about the artist themself. I don't consider it rude whatsoever, nothing I said was demeaning, simply put....your worried about what "others" will think too much, even after your dead for crying out loud....you should be aware of that if it is your goal through your art, but understand that nothing is shown in complete clarity from artist to spectator....

to quote Puddnhead: "design from your heart...if you don't your work will end up looking like everyone elses with fig leaves over crotches...." "When your designing from your mind it's not like you can control it or something...I don't believe your ideas should be sensored by what others think of it..."

One of the many keys to originality in my opinion....

[Flake]

Sve makes good points.

[Rabid]

Yeah the drawing is kinda growing on me

[Act.Appalled]

surprised no one posted these specially since he has a piece extremely similar to that of bhanu's or other way around...whatever....good ol kevin llewellyn. Hope he doesn't mind me posting these.

for those that missed kevin's thread here it is...
http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=92429

[Torgovix]

I have a whole book full of drawings more sexually explicit than that. Its Grande Finale by Ashley Wood. And its all art.

I would have mentioned Kevin Llywellyn but I was beaten to it.

[Rabid]

Sry guys, Llywellyn's biggest fan here

Holy shit! I didn't even see this thread thanks Act. Appalled !!! I owe you!

[Mungus]

My impression of Bhanu's picture is that he wants to stimulate and tittilate either himself and/or other viewers, the picture succeeds in a tiny way, maybe more from knowing the artist wants to tittilate others rather than something from the picture itself, but, anyway, that's a tangential topic for later.

I would bet my life savings that most artists who depict nudity, sexual acts etc, are more conscious of the stimulation value (sexually or controversially) than it's artistic values.
When I draw a tree, I don't exclaim to myself "wow, what art!", I'm first saying "wow, what a tree!"

I can't stand it when people aren't sure what to think, so they blindly climb on some moral high ground with the "it's ART" argument...even though no-one in the known galaxy has summarised the meaning of the word ART to everyone's satisfaction.

Bhanu's motive's and subject get my approval, unlike Bhanu's dad, who gets my Dickhead of the Year award. (No sexual connotation intended)
Hey, Bhanu, be sure to send him an email with a hyperlink to this discussion.

ok, maybe not.....

[aesir]

Art "can" be innapropriate at times. It's very situational.

[Jazz]

Bhanu, as far as your picture goes (and before I answer your actual question), it looks like the girl is enjoying herself, that's for sure! It's really hard for me to tell what intentions lie with her emotion and position. I don't like the position, myself. I guess I'd seen too much risqué art with that type of pose.

As it is, it's pretty naughty looking to me. That could be because of the lines you made in the drawing. Sure it's art, if you deem it so. Naughty art, in my view.

Heh... If I drew such a pic, I'd definitely have to try hiding it from my family. I don't call them prudish, though. It's just not what they like to see, and I respect that. Of course, some friends of mine wouldn't mind such a picture. Like some have said already, it depends on the person.

Now, back to you and yours.

I'm wondering, how DID your Dad come upon the picture? It's not at all nice that he threw your picture away like that. Still, there's an outlook that you'll need to accept with him, especially if he needs to accept what you do: He doesn't favour that type of picture. He doesn't think that it's art, and even if a billion comments claim that it is, those comments don't belong to him.

I hope you and your Dad work out your differences on the matter though. I'm sure you don't want the tension between you and him. Maybe he'll calm down with his responses. At least I hope he will. I certainly empathize with you. I've had a few incidents with more questionable things I drew.

PS: I shook my head at some of the comments. A few mentions of bhanu's Dad, religious people and hypocracy. I don't see how bhanu's Dad was being a hypocrite (unless I missed a post from bhanu about how). And, for the topic, it doesn't matter WHERE the word "porn" came from, who made it and why, does it really?

Grief!

[Zergaloth]

solution:
keep drawing them.
hide them from your parents.
show them to your friends.

[Chiko]

I think that it is art. I may not like it, your parents might not like it, but to you this sketch is a piece of art. There are so many different opinions on this planet every form or artwork will somehow offend someone at some point in time. I think that anything that is drawn, photographed, made in any form of media can be offensive to some, and art to other.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=pRJQ_S8Rjro

Take for example the Pyramid head scene from the Silent Hill DVD. He's clearly raping a demonic nurse, but I still love that video. Yet if people like my parents saw it, they would freak out.

[Elwell]

Less talk, more pics!

[Brendan N]

K, just my 2c:

The Deconstructionists of the post modern era realised something the modernists never got - the viewer is far more central to making meaning out of a piece than the artist is. Meaning where interpretation is concerned the viewer is more involved than the artist.

So it will really depend from person to person and no one's right and no one's wrong - it's what you make of it.

Elwell - ooh, I like where you're going with this.

[sve]

Shunga, Japanese erotic art. I took it from this site
http://www.robynbuntin.com/Japanese/g_shunga.asp

There is colored drawing by James Jean, Succubus. It got it all, very provocative but very beautiful IMO: compositionally, in colors, lines, everything, emotion is very bright too. I love it. I took it from his site.
http://www.jamesjean.com/
I think it was influenced by shunga. The third one has a beautiful composition with two bodies, male and female with different colors of skin.

I would mention Toulouse-Lautrec and his pastels too. Influenced by Japanese art as well, together with Edouard Manet and his Olympia posted earlier by someone.

Someone mentioned Jean-Antoine Watteau and French school. My favorite writer Galsworthy wrote, that no one (well, in his time) can make human lust look so attractive as Japanese or French artists.

And here sculptures from some person's blog. They look a bit too technical, but there is some beauty in them. beautify of well fit human bodies, mostly.

http://infostore.org/info/1772529
I don't know who did them unfortunately.

[BANNED_For_POOPY_PANTS]

Considering the fact that we don't really need to see a human being's actual sex organ to appreciate his/her natural anatomy, most of the pics posted so far in this thread would qualify, imo, as porn.

Not that there's anything wrong with that, of course..

[LaPalida]

It's art. It's porn. It's pornographic art?

... and here are my contributions to this thread

Tijuana Bibles http://www.tijuanabibles.org/cgi-bin...gi?action=home

Pablo Serpieri http://images.google.com/images?q=se...search&start=0

Kama Sutra Sculptures http://images.google.com/images?svnu...=Search+Images

Hajime Sorayama http://images.google.com/images?svnu...rayama&spell=1

HR Giger http://images.google.com/images?svnu...=Search+Images

Dorian Cleavenger http://images.google.com/images?svnu...=Search+Images

Luis Royo http://images.google.com/images?q=Lu...&start=36&sa=N

[Darasen]

I am going to disagree with everybody most likely. (Dons flame retardant suit) The image in the OP is neither. I do not believe every poorly drawn naked female in a teenagers spiral notebook or what have you is art. this image is simply a crude drawing neither erotic as it is far too crude nor artistic for the same reasons.

[ArtIsZen]

bhanu.
Art or Porn ? won't get into that debate.
Everyones opinion of what porn is differs, but obviously your Dad thinks it is porn and in your household that is what matters. You won't win this argument, so keep drawing and hide the sketches he will not approve of.

[LaPalida]

that kinda brings up another point: a better description of porn could be to say 'the EXPLOITATION' of the human body' could be considered porn.

the human body is a beautiful creation, and theres nothing wrong with appreciating it and displaying it naturally [naturally being the keyword there]

remember that book a while back, had a bunch of photos of nude mothers holding their new babies? a bunch of werid ass photos exploring the intimate connection between a mother and her child bla bla bla..

just cuz there were nude women holding nude babies you're not gonna say thats child porn [unless you're on psych-medication]. its about a mother and her baby and their wonderful connection and the beauty of it all.. ok sure i'll buy that. its natural [sorta]

but if i show a woman sticking a cucumber up one hole and a water hose up the other while sucking down [whatever].. wtf?? how is that in any way 'natural'?? thats just dirty ass porn. end of story.

displaying the body is ok, exploiting the body and showing it.. well thats when it gets 'sticky'. but maybe im just talkin outta my ass.. - JAG

I'm surprised no one looked it up

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erotica

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pornography

Pornography sometimes shortened to porn or porno, is the explicit representation of the human body or sexual activity with the goal of sexual arousal. It is similar to, but distinct from erotica, which is the use of sexually arousing imagery used for artistic purposes only. Over the past few decades, an immense industry for the production and consumption of pornography has grown, due to emergence of VHS, DVD and the Internet.

In general, "erotica" refers to portrayals of sexually arousing material that hold or aspire to artistic or historical merit, whereas "pornography" often connotes the prurient depiction of sexual acts, with little or no artistic value. The line between "erotica" and the term "pornography" (which is frequently considered a pejorative term) is often highly subjective. In practice, pornography can be defined merely as erotica that certain people perceive as "obscene." The definition of what one considers obscene can differ between persons, cultures and eras. This leaves legal actions by those who oppose pornography open to wide interpretation. It also provides lucrative employment for armies of lawyers, on several "sides."

The distinction between erotica and pornography (as well as the lesser known genre of sexual entertainment, ribaldry) is difficult to identify, if not completely impossible. Proponents for erotic art argue that such work is intended to arouse aesthetic rather than erotic feelings, and is therefore not pornographic. Opponents see this as a pretentious stand, as they believe that erotic art shares the same purposes as pornography. Stephen Gilbert once remarked "The difference between erotica and pornography is simple. Erotica is what I like. Pornography is what you like, you pervert!"[citation needed] One common joke is that "the only difference between art and pornography is a government grant." Another is: "Erotica is when you use a feather. Pornography is when you use the whole chicken."

The issue of whether a distinction can be made between erotica and pornography raises multiple complicated questions. These questions include whether aesthetic and erotic feelings are mutually exclusive, how the level of commercialism and tastefulness in an artwork can be objectively measured, and at what point they make the work pornographic.

In general, "erotica" refers to portrayals of sexually arousing material that hold or aspire to artistic or scientific merit, whereas "pornography" often connotes the prurient depiction of sexual acts, with little or no artistic value.

Jag, comon you can't seriously be using the "it's not natural" argument. If you go down that road then you'll have to concede that these are not art either because the body isn't portrayed naturally

http://www.worth1000.com/cache/conte...play=photoshop

http://images.google.com/images?svnu...=Search+Images

http://images.google.ca/images?q=fau...=1&sa=N&tab=wi

http://images.google.ca/images?svnum=10&um=1&hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&q=mermaid+drawing&btnG=Search+Images

[Flake]

Luis Royo

Some of his paintings and sketches are just gorgeous.

[Mr. Indigo]

Originally posted by sve
Because this drawing was torn out of the sketch book or wherever it was drawn and thrown in a trash can...

So? What is your point?

[Konstruktion]

Damnit does it matter whether its porn or not, one thing I know is I dont want to see them penises! Damn!

[Seedling]

To put the covet more clearly...

You had misspelled “covet” so poorly that I couldn’t tell what word you intended.

your (sic) worried....

No, I’m not worried. But you seem to insist on telling me about myself, and I have a policy of not continuing in dialogue with people who insist on telling me about myself, so congrats, you have earned a vacation on my ignore list.

[Brendan N]

I am going to disagree with everybody most likely. (Dons flame retardant suit) The image in the OP is neither. I do not believe every poorly drawn naked female in a teenagers spiral notebook or what have you is art. this image is simply a crude drawing neither erotic as it is far too crude nor artistic for the same reasons.

I don't mean to be rude, but dismissing something from wide embrace of the term "art" due to its subject matter or level of skill applied is crude, sir. What bhanu has there is most definitely art. Whether it's pornographic, though, is up to the viewer in my opinion.

[Robert.B]

wow.........

[JAG.]

[QUOTE=LaPalida]...Jag, comon you can't seriously be using the "it's not natural" argument. If you go down that road then you'll have to concede that these are not art either because the body isn't portrayed naturally ...QUOTE]


nosense.. those are plainfully art because theres nothing 'erotic' or sexual about them.. just because a body is nude, doesnt have to mean its 'sexual', for instance a cadaver or something [unless you're a necrofile]

maybe i should have clarified 'sexually unnatural'

SVE: theres nothin wrong with a woman doing what she needs to do to feel gratification, satisfaction, or happiness.. in any sense. but thats a personal matter. displaying it, whether its a drawing or photograph etc, with someone who isnt involved in that specific action.. well thats just pornographic, naughty stuff.. not art.

but a friend brought up an interesting point [and we're gettin a bit off topic here] but he mentioned to me about those images and such of people 'eliminiating waste'.. dunno why some actually enjoy seeing that but theres plenty of it out there, and its considered porn. even though that 'business' is in no way sexual, it sexually arouses those who chose to view it for pleasure. so would that be porn?? i dont see anything artistic about it..

anyway, this is getting out of hand. and like i said, i think his drawing could be classified as art.. its just of a pornographic nature - JAG