Contemporary Art and Pornography:

The Female Nude Image

by

Marisa Ann Kurtz

A thesis submitted in conformity

with the requirements for the

Master’s Degree in Contemporary Art

Sotheby’s Institute of Art

2013

12, 167 words

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Contemporary Art and Pornography:

The Female Nude Image

By: Marisa Ann Kurtz

The female nude is one of the most prevalent representations in the history of art. Over the years,
the female form has taken on a multitude of associations. The nude began as a goddess of antiquity. From
there, she has become a tool for social and political expression. The invention of the photograph
transformed the female nude into the naked women. The medium of photography changed how to look at
an aesthetic object. The inherent realism of nude photographs paved the way for the creation of modern
pornography. Today’s most popular female nude is the pornographic image that circulates unhindered on
the Internet. Through the works of several photographers, this thesis seeks to determine the relationship
between contemporary art and pornography as well as the boundaries between an artistic image and a
pornographic image.

2
  

Table of Contents

Introduction p. 6-9

Chapter One: Representations of the Female Nude p. 10-15

Chapter Two: Erotic Imagery and The Development of Pornography p. 16-22

Chapter Three: Ideas of Looking p. 23-28

Chapter Four: Art Criticism and Pornography p. 29-36

Chapter Five: Contemporary Art and Pornography p. 37-46

Traditions of Nudity p. 38-41

The Accused p. 41-43

Pornography as Art p. 43-46

Conclusion p. 47-48

Bibliography p. 49-51

3
  

Illustrations

Fig. 1. Venus of Willendorf, 24,000-22,000 BCE; Oolitic limestone; 11.1 cm high; Photograph ©
Don Hitchcock, 2008

Fig. 2. Titian, Venus of Urbino, 1538; oil on canvas; courtesy Uffizi Gallery Florence

Fig. 3. Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, The Turkish Bath, 1862; oil on canvas; 1.08m x 1.10m;
courtesy Louvre Museum Paris

Fig. 4. Edouard Manet, Olympia, 1863; oil on canvas; H. 130cm; W. 190cm; Photograph ©
RMN-Grand Palais (Musée d'Orsay) / Hervé Lewandowski

Fig. 5. Pablo Picasso, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, 1907; Oil on canvas; H. 243.9; W. 233.7 cm;
Photograph © 2003 Estate of Pablo Picasso/Artists Rights Society

Fig. 6. Tom Wesselmann, Great American Nude #57, 1964; acrylic and collage on board;
H. 48 in; W. 65 in; Photograph © 2001 by PSMG, Inc

Fig. 7. Jemima Stehli, Strip No. 4, Curator, 1999; Chromogenic print; H. 17.25 in; W. 10.5 in;
set of 12 C-Type photographs mounted onto aluminum; Photograph ©2013 Stephen
Daiter Gallery

Fig. 8. Gustave Courbet, The Origin of the World, 1866; oil on canvas; H. 46m; W. 55cm;
Photograph © RMN-Grand Palais (Musée d'Orsay) / Hervé Lewandowski

Fig. 9. Katy Grannan, Dale, Southampton Avenue (III), 2007; archival pigment print on cotton
rag paper mounted to Plexiglas; H. 40 in; W. 50in; Photograph © Artnet Worldwide
Corporation

Fig. 10. Katy Grannan, Untitled, 1998; c-print; H. 44.5 in; W. 35in; Photograph © Artnet
Worldwide Corporation

Fig. 11. Renée Cox, Yo Mama’s Black Supper, 1996; Photograph © Renée Cox

Fig. 12. Robert Mapplethorpe, John N.Y.C., 1978; Photograph © Robert Mapplethorpe

Fig. 13. Jock Sturges, Flore et Fredeìrique, Montalivet, France, 1989; silver gelatin; H. 10.5in;
W. 13.5in; Photograph © Jock Sturges

Fig. 14. Thomas Ruff, Nudes in 03, 2000; c-print mounted on Plexiglas; H. 140 cm; W. 100 cm;
Photograph © Rubell Family Collection

4
  

Fig. 15. Image blonde-dildo-high-heels-jasmine-rogue-sophie-moon-twistys13; Photograph ©

SexNod

Fig. 16. Thomas Ruff, Nudes ree07, 2000; chromogenic print; H. 110.2 cm; W. 136.2 cm;
Photograph © Thomas Ruff

5
  

Introduction

The debate between art and pornography is a hot subject among academics for several

reasons. On a fundamental level, pornography is provocative and taboo. There is an inherent

fascination with an image that should not but nonetheless does excite. There is a pre-rational

curiosity inherent in pornographic images only to be secondarily suppressed. Also, the debate

involves a variety of disciplines among them aesthetics, psychology, sociology, gender, and

sexuality. The multitude of discourses assures the debate remains complex in approach and

conversation. Hans Maes notes, “The fact that we speak of consuming pornography and of

appreciating art indicates that there is a fundamental difference in how we are meant to engage

with both kinds of representation.”1 What makes the debate between art and pornography

controversial is the inability to clearly define the boundaries of sexually explicit images. On

pornography, United States Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart famously said, “I don’t know

how to define it, but I know it when I see it.”2 It is easier to classify images that fall at the

extreme ends of the scale but impossible to say where one category starts and the other ends. Not

all pornographic images are obscene or dirty. Likewise, some pornographic images can be

considered beautiful but this does not necessarily make them art.

This thesis will focus on the female nude form as it is portrayed through the medium of

photography in contemporary art. The main question is how to comprehend an image that has

both an aesthetic appeal and a sensual appeal. From the beginning of artistic production, the

human body has been a popular subject for representation. In particular, the female nude has

often been a site of controversy marked by time and place. During the Renaissance, the female

                                                                                                                         
1
Hans Maes, “Who Says Pornography Can’t Be Art,” in Art and Pornography: Philosophical Essays, ed. Hans
Maes and Jerrold Levinson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 22.
2
Jon Huer, Art, Beauty, and Pornography (Buffalo: Prometheus Books, 1987), 183.

6
  

nude was the visual pinnacle of art. The female nude represented ideal beauty that transcended

reality. Throughout the next three centuries, artists continually reinvented the form and context

of the female nude. In the nineteenth century, the invention of photography revolutionized the

way the female nude could be presented. Photography’s inherent realism portrayed an actual

naked woman rather than the imagined ideal nude. Almost immediately, governing bodies

enacted laws against obscenity in order to control the decency of nude images. Legal systems

created a division between artistic works and pornography. Pornography is the forbidden end that

all all forms of visual representation are judged against.

Critics are divided between images as well as the basic definitions of words like “art,”

“erotica,” and “pornography.” While one art critic may define erotic art as nudity that falls

within art’s conventions, another critic may declare any sexually explicit image pornography. It

is necessary to define these terms before I continue. Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary defines art as

“the conscious use of skill and creative imagination especially in the production of aesthetic

objects.”3 This thesis focuses on the fine arts which include but are not limited to images or

objects in the mediums of drawing, sculpture, painting, photography, and film.

Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary defines erotic as an adjective “tending to arouse sexual

love or desire.”4 Thus erotic art is the production of an aesthetic image or object that stimulates

sexual desire without being explicitly pornographic. Eroticism provokes but does not overpower.

Erotic art is a zone of tension between art and life allowing the viewer to dwell in stimulation

                                                                                                                         
3
“Art,” Merriam-Webster Dictionary. Accessed September 7, 2013, http://www.merriam-
webster.com/dictionary/art.
4
“Erotic,” Merriam-Webster Dictionary. Accessed September 7, 2013, http://www.merriam-
webster.com/dictionary/erotic.

7
  

while appreciating the formal, expressive, social and political aspects of the representation.5 At

times, erotic art and pornography both feature sexually explicit imagery.

The word “pornography” derives from the Greek pornographos meaning writing about

prostitutes. Pornography debuted in English dictionaries in the mid nineteenth century.6 The

word first appeared in a medical dictionary regarding prostitution’s effect on public health. In

1864, Webster’s Dictionary defined pornography as "licentious painting employed to decorate

the walls of rooms sacred to bacchanalian orgies, examples of which exist in Pompeii."7 When

the ancient city of Pompeii was unearthed, excavators discovered pornographic representations

and hid them in a secret museum. While the secret museum was closed to the public, word of the

fascinating and forbidden images spread. Before common usage, pornography was referred to as

obscenity. At the time, pornography was associated with provocative literature meant to entertain

as well as arouse. Today, Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary describes pornography in three ways:

the depiction of erotic behavior (as in pictures or writing) intended to cause sexual excitement,

material (as books or photograph) that depicts erotic behavior and is intended to cause sexual

excitement, and the depiction of acts in a sensational manner so as to arouse a quick intense

emotional reaction.8 Since the genesis of the word, pornography has been a contentious subject.

Chapter One briefly outlines the transformation of the female nude form from antiquity to

present day. The features of the female nude are historically and culturally fluid. Chapter Two

traces the history of erotic imagery, sexually explicit imagery, and eventually pornography. The

chapter explores how the photograph revolutionized the availability of erotic imagery and the

origin of modern pornography. Chapter Three examines how the medium of photography

                                                                                                                         
5
Jerrold Levinson, “Erotic Art and Pornographic Pictures,” Philosophy and Literature 29, no. 1 (2005).
6
Lynn Hunt, introduction to The Invention of Pornography, ed. Lynn Hunt (New York: Zone Books, 1993), 13.
7
Walter Kendrick, The Secret Museum (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), 13.
8
“Pornography,” Merriam-Webster Dictionary. Accessed September 7, 2013, http://www.merriam-
webster.com/dictionary/pornography.

8
  

changed the relationship between the artist and the subject depicted. Also, this chapter considers

ideas of looking and the gaze of the viewer. Finally, the chapter discusses the evolving

relationship between the viewer and the image. Chapter Four focuses on several approaches to

the pornography debate including censorship, morality, feminism, artistic intent, and intended

effect. Chapter Five details several contemporary artists working with or around themes of

nudity. In recent decades, art has drawn upon and critiqued pornography. Several artists working

in the medium of photography have been accused of producing pornographic content and

censored. Others have used pornography as an image source in their works.

Overtime, the traditional female nude transitioned into the naked women. Pornography is

no longer a subject on the fringe of society. In popular culture, sexually explicit images

reproduce and circulate unchecked by boundaries of technology or censorship. It is the intention

of this thesis to discover the relationship between pornography and contemporary art as well as

encourage its dialogue.

9
  

Chapter One: Representations of the Female Nude

Throughout the history of art, depictions of the female form vary greatly. Statuettes,

sculptures, paintings and photographs chronicle the female nude’s transformation through the

centuries. Artists have used the female nude as allegory, saint, Madonna, and whore. The female

nude is among one of the most loaded representations in artistic production. Prehistoric images

of women, like the Venus of Willendorf, show the female nude as a symbol of fertility (Fig. 1).

The eleven centimeter high statuette was believed to be created between 24,000 and 22, 000 B.C.

The true utility of the figure is unknown but the breasts, abdomen, and vulva are emphasized

suggesting the importance of reproductive values. It is likely the statuette represented women in

general as she lacks any individual characteristics. Similar statuettes, also termed “Venus,” have

been found at sites of early civilization.

The Greeks invented the modern nude as we know it. The first nude sculptures were not

females but males traditionally referred to as “Apollos.” In Greek culture, nudity was common in

sport and religious ceremonies. The Greek people appreciated perfection in physical form and

this interest was reflected in their sculptures. In the interest of perfection, Greek artists strove to

perfect the nude form rather than imitate nature. Artists and philosophers alike saw the ideal

form as a postulate for ideal beauty. Female nude sculptures mostly depicted the goddess

Aphrodite or other divine beings. Female nudes were carved with draped garments meant to

enhance the curved forms of the otherworldly females.9 Nude sculptures of Aphrodite embodied

physical desire but the sculptures were foremost objects of religious veneration. The Greeks and

the later Romans also painted the nude female form on pottery. On pottery or in frescos, nude

figures represented mythological characters and occasionally scenes from daily life.

                                                                                                                         
9
Kenneth Clark, The Nude: A Study in Ideal Form (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1956), 79.

10
  

In late antiquity, the development of Christianity emphasized piety and chastity. Thus,

representations of the female nude are almost non-existent except in the narrative of Adam and

Eve. Adam and Eve’s nakedness came to represent their sin and by proxy the human temptation

to sin. The nude was revived in the fifteen century with the birth of the Renaissance. Artists

transitioned from makers of a craft into intellectual circles. At this time, artists began to seek

established academic training. Renaissance history painting drew on themes from the Bible,

ancient history and classical mythology. Drawing from classical antiquity, academic training

embraced the nude male form. Studies of the male nude concentrated on anatomy, proportion,

and composition. Often, figures were sketched as nudes for anatomical reference and later

clothed during painting. When nude, male figures or lightly draped females flaunted a painter's

skill and stood as an academic achievement of perfect formal units. Leonardo di Vinci and

Michelangelo are famous for their masterful male nudes. Male and female semi-nude or nude

figures were permitted because these paintings were meant to extol moral and heroic virtues.

Another theme of the Renaissance was an interest in the beauty and mystery of the

natural world. The female nude flourished as an allegorical character of celestial beauty. Lynda

Nead explains, “The female body – natural, unstructured – represents something that is outside

the proper field of art and aesthetic judgment; but artistic style, pictorial form, contains and

regulates the body and renders it an object of beauty, suitable for art and aesthetic judgment.”10

Painters like Botticelli drew on representations of Venus and the Graces. Like the earlier Greek

female nudes, many of the figures wear draped sheer garments. The celestial Venus, seen in

paintings like The Birth of Venus, paved the way for representations of the female nude without

protective clothing.

                                                                                                                         
10
Lynda Nead, The Female Nude: Art, Obscenity and Sexuality (London: Routledge, 1992), 25.

11
  

Painters of the High Renaissance, like Titian, embraced female nude figures with ample,

sensuous curves. The figure of Venus moved from a natural landscape into interior settings.

Idealized female nudes recline comfortably on luxurious beds and couches. Titian’s fleshy nudes,

like Venus of Urbino, lay upon one arm with the body facing toward the viewer (Fig. 2). As in

classical sculptures and Renaissance paintings, these nudes often look away in a blissful state.

Here, the female nude is rendered passive and contemplative. This type of depiction became a

formula for producing appropriate female nudes.

During the eighteenth century and nineteenth century, classical culture and the female

nude enjoyed the prestige of high art. Immanuel Kant popularized the notion of aesthetic

pleasure and intrinsic beauty within the realm of art. Enlightenment aesthetics associated the

female nude with sensory beauty.11 Though the male nude was studied and represented in

ambitious history paintings, “the nude” as a term became associated with the female subject.

Artists continued to treat the female nude within conventional artistic codes. At this point, it is

interesting to note “the male identity of artist and connoisseur, creator and consumer of the

female body is fully installed.”12 The patron, artist, and viewer are male looking at the female

body. The idea of the artistic genius is inevitably connected with male sexuality.

By the middle of the nineteenth century, the female nude starts to reflect different parts of

society. Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres painted female nudes from the imagined East. His

paintings reflect French society’s interest with the exotic “Other.” In Odalisque with Slave, a

female nude reclines atop a bed in much the same manner of Titian’s fleshy nudes. The Turkish

Bath portrays a harem of female nudes relaxed and sedated (Fig. 3). The artist was interested in

showing these women in a sexual yet passive manner. Ingres never actually visited the Orient he
                                                                                                                         
11
Kenneth Clark, The Nude, 162.
12
Lynda Nead, The Female Nude: Art, Obscenity and Sexuality (London: Routledge, 1992), 13.

12
  

depicted; his nudes are likely based on European models. In both cases, nudity was acceptable

because the foreign girls were seen as characters separate from the civilized world of Europe.

Manet’s Olympia portrays the stark nudity of a prostitute (Fig. 4). In an interior scene,

she reclines upon a bed abiding by artistic convention; however, rather than look away, the

woman confronts the viewer’s gaze. Manet’s figure demands the viewer admit her nakedness

rather than appreciate her form. Kelly Dennis writes, “ A deliberate quote of Titian’s Venus of

Urbino, by then part of the high-art canon, the Olympia serves to undermine the sense of entry or

access to viewing that was typified by the Venus but also established as a defining characteristic

of the painted nude.”13 The individual character of the figure transforms the nude from a female

type into a real woman. Not only is the women depicted realistically but Manet surrounds her

with attributes of a high-class prostitute. The painting highlighted prostitution, a common social

practice, thought outside the bounds of high art. From this point onward, artists use the female

nude as a creative and critical tool.

By the twentieth century, artists began to revolt against the strict doctrine of the academy.

Artists embraced the concept of the nude rather than the anatomical properties of the body. For

example, surrealists saw the female body as a site of desire, fear, and mystery. On the other hand,

Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon reconfigured the form as well as the context of the female

nude (Fig. 5). Like Manet, Picasso chose the prostitute, an already controversial member of

society, to make his radical departure from modern painting. The artist abandoned traditional,

European perspective in favor of a two-dimensional picture plane. The nudes are comprised of

angular forms and have faces inspired by primitive African masks. Not only are the prostitutes

available for purchase within the narrative of the painting, the figures offer themselves to be

consumed by the artist and subsequently the viewer.

                                                                                                                         
13
Kelly Dennis, Art/Porn: A History of Seeing and Touching (Oxford: Berg, 2009), 81.

13
  

With the rise of modernism and the avant-garde, Carol Duncan argues that the reason so

many seminal works from this period are nude is because they originate in and are sustained by

male erotic energy.14 Willem de Kooning is known for his series of women featuring sensous,

full figured women that represent females through the ages. Starting with the Abstract

Expressionists and continuing into Pop Art, The female nude, painted by the male artist, is

sensual and abstract. Tom Wesselmann's series of Great American Nudes employs the Western

tradition of a female nude reclining in an intimate domestic space. He alludes only to the

female’s overtly sexual parts like her lips, nipples, and pubic area. He packages the female nude

as eroticism for sale. Wesselmann shows the American women as seductive, depersonalized, and

most significantly as a commodity.

Although a seemingly overworked subject, the body has been a huge concern for

contemporary artists. At a visceral level, the body and the nude are our most recognizable subject

manner. David McCarthy states, “The nude allowed artists to tie themselves to an ongoing

tradition while also examining the dramatic changes in society that placed the body, its pleasures

and experiences, at the very center of human consciousness.”15 Artists of the 1960s and 1970s

explored the body in relation to growing attention on race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality.

Artists like Carolee Schneemann, Ana Mendieta, and Hannah Wilke used their own bodies as

sites for exploration into stereotypes of the female sexuality.

In the twenty-first century, the body is experiencing a crisis in representation as a result

of digital technologies. Unlike a photograph, depictions of the body are not grounded in a

material object. The digital image complicates our corporeal relationships. The female nude is

                                                                                                                         
14
Carol Duncan, “Virility and Domination in Early 20th Century Avant-Garde Painting,” Artforum 12 (1973), 36.
15
David McCarthy, “The Nude That Darling of the Artists, That Necessary Element of Success,” in The Nude in
Contemporary Art, ed. Harry Philbrick (Ridgefield: Herlin Press, 1999), 75.

14
  

by no means a new concept; the nude has both evolved and devolved throughout this time. Along

the way, the question of nudity became a question of obscenity. The female nude became the

naked women.

15
  

Chapter Two: Erotic Imagery and The Development of Pornography

In the previous chapter, I have traced the history of the female nude as a subject. At this

time, it is appropriate to trace the history of erotic imagery, sexually explicit imagery and the

creation of modern pornography. Like the female nude, explicit imagery dates back to antiquity.

The ancient Greeks adorned their civic centers with erotic friezes that contained nudity and

sexual narratives. The ancient Greeks and Romans did not have a concept of pornography; the

cultures were merely depicting scenes of daily life. Similarly, Asian civilizations like Japan,

China, India, and Persia produced erotic painting. India produced the world’s most famous sex

manual, Kama Sutra, still widely referenced today. These civilizations would have seen these

depictions as facts of life.

Conventional theory surrounding the fall of Rome often notes the civilization’s

decadence. Christianity did not support Rome’s sexual pervasiveness. The early church did

feature erotic imagery but as a representation of sin. Suggestions of eroticism were acceptable if

they provided moral instruction. Well into the nineteenth century, this idea of morality insured

that artistic works for public display only featured nudes that fell within classical or mythological

boundaries.16 The Post-Puritan papacy deemed many of the early church’s representations of sin

lewd. As a result, the Church had licentious sculptures removed and paintings whitewashed. This

campaign against obscenity was the first instance of state intervention into pornography. By

suppressing explicit images, the papacy actually gave the images a great deal of power. The legal

structure of the day could not regulate how a person would react to an image so they announced

a list of banned items and arrested any violators. This effectively put a legal structure around the

act of looking at sex.

                                                                                                                         
16
Alan Moore, 25,000 Years of Erotic Freedom (New York: Abrams, 2009), 16.

16
  

The history of obscenity began with classical literature. These forms of pornography

were limited to educated gentlemen versed in Greek and Latin. Eventually, these classical texts

were translated and new and cheaper forms of print technology commercialized literary print

culture. When the general reading public grew, the production of pornographic works, intended

to entertain as well as arouse, grew as well. The sexual repression of the Victorian Era increased

the escapist fascination with pornographic novels.17 Soon, obscenity trials aimed to ban

pornography. Obscene lines or ideas were censored from texts or banned altogether.

Pornography, as we know it, is a concept created in the Victorian Era. Lynn Hunt states,

“Although desire, sensuality, eroticism and even the explicit depiction of sexual organs can be

found in many, if not all times and places, pornography as a legal and artistic category seems to

be an especially Western idea with a specific chronology and geography.”18 The definition of

pornography is also culturally fixed. In the mid eighteenth century, an Italian peasant discovered

the untouched ruins of Pompeii. Upon excavation, sexually explicit representations threatened

the way Victorians saw the classical world as an ideal society. These representations depicted

every kind of sexual act with every kind of partner and in some cases bestiality. For example,

one sculpture features a god, Pan, copulating with a goat. Excavators locked away these

sculptures and paintings in a secret museum in Naples. By taking what the Romans would have

seen as tame or humorous images and hiding them away, the excavators destroyed the original

context of the works of art. Removing the images from their original context created

pornography. The secret museum was meant to keep obscene objects away from women,

children, and the lower classes. Victorian society believed that sexually explicit images could

                                                                                                                         
17
Steven Marcus, The Other Victorians (New York: Basic Books, 1964).
18
Hunt, The Invention of Pornography, 10.

17
  

become an addiction and distract people, namely the poor and uneducated, from their proper

jobs.

Before the invention of the printing press, sexually explicit images were limited to upper

class males because they were handmade and therefore expensive. It was thought gentlemen

scholars were well educated enough to be able to identify the line between art and obscenity.

These men could be trusted not to lose themselves to human behavior. Gentlemen created private

collections and exchanged pornographic drawings and illustrations. The invention of the printing

press ushered in an explosion of pornography. For the first time, it was profitable to copy and

distribute images on a large scale. In addition, the legal system created a taste for the forbidden.

In Britain and especially France, pornographic images accompanied political pamphlets.

Illustrators ridiculed royalty in the interest of individual freedoms. In revolutionary France, they

drew Queen Marie Antoinette copulating with the impotent King’s brother.19 These

compromising positions attracted the reader’s interest and humor. After initially interested by the

illustration, the reader would attend to the pamphlet’s textual propaganda. The greater realism

allowed by the printing press also increased the circulation of masturbatory pornography. The

French are credited as the worldwide supplier of nude photographs by the early 1860s.20 As was

the case with the increasing availability of print novels, the reproducibility of the photography

introduced pornographic images to a wider public.

The boundary between the aesthetic and the obscene became more complicated with the

invention of the photograph in 1839. The history of the camera is vastly older than the history of

photography. Although the notion of the camera obscura dates back to the ancient world, camera

                                                                                                                         
19
Pornography, directed by Fenton Bailey, Chris Rodley, Dev Varma, and Kate Williams (2006; Port Washington,
NY: Koch Vision, 2006), DVD
20
Anne McCauley, Industrial Madness: Commercial Photography in Paris 1848-1871 (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1994), 161-2.

18
  

pictures were first scientifically explored in the late Renaissance.21 The camera obscura used a

hole to project an image outside of the box upside-down onto a surface; however, this device

could not permanently capture an image. The history of photography began when chemical

reactions with light fixed the camera’s image. Throughout the nineteenth century, inventors like

Louis Daguerre and William Henry Fox Tablot, experimented with the photographic process.

Photography was popularized through daguerreotype portraits. After all, this development in

photography was much cheaper and faster than oil painting. Unfortunately, the daguerreotype

was limited to a single photograph and could not be reproduced. The invention of the negative

allowed for reproduction and became the preferred method of photography. As a mechanical

process, photographs conveyed a record or fact that was seen as objective and impartial.

Eventually, photography was used to record travel, medicine, war, motion, and science. As the

photographic process matured, exposure time shortened and the materials necessary to create a

photograph became more available. The scientific advancement of the photograph was a natural

successor of visual representation in the West.

Critics of artistic photography argued the mechanical process did not bear the distinct

marks of the artist’s hand and thus lacked artistic merit. Art critics often referred to photography

negatively when describing a painting that did not transcend the mind but merely recorded the

facts of the world.22 Art photography’s original purpose was for academic studies. The

photograph was useful as a first sketch in an elaborate composition. Art photographers stove to

separate their work from the archival mode associated with documentary photography. By the

end of the nineteenth century, art photography grew in popularity among artists. Photographers

began forming camera clubs and photographic societies that gave birth to publications like

                                                                                                                         
21
Beaumont Newhall, The History of Photography (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1982), 9.
22
Ibid., 83.

19
  

Camera Work. From here, the camera and the photograph were cemented as instruments of

artistic practice.

The unprecedented realism of photography directly related to the real world. Almost

immediately, photographs with sexually explicit images arose. Academic female nudes, called

académiques, faced away from the camera or wore sheer veils. Académiques were created for

both academic and erotic purposes. Under the guise of academic photography, these nudes could

be registered with the French government for sale. The first personal photographic nudes were

luxury items much like the early daguerreotypes. Often framed and encased in velvet, the images

were owned by men of financial status and viewed in private.23 Similarly, stereoscopic

daguerreotypes, viewed through a special binocular lens device, added to this aspect of

discretion. Stereoscopes created the illusion of a field of depth by superimposing two slightly

different images onto a singular plane. The binocular vision in combination with the two slightly

discrepant images produced an “eerie paradox of tangibility, the illusion of an accessibility to

touch, and the sense of the proximity of object to viewer.”24 Stereoscopes changed the nature of

the experience because there was a sense that the viewer was alone with the picture.

The industrialization of photography gave every man the ability to take nude

photographs. It was not necessary to be trained by the academy in order to produce and sell

images. Secretly, legitimate photographic studios produced pornographic sets of female nudes on

handheld cards. The trading of pornography was still underground because the images could not

be registered for sale with the government. This type of production professionalized the

pornographic market. At the turn of the century, halftone printing lead to the creation of the mass

market magazine Halftone printing allowed for the cheap production of magazines that could be
                                                                                                                         
23
Dennis, Art/Porn,76.
24
Linda Williams, “Corporealized Observers,” in Fugitive Images, ed. Patrice Petro (Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1995), 12-13.

20
  

widely circulated. Originally, these productions masqueraded as “art magazines” but soon gave

way to soft-core pornography. For decades dirty magazines, like soft-core Playboy and later

hard-core Hustler, were pornography’s chief vehicle. Unlike handheld cards, magazines featured

full-page spreads. By the middle of the twentieth century, glossy (or girlie) magazines embraced

the increasingly fragmented consumer market. Magazines began to specialize for different

personal tastes like breasts or legs. Soon, there was a pornographic magazine for every

readership niche. The ownership of an individual magazine allowed the viewer to be alone with

pornographic material. The sensual experience of touch increased the girlie magazine’s

masturbatory function. Similarly, the viewer could control the pages of his sexual material

pausing longer at some images or ignoring others altogether.

In the late twentieth century, this appreciation of control carried over to the video

revolution. Although German gentlemen could view film pornography in brothels as early as

1904, adult theaters in the United States didn’t arise until the 1970s. Of course, the sensation of

touch was prohibited in public theaters. Unlike cinema, the invention of video allowed viewers

greater control; viewers could fast forward, pause, and rewind. The majority of pornographic

material was increasingly produced on videotape. The popularity of the videotape moved

pornography out of the public and into the home. Just like the pornographic magazine, the video

industry specialized in every kind of scenario imaginable. As technology evolved, viewers made

their own pornographic videos replicating themselves as sexual images. The power of the image

was now completely in the hands of the viewer. The viewer could be producer, star, and later

observer.

21
  

Today, pornography is available to every household via the Internet. Pornographic

images are always available for immediate download. As a result, the pornographic market

continues to profit as a fixture of mass culture. Linda Williams elaborates:

To me, the most eye-opening statistic is the following: Hollywood makes approximately
400 films a year, while the porn industry now makes from 10,000 to 11,000. Seven
million porn videos or DVDs are rented each year…Pornography revenues-which we can
broadly be constructed to include magazines, Internet Web sites, magazines, cable, in-
room hotel movies and sex toys – total between 10 and 14 billion collars annually.25

The “porn industry” is a churning machine of mass produced commodities. The Internet’s

mass proliferation of images revolutionized the way viewers look at sexually explicit imagery.

The introduction of pornography to the Internet complicates how the viewer consumes the naked

female body.

                                                                                                                         
25
Linda Williams, “Porn Studies: Proliferating Pornographies On/Scene: An Introduction,” in Porn Studies, ed.
Linda Williams (Durham: Duke University Press, 2004), 2.

22
  

Chapter Three: Ideas of Looking

The boundary between a female nude and a pornographic image is complex. While both

may contain sexually explicit imagery, the female nude is ideal whereas the naked female body

is too close to nature. Kenneth Clark associates the term “nude” with formal artistic qualities

while the term “naked” suggests a figure deprived of clothing and implies shame or

embarrassment.26 The painted female nude is a representation of female sexuality as opposed to a

naked female photograph of real female sexuality. Previously, artistic conventions mediated the

nakedness of the female body. Nead writes, “The transformation of the female body into the

female nude is thus an act of regulation: of the female body and of the potentially wayward

viewer whose wandering eye is disciplined by the conventions of protocols of art.”27 Prescribed

rules in the conventions of painting and drawing alleviated the anxiety of what to look at and

how to look.

Since antiquity, the female nude has been a mostly passive being. The artist adverted eyes

her eyes so that the viewer could gaze upon her form unchallenged. Traditionally, there is a clear

divide between the artist (male) and the object he depicts (female). Berger writes, “On the one

hand the individualism of the artist, the think, the patron, the owner: on the other a hand, the

person who is the object of their activities – the woman – treated as a thing or an abstraction.”28

Historically and as a group, males have had more opportunity and power to stare than their

female counterparts. The woman, as a representation, has been shaped by erotic codes into a

sexual object of the male gaze.29 At the most fundamental level of the academies, art students

(male) learned to master the nude form (female). Life drawing classes encouraged the active
                                                                                                                         
26
Clark, The Nude, 3.
27
Nead, The Female Nude, 6.
28
John Berger, Ways of Seeing (London: Penguin Books, 1972), 62.
29
Laura Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” in Art and Theory: 1900-2000, ed. Charles Harrison and
Paul Wood (Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 2003), 986.

23
  

male and the passive female. The idea of the artistic genius is inevitably connected with male

sexuality.

In 1998, artist Karen Finley attempted to break this stereotype; however, the nudity

featured in her performance lead to a censorship case. Finley v. National Endowment for the Arts

set “standards of decency and respect” that affect funding for artistic projects in public spaces. A

week later, the Whitney Museum in New York City canceled a separate Finley exhibition with

three other performance artists.30 Finley moved her performance/installation, Go Figure, to The

Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art. According to the exhibition’s catalogue, “Go Figure

consists of a gallery in the Museum which has been converted into a life drawing classroom.

Everyday the exhibition is open there will be drawing classes, with a model and an instructor,

open to any Museum visitor. Participants are invited to pin their finished works on the walls of

the gallery for public viewing.”31 Finley’s exhibition works to undo the traditional relationship

between model, artist, instructor, and viewer. The artist uses the traditional setting of an

academy/gallery but invites any gender or age to draw the nude model (male or female). Her

goal was to undo the long-standing gender stereotypes. Instead of the power asserted by a male

artist or instructor onto the female model, everyone can look or be looked at. The artist invited

the museum’s visitors to participate in staring at the model’s nakedness. The actual naked model

shocked members of the public. Nudity is acceptable as tradition but nakedness is not. Her

significant attempt to obliterate the gendered gaze was lost on viewers focused on the naked

body. Nudity in art is altogether welcome, but nakedness in the real world is for private viewing.

As with paintings in the Salon, the fundamental issue of the female nude is not nudity but

indecency. The nineteenth century suffered a crisis in representation as photography challenged

                                                                                                                         
30
Harry Philbrick, “A Nude in our Time: A Brief Rumination on the Nude in Contemporary Art, in The Nude in
Contemporary Art, ed. Harry Philbrick (Ridgefield: Herlin Press, 1999), 13.
31
Ibid., 18-21.

24
  

the idealized painted nude. Painters combined idealized body parts in order to create the perfect

female form; however, a photograph is a direct, unmediated representation. The introduction of

nudity into photography further complicates the relationship between the viewer and the image.

Nead agrees, “The assumed immediacy and accuracy of the photographic image is invested with

a pornographic intent; whereas the abstraction and mediation of artistic methods such as painting

and drawing are believed to be contrary to the relentless realism of the pornographic intent.” In

mediums like painting and drawing, the female nude presents less of a threat than in the medium

of photography. Art invites us to think while pornography invites us to act. Photography

successfully produced reality and changed how the content of an image is represented. The

photographer cannot combine separate parts like a painter. Unlike the fictive space of an oil

painting, the pro-filmic space has a real world referent. The pro-filmic space consists of the

entire setting of an image. The setting includes models, actors, costumes, and props. In other

words, it is the content that exists before the camera. The camera frames the pro-filmic event

transforming the space into a selected image for photography or cinema.

Photography is dangerous because it comes closer than any other medium to the ability to

“simply presenting the requisite object – typically, a women or man or combinations thereof-

directly, as a material for sexual fantasy and gratification.”32 Similarly, the camera is a sort of

detached eye. We have an idea that we see exactly what the photographer saw. The

photographer’s choice to depict certain sexual objects or scenes provokes specific reactions.

Unlike cinema, a pornographic photograph does not need to lean on formal considerations to

benefit a narrative. Rather the purpose of the image is to seduce and inspire sexual arousal.

Selecting a particular frame within the pro-filmic event directs the viewer’s eye. John Berger

notes, “Photographs are not, as is often assumed, a mechanical record. Every time we look at a
                                                                                                                         
32
Levinson, “Erotic Art,” 232.

25
  

photograph, we are aware, however slightly, of the photographer selecting that sight from an

affinity of other possible sights.”33 The material was actively selected. In post-production, the

image was cropped for the purpose of dissemination. In the case of pornography, the image was

captured, produced, and sold with the intent of being consumed as pornography.

Through the image, pornography gives the viewer complete sexual control. The

photograph was a material object one could own. The pornographic photograph, magazine, or

videotape is inherently fetishistic. These mediums allow the viewer to see as well as own,

consume, and touch. The viewer experiences a level of power unequal to coporeal relationships.

Berger notes, “Almost all post-Renaissance European sexual imagery is frontal – either literally

or metaphorically – because the sexual protagonist is the spectator – owner looking at it.”34 The

female’s exposure benefits the viewer. This convention continues with the medium of

photography and becomes the natural ally of pornography. The one-sided relationship between a

viewer and an image gives the viewer total and complete control.

The gaze is used to explain the relationship between the viewer and the image. In a life

drawing class or an artist’s studio, the viewer can assume that the model would have been aware

of being looked at or aware that someone outside of the room may see the depiction. When

technology adapts to the point that it is possible to reproduce an image several times, the

awareness or knowing of being looked at gradually diminishes. The camera or reproductions of

an image taken by a camera obscures the direct gaze. Any discussion about the female nude

cannot avoid a discussion of voyeurism. Voyeur, a French term, means “the one who looks.”

Traditionally, the female nude invited voyeurism. For centuries, artists composed the female

nude based on a basic formula. The female reclined comfortably in an interior setting surrounded

                                                                                                                         
33
Berger, Ways of Seeing, 10.
34
Ibid., 56.

26
  

by lavish fabrics. She was an otherworldly type; she could be gazed upon but was out of reach.

The male gaze asserted power over the object portrayed. The gaze is decidedly voyeuristic. The

person depicted becomes an object that can be viewed at anytime. The term voyeur also takes on

a deviant meaning referring to a sexual interest or spying on people in intimate space with the

subject often unaware of the looker’s eye. There is a suggestion that laws of privacy are being

violated. Photography often allows the viewer to see an image or object they would not

otherwise be in a position to view. The voyeur can look without being seen; the camera lets the

viewer gaze without consequence.

In Jemima Stehli’s 1999-2000 series of photographs Strip, the artist attempts to

undermine the privileges of the voyeur and question the importance of the nude in female

photography (Fig. 7). The artist places her body between the camera and a male participant as

she begins to strip off her clothing. A male artist, curator, or critic sits facing the camera while

Stehli faces the participants. The male participants take photographs by using a cable release at

intervals of their choosing. Stehli uses her own studio setting and has a body that fits the mass

media’s ideal. The artist does not allow the camera to capture her frontal image. Whether her

naked body is meant to entice or fluster, the cable denies the subject the ability to control his

own representation. Although the sitter is in charge of capturing the image, the male is forced to

capture his own gaze. The gaze of the photographer and the objectifying lens of the camera are

denied a privileged view of Stehli’s naked body. The purpose of Stehli’s series is to invert the

male gaze of her participants; the series does not depend on the content of the photographs

produced. The artist removes all of her clothing but her naked body does not lend itself to

pornographic content. The series viewer is denied all but one of her sexually explicit features.

27
  

Pornography is an ally of the vouyeristic male gaze. Pornography presents an image for

the purpose of consumption. The pornographic image lacks the activity of imagination because

all the viewer needs to know is clearly and aggressively represented. The male gaze is especially

apparent in the POV category of pornography. The POV, point-of-view, spectator is no longer a

voyeur standing outside the representation. The POV is almost exclusively male and concerned

with almost exclusively male satisfaction. The amateur cameraman receives sexual gratification

from his partner through fellatio or penetration. The genre became popular with the invention of

video recorders. Amateurs took their cameras into their personal sexual acts. The image can be

produced by any person and consumed by any person. POV images allow the viewer to

experience an even more direct access to pornographic material. The viewer is no longer the

voyeur but the pseudo-participant.

The male gaze is a facet of both artistic production and pornographic consumption. The

mass proliferation of pornographic images through the Internet changed the relationship between

artist and product into viewer and image. With shifting relationships, it is often difficult to decide

what is art and what is pornography.

28
  

Chapter Four: Art Criticism and Pornography

We talk about pornography differently than we talk about other aesthetic objects like

literature, films, or paintings. As David Rose illuminates, “Accepted artistic objects are judged

aesthetically separate from any considerations of immoral practice in their production or immoral

ideas in their expression, and immoral practices or decisions on the part of artists.”35 Once a

work is labeled as art, we tend to offer opinions, criticisms, and judgment. There is an objective

character to these conversations. Artistic works refer to and comment on subjects outside of

cultural norms without bearing the accountability necessary for their production. We like to think

of a work of art as something that stands on the pedestal of high taste. In other words, a work of

art can refer to pornography and include pornographic images without bearing the label

pornographic.

A pornographic image is a sexually explicit image; however, not all sexually explicit

images can be labeled pornographic. Pornography pushes limits. We talk about the transgressive

nature of pornography as if the subject exists on the fringe of society. Art itself has often been

applauded for its transgressive qualities that push the boundaries of societal limits. The truth is

most people will admit seeing pornographic images. It is hard to passionately condemn

something you have never seen personally. The Internet allows every age access to pornographic

images and most people have explored this opportunity at one time or another. Anti-pornography

groups call for the blanket censorship of pornography. As the papacy learned, censorship often

has the opposite of the intended effect. All pornography should not be censored or prohibited

except in cases of child pornography which should be strictly regulated as so to protect children

against the abuse of adults.

                                                                                                                         
35
David Rose, “The Problem with the Problem with Pornography,” in Porn, ed. Dave Monroe (Hoboken: Blackwell
Publishing, 2010), 178.

29
  

The availability of naked images touches all aspects of the visual arts. The discussion

connects a number of social, political and economic agendas. Culturally supported laws relate

what is and what is not visually acceptable. For example, films are given ratings based on the

amount of nipple shown and it is considered “human indecency” to expose your genitalia on the

subway. In recent years, art and social critics have embraced the subject of pornography with

vigor. These critics attempt to define what characteristics or visual representations denote

pornography. When the boundary between art and pornography includes multiple sections of

academia, the approaches to defining pornography vary greatly.

Hans Maes believes critics usually draw the line between art and pornography based on

four different categories: representational content, moral status, artistic qualities, or prescribed

response.36 The most obvious way to define a pornographic image is to focus on the body parts

depicted. A pornographic image is often arrestingly anatomical. For the female, this means the

breasts and genitalia will be obviously displayed. Luc Bovens suggests that an artist will often

avoid using graphic representations in favor of suggestive features. The subjective nature of

individual characteristics triumph the mere facts of anatomy. Art relies on suggestion and

illusion. “Thus art reveals in concealing, whereas pornography conceals in revealing.”37 If the

main value of art is intellectual contemplation, lustful desires nullify the purpose of art. By

obscuring sexually explicit representations, the viewer can objectively attend to the aesthetic

considerations made by the artist. Ideally, a successful representation of the nude should be in

control of the potential risk of pornographic associations. Samuel Alexander famously quoted,

“If the nude is so treated that it raises in the spectator ideas or desires appropriate to the material

                                                                                                                         
36
Maes, “Who Says,” 18.
37
Maes, “Who Says,” 18.

30
  

subject, it is false art, and bad morals.”38 On the other hand, Kenneth Clark believes, “No nude,

however abstract, should fail to arouse in the spectator some vestige of erotic feeling.”39 Of

course pornography fails if it fails to arouse the viewer, but must a work of art fail to arouse in

order to be art? It is improbable that a successful nude representation would not affect the senses.

Frequently, both sensuality and eroticism exist within an image. What terrifies most anti-

pornography viewers is the way pornography can move our bodies without our consent. One

does not need to approve of an image or the effect of an image to experience arousal. Clark

admits, “The desire to grasp and be united with another human body is so fundamental a part of

our nature, that our judgment of what is known as ‘pure form’ is inevitably influenced by it; and

one of the difficulties of the nude as a subject for art is that these instincts cannot lie hidden.”40

Whether art or pornography, a photograph’s representational content has the ability to influence

the body. Alone, representational content cannot be the sole basis for pornography. A nude

female bottom can just as likely be captured in an Edward Weston photograph as on a

pornographic website catering to lovers of big butts.

Another objection to the proliferation of sexual images is the questionable moral status of

pornography. The Victorians believed that pornography and by extension masturbation could

lead to an addiction and cause a breakdown in society. Licentious material was destructive to

industrialization. Proponents of pornography’s immoral qualities argue that pornography is

harmful. Either pornography is harmful in production or pornography is harmful in post-

production. During production, it is unlikely that the actors are purposefully harmed. This may

seem like the case with pornographic niches like bondage. For a person unfamiliar with bondage

scenarios, these sexual acts may look as though they condone brutality and rape. In actuality,
                                                                                                                         
38
Clark, The Nude, 8.
39
Ibid., 8.
40
Ibid., 8.

31
  

participants exercise a great deal of trust with their partner between pleasure and pain in which

sadist harm is not a factor.

Critics of pornography’s moral status are much more likely to refer to the post-production

effects. Pornography can be damaging to social constructions of sexuality. Critics view the

effects of pornography as a masculine aim to exploit and objectify women. They fear

pornography as a way to subordinate women in an already male-dominated culture. Feminist

discourses in the late twentieth century were especially wary of the effect of pornographic

materials on female sexuality. Catharine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin worked extensively

on anti-pornography legislation. MacKinnon defined pornography as, “the graphic sexually

explicit subordination of women through pictures and/or words.”41 Among other acts, her

definition concerned the representation of women “dehumanized as sexual objects, things, or

commodities” and “in scenarios of degradation.”42 For those on the censorship side, pornography

supports and even encourages these actions. In her writings, Dworkin went as far as to argue that

pornography is the latest reincarnation of all the exploitation and brutality of human history.43

The feminist critique of pornography tends to declare almost all sexually explicit representations

offensive to women. In fact, some female performers believe their participation in pornography

to be empowerment for female sexuality. Moreover, this assumes that all women participating in

pornography have been forced in some way. The success of the pornographic market encouraged

the growth of the porn star. Female performers are picked for their attractiveness and willingness

to perform sexual acts. On the other hand, male performers are picked for their ability to

complete the sexual act on cue. The 1970s, nicknamed “The Golden Age of Porn,” embraced

                                                                                                                         
41
Walter Kendrick, The Secret Museum (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), 233.
42
Ibid., 233.
43
Andrea Dworkin, Pornography: Men Possessing Women (New York: Plume, 1981).

32
  

these stars as a way to market the brand of a particular company. The availability of pornography

gave these actresses international recognition.

Pornography does not solely depict the subordination of women. Most pornography is

directly at the heterosexual male viewer but pornography is a vast collection of images. Many of

these images do not fall into male-female sexual relations. The debate on pornography has

greatly avoided gay male, lesbian, and transvestite categories. Dennis observes, “Pornography in

mainstream debate is presumptively heterosexual because gay and lesbian pornography cannot

be cited as a “cause” of the exploitation of women. It tends not to be cited at all.”44 This view

suggests that only women are in danger of being harmed by sexually explicit imagery. Can

pornography not also be harmful to men? Pornography is a blanket term that includes any

number of subgenres. “By displaying sexual diversity – different positions, different partners,

different gender combinations – pornography depicts sexual activity and enjoyment outside the

boundaries of institutionally sanctioned monogamous relations. It also not infrequently

represents sex and pleasure outside of class and social hierarchies: sex: not money is the great

leveler.”45 The mass proliferation of sexual representation and pornography has larger social

implications.

Currently, the feminist camp is divided between anti-pornography (censorship) and

reading pornography as a “meaningful” text about sexual acts.46 Angela Carter insists, “sexual

relations between men and women always render explicit the nature of social relations in the

society in which they take place and, if described explicitly, will form a critique of those

                                                                                                                         
44
Dennis, Art/Porn, 10.
45
Ibid., 112.
46
Carol J. Clover, introduction to Dirty Looks, ed, Pamela Church Gibson and Roma Gibson (London: British Film
Institute, 1993), 1.

33
  

relations, even if that is not and never has been the intention of the pornographer.”47 Thus the

pornographer’s aim is not always to exploit the female form. Of course there are types of

pornography that are degrading to women like rape scenarios; however, there is not a direct link

between viewing violent pornography and becoming compelled to imitate violent actions. If

certain types of pornography are indeed harmful, this label should be applied only where

absolutely necessary. Caustiously, Helen Longino defines a harmful pornographic situation as

“verbal or pictorial material which represents or describes sexual behavior that is degrading or

abusive to one or more of the participants in such a way as to endorse the degradation.”48

Another anti-pornography argument cites the effects of false female body images. The

feminist camp focused the energy they had previously put towards fashion models and

advertising onto the surgical enhancements encouraged by professional pornography. Of course,

this ignores the fact that a huge fraction of the pornographic market embraces less-than-ideal

amateurs. Instead, Lynne Segal argues, “What women need, according to feminists opposed to

anti-pornography crusades, is not more censorship but more sexually explicit material produced

by and for women, more open and honest discussion of all sexual issues, alongside the struggle

against women’s general subordinate economic and social status.”49 Declaring all pornography

harmful is dangerous and naïve. By saturating the debate on pornography with gender politics,

these critics are unable to talk about pornography in an objective manner.

Thus, the most successful way to differentiate between art and pornography is to consider

the artistic intent of the image. Art values form, medium, and vehicle. An image aimed purely at

sexual arousal has a lesser need of formal qualities. The artistic intent of an image is “the way

                                                                                                                         
47
Hunt, The Invention of Pornography, 40.
48
Helen Longino, “Pornography, Oppression, and Freedom,” in Take Back the Night: Women on Pornography, ed.
Laura Lederer (New York: William Morrow, 1980), 43.
49
Lynne Segal, “Does Pornography Cause Violence?” in Dirty Looks, ed, Pamela Church Gibson and Roma Gibson
(London: British Film Institute, 1993), 9.

34
  

the medium has been employed to convey the content.”50 A work of art demands that the viewer

attend to its artistic dimension. Bence Nanay states, “One striking feature of most pornographic

images is that they emphasize what is depicted and underplay the way it is depicted: the

experience of pornography rarely involves awareness of the picture’s composition.”51 An artistic

image does not give the viewer the ability to see through its formal qualities. The image is a

whole rather than a number of sexually explicit parts. Nanay continues, “We experience

pornographic pictures as transparent if our experience does not involve attention to the ‘design’

or ‘configurational’ aspect of these pictures, but only to the ‘recognitional’ aspect.”52 In

pornographic images, the viewer ignores or looks through the medium in favor of the anatomical

properties shown. For an image to be considered a work of art, the viewer must pay attention to

how the image is constructed not only what the image portrays.

By definition, pornography’s aim is to excite the viewer. The pornographic image is

effective once it elicits certain body responses. While pornography is meant to arouse, art is

meant to allude to the sexual desires of the subject. Art is an intellectual pursuit while

pornography is a means to satisfy a desire. Pornography attends to what images are for rather

than what they show. For pornography, aesthetic concerns are an obstacle to arousal. Jon Huer

offers, “We could define pornography as something through which arousal is intended as an end

in itself; if the arousal is adopted, on the other hand, as a means to a larger purpose, such as a

message of the while work with a definitely symbolic and structural meaning in viewer, we may

grant it the benefit of our doubt and call it art.”53 If the image is meant to arouse foremost and

                                                                                                                         
50
Levinson, “Erotic Art,” 232.
51
Bence Nanay, “Anti-Pornography: André Kertész’s Distortions,” in Art and Pornography: Philosophical Essays,
ed. Hans Maes and Jerrold Levinson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 191.
52
Ibid., 198.
53
Huer, Art, Beauty, and Pornography, 188.

35
  

endmost, typically the image was produced as pornography with the intent of being distributed as

pornography.

Art, and likewise erotic art, can easily arouse sexual desire in the viewer. Pornography is

defined as intending to arouse for the main purpose of sexual release. There are inherent

problems with works of art intended to arouse pornographic interests in their viewer. Gustave

Courbet’s The Origin of the World is one of the most famous examples of erotic art (Fig. 8). A

Turkish collector commissioned The Origin of the World from Courbet and after a confusing

number of provenance issues the oil painting resides in the Musée d’Orsay. The painting is on

public display and is viewed as one of the great accomplishments of French art. Courbet

masterfully paints a nude female with her legs parted. A sheet covers her torso leaving one breast

exposed. Although the painting is cropped closely, the artist’s attention focuses more on the flush

tones of the skin rather than extreme detail featured in pornographic images. Pornographic

images tend to show extreme detail; females use their fingers to expose their genitalia. Courbet’s

rendering attends to an intimate reality rather than the hyper-reality of pornography; the artist

portrays only the cleft of her body.

There are also problems with “artful” pornography. While artful pornography aims at

arousal, it employs artistic quality like line and style. “Artful” pornographic images use formal

qualities to a pornographic end. The overriding goal of arousal or sexual activity will always

betray an image as pornographic. An image is considered pornography if it was produced with

the intent of being distributed as pornography. The best way to classify the debate between art

and pornography is to what aim the image aspires. Art and pornography are not and will never be

mutually exclusive. Art has been used to describe pornography and vice versa. The two are

influenced by and regarded in conversation with each other.

36
  

Chapter Five: Contemporary Art and Pornography

Even in an artistic institution like a museum or gallery, the nude has been under fire by

the general public of its particular time. When Manet’s Olympia was first displayed in the Paris

Salon in 1865, the painting was deemed indecent. Now, the painting is accepted as a masterpiece

in the art historical cannon. Origin of the World would have been considered obscene if

displayed in public at the time it was painted. Even now, viewing the painting in the Musee

d’Orsay continues to be an uncomfortable experience for some viewers. Upon visiting the

museum, the viewer experiences a self-awareness that he or she is looking at a sexually explicit

image. Rather than enjoying a private gaze, the viewer is forced to gaze in public. There

continues too be a strange tension between an artistic depiction and the reality of our bodies.

The controversy of the nude is often a “function of personal taste, which in turn is

affected by religious affiliation, educational background, economic status, sexual identity, and all

of the other variables that contribute to human subjectivity.”54 Objective measures for personal

taste or judgment do not exist. Social and cultural complicate what is publically appropriate It is

diffuclt to determine the boundaries between a sexually explicit image and an acceptable work of

art. Since the beginning of the printing press, some of the images circulated have been

pornographic in nature and/or intent. As these images came to light, they have been policed and

censored but never quieted. The urge to subdue pornographic images only added to their

popularity, fascination, and discussion.

One would hope that the artistic endeavors of the female nude would provide an

intellectual experience unavailable in pornography. The female nude seeks to a higher facet of

culture established in museums and galleries. Art institutions have an incredible amount of

influence defining art from pornography. Museums circulate postcards featuring upcoming
                                                                                                                         
54
McCarthy, “The Nude,” 71.

37
  

exhibitions of voluptuous Aphrodite sculptures. On the other hand, girlie magazines are incased

in black plastic warning off any person that might be offended by pornographic material. New

naked images create controversy but classical objects in an institutionalized context do not shock

or awe. Context is often the key element in the battle between nudity and nakedness. In an

exhibition, viewers are less likely to feel ashamed or embarrassed to look at a nude female

photograph than in a dirty magazine at a convenient store. It is possible some of these same

images would likely be accepted as art if they were on display in a renowned art gallery.

Traditions of Nudity

Working in the tradition of the nude, Katy Grannan, places newspaper advertisements

seeking art models for portraits. She adds that no experience is necessary. After individuals

contact her, she meets them in their homes, public places, or even her home. She lets her amateur

models pose wherever they like in whatever way they choose. Many of the people that reply to

her art model advertisements choose to pose nude. Although she holds the camera and places the

props, the setting is up to her models. This collaboration produces a bizarre and almost eerie set

of portraits. The artist captures a moment of blunt, often not conventionally pretty, realism

whose visual codes should read pornographic. Dale, Southampton Avenue (III), 2007 reclines

upon a pillow in her unmade bed (Fig. 9). Her pose is identical of a Venus by Titian but her eyes

confront the viewer. There is a realness to her sitters that is not present in pornographic

photography. Instead, she manages to capture perfection in outright flaws. Dale’s body blends

into the monochromatic linens and wall color. The individualism of her sitters inspires

imagination and contemplation. Dale’s eye contact challenges the viewer to read into her as a

person rather than consume her sexual parts. Although subjects may pose in a sexually

provocative manner, the photographs are not sexually explicit or threatening.

38
  

Grannan transforms the traditional nude into a contemporary, real nakedness. Yet, there

is a clear eroticism in the subject’s gaze meeting the camera in such intimate settings. The

confusion between nudity and a sexually explicit image is a symptom of cultural anxieties. It is

often hard to say if our shifting feelings about nudity are becoming more liberal or in fact more

conservative. As a function of personal taste, the nude grows more and more problematic. While

forums for publishing nude media have expanded, the criteria for establishing taste and judgment

when it comes to these images is unstable at best. What makes Grannan’s photographs successful

is the “awkward negotiations between self-image and media-image.” 55 The perfection of the

celebrity nude and the professional pornographic image create a new standard image that the

body may not be able to live up to. An earlier photograph, Untitled from 1998, shows a younger

women perched atop her bed (Fig. 10). The bed is covered in a cozy, leopard throw. The

blackened blinds and dull green plant in the background are particularly unremarkable; the two

could just have easily been found in a low budget office building. The girl poses opposite a oddly

colored but passionate figurine of two lovers. Their natural passion is offset by the girl’s hunched

pose. In mid-undress, the girl pauses to look at the camera. Although she has a body closer to the

ideals of the mass media, she does not allow the camera to use her body in such a way. She

refuses to give the viewer unnatural access. The photographer nor the sitter or eventually the

viewer sees the works as tools for sexual arousal; the photograph is a comment on the

ambivalence of nudity in our everyday lives.

Typically, artists working the tradition of the nude reference the long lineage of artistic

tradition’ however, well-established artists are not always safe from controversy. Photographer

Renée Cox uses her own nude body to explore black female sexuality through the lens of art

history. She references the lineage of the female nude in traditional conventions in order to show
                                                                                                                         
55
Carmine Iannaccone, “Katy Grannan,” Frieze Magazine, April 2001.

39
  

where she as a woman is represented in the history of art. In the Western tradition, the features of

the female nude are fair skinned and delicate. In a 2001 exhibition entitled “American Family,”

the artist took nude photographs of herself in masterpieces like Olympia, La Grande Odalisque,

and Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe. By casting herself as the classical (read: white) female nude, the

artist displays an antagonistic re-envisioning of racial and sexual stereotyping. Cox erupted into

the public eye with a show at the Brooklyn Museum which featured her 1996 work Yo Mama’s

Black Supper (Fig. 11). The large color photographic montage features five panels and is a quote

of Leonardo da Vinci’s famous The Last Supper. Cox casts herself as a nude, female Jesus with

outstretched arms surrounded by eleven dreadlocked, African American disciples and one white

Judas. The artist alone occupies the middle panel and the disciples fill up the other four panels in

groups of three. Cox does not arrange her disciples in the same arrangement as Leonardo da

Vinci but rather re-conceives their placement and poses. New York City mayor Rudolph Giuliani

immediately called for a special commission on indecency that would ban such pro-fane,

blasphemous works of art from publically funded locations. Besides the fact that indecency is

immeasurable, it is impossible to say what the mayor was most offended about. Was it the

presence of African Americans at the last supper? Was it white Judas? Was it Cox representing

herself as Jesus (which I highly doubt the artist was proclaiming herself to be)?

William Donohue, the president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights,

admitted it was the artist’s nudity that earned Yo Mama’s Last Supper its irreverent association.

At a debate between Cox and Donohue, he voiced, ''I don't care if Christ is depicted as a black

man and black woman,'' he said. ''But this is pushing the envelope.'' He added, ‘‘there would be

no problem if you had kept your clothes on.''56 Cox’s stark nakedness brought the biblical theme

too close to reality. As an artist working in the grand tradition of the female nude, Yo Mama’s
                                                                                                                         
56
Monte Williams, “’Yo Mama’ Artist Takes on Catholic Critic,” New York Times (New York, NY), Feb. 21, 2001.

40
  

Black Supper was not a controversial step within her established body of work. Christianity is

powerful part of the African American community but members often go without representation

in traditional biblical themes. The artist interpreted Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper through

the representation of people she knows through personal experience. A big part of that

experience is black female sexuality. For a subject as old as art itself, it is hard to believe that the

nude still causes such upheaval.

The Accused

Traditionally, the studio is the most established setting in photography. The studio allows

the photographer to control what the camera sees and how the viewer will see it. Robert

Mapplethrope’s photographs of bodybuilder Lisa Lyon draw on characteristics of classical

sculpture. As a discipline, bodybuilding requires perfecting the physical form. The emphasis on a

physical and aesthetic ideal transforms the female body into a work of art. The artist presents an

interesting challenge to the studio nude. Sexually explicit female representations are more

acceptable as art than male representations. Once male nudity is included, a work is more likely

to be considered pornography. Of all Mapplethorpe’s accomplishments, he is most known for his

deliberately pornographic photographs.

Mapplethorpe was the first major artist to photograph homosexual S&M practices. S&M

was and still very much is seen as a deviant sexual practice. Photographs like Mapplethrope’s X

Portfolio clearly reference a classical tradition of erotic art and refer to his experience with

pornography. The artist was inspired by pornographic images in novelty shop magazines as a

teen. He also drew from his experience as a gay male. Mapplethrope uses the language of

formalism to take artistic photographs that elicited the same intrinsic sensation he felt when

looking at pornographic material. Danto adds, “His ambition was to create work that really was

41
  

pornographic by the criteria of sexual excitement, and really was art.”57 John, N.Y.C. is a tightly

cropped image of a man inserting a dildo into his anus (Fig. 12). The artist employs hard edges

and dark chiaroscuro to show his aesthetic control in black and white photographs.58 As a whole,

the image is elegant and even beautiful. Although the portfolio is like pornography and about

pornography, the images themselves are considered high art for his classical use of the studio and

pictorial conventions.

Mapplethorpe’s 1989 traveling retrospective, titled “Robert Mapplethorpe: The Perfect

Moment,” encountered problems of censorship at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington D.

C. The Museum refused to host the exhibition because of homoerotic content. The Corcoran and

several members of the U.S. Congress felt that federal funding should not be given to obscene

works of art. This raised questions of what is deemed appropriate for public display in the arts.

These questions continue today as no law has been able to judge the limits of obscenity.

Frequently, questions of decency exist outside of the photographic frame. Jock Sturges is

known for his nude photographs of children and adolescents. In 1990, his San Francisco studio

was raided by the F.B.I. and he was accused of child pornography. The charges were dropped

and his photographs returned; however, the nudity of children, like the S&M of Mapplethrope,

became his calling card. Luc Sante argues that the artist’s behavior, the artist’s motives and the

viewer’s response are the fundamental issues in pornography.59 Sturges behavior does not give

any hint of malice. There is nothing inappropriate or immoral about his beautifully simplistic

photographs. Flore et Fredeìrique, Montalivet, France features a young girl and her mother on a

nude beach (Fig. 13). Sturges often shoots groups and families together. The girl stands in a

classical contrapposto and stares confidently into the camera. Several feet away, the mother
                                                                                                                         
57
Arthur C. Danto, Mapplethorpe (New York: teNeues, 1992), 326.
58
Nead, The Female Nude, 8.
59
Luc Sante, “The Nude and the Naked,” The New Republic 212, no. 18 (1995): 30.

42
  

looks on confident and proud. His focus is the beauty of the human body. An artist’s motives are

harder to establish but so is the viewer’s response. The nude body of a child is not controversial.

Controversy arises when the law imposes ideas of adult sexuality onto these images. As I have

established, the standard of decency is not a fixed property. Although both artists have been

accused of pornographic imagery, Sturges and Mapplethorpe’s photographs fit squarely within

artistic intent.

Pornography as Art

The introduction of pornography into public discourse has complicated the female nude

as a subject in contemporary art. Pornography is the natural encroachment of the female nude

figure. The subject has taken the female nude to its farthest, most explicit form. As a result,

artists often run into trouble when heavily referencing pornography although it is a subject

universally and intimately known. Pornography is worth talking about because it is a culturally

significant subject based on our interests and values.

In a series of nudes (1999-onwards), Thomas Ruff produced a number of monumental

prints from digital stills of Internet pornography. The artist appropriates digital files as he surfs

upon them. He carefully chooses each of his images for their compositional particularities in

order to evoke the aesthetic of the classical female nude.60 The pornographic stills are enlarged

blurring the pixilated image. Then, he further distorts the image with digital technology

producing a disarmingly, painterly effect. While the monumental scale of the print should result

in a confrontational experience, Ruff’s pictorial strategies invite the viewer to decipher the

blurred image. Like a Monet, you see nothing up close until you step back and the whole image

seems relatively focused. There is a delay between what you see and perceiving that you are

                                                                                                                         
60
Okwui Enwezor, “The Conditions of Spectrality and Spectatorship in Thomas Ruff’s Photographs,” in Thomas
Ruff, ed. Okwui Enwezor (Haus der Kunst: Schirmer/Mosel, 2012), 16.

43
  

seeing it. The viewer is forced to imagine the content of the image. Ruff robs the viewer of the

unmediated, immediacy of the genitalia or the sexual act. Instead, “the editing opens up a

beautifying and thus enticing associative space charged with seduction, desire, availability,

voyeurism and exhibitionism.”61 The viewer experiences a pre-reflective curiosity to find out

what lies within the image’s blur. From a distance, the blurred image is explicit but the viewer’s

willingness to spend contemplative time with this type of content accomplishes the artistic intent

necessary for a photograph to be considered art.

Nudes in 03 depicts a naked, blonde female inserting a sex toy into her genitals (Fig. 14).

Her legs are cropped out of the frame as they are unimportant to the aim of the image.

Pornography is not complex. It depicts the same kinds of roles, settings, sexual acts, and stunted

narratives. These features do not have to be multi-layered and various because they all aim to the

same sexual release. While art has the ability to illuminate our reality, pornography only seeks to

satisfy our immediate desires. Pornography does not belong to a place. It is a mixture of fantasies

that are not bound to any representation. Her arm juts downward and her hand fervently grasps

her instrument. With wild blonde hair and red lips, the viewer has a sense of her passion.

On the other hand, image blonde-dildo-high-heels-jasmine-rogue-sophie-moon-twistys13

is a pornographic image (Fig. 15). The two poses are almost identical; however, the

pornographic image is cropped even closer to the body. The photographer takes great care to fit

as many as her sexual parts into the image as possible. The flatness of the image creates an

absolute proximity to the viewer. Ruff’s photograph reads from the top down while the

pornographic image reads from the bottom up. The artist presents us with a space for entry and a

space to read into but the other image is “too close.” Nude photography is typically cautious of

                                                                                                                         
61
Thomas Weski, “The Scientific Artist,” in Thomas Ruff, ed. Okwui Enwezor (Haus der Kunst: Schirmer/Mosel,
2012), 31.

44
  

the female nude and thus uses forms of abstraction to distance the viewer from being “too close”

to the image. Thereby, the viewer can experience a bit of the erotic through a safe boundary. We

happily explore the terrains of art but consider the pornographic image as “too close” to the other

sense of touch. Pornography, privately, allows the viewer to have a sensual experience with his

or her body. The pornographic image appeals directly to the consumer. The title of the image

insures that users searching for particular interests like high heels or dildo can easily find what

they are looking for. The toy is not a device for her pleasure but a tool to show as much detail of

her genitalia as possible. Her arms and her hair do not get in the way of displaying her breasts

like Ruff’s photograph. The viewer need not have a thought past the content expressly displayed

and then promptly move to the next image that arouses.

Artistic intention allows one to see the formal qualities of the work initially while

processing the content. Nudes ree07 references a classic pornographic shot called the “beaver

shot (Fig. 16).” The shot focuses directly and almost exclusively on female genitalia. Throughout

the history of pornography, the representation of female genitalia endures. As such, the camera

angle is a decidedly male viewpoint. The pose and the cropping of the subject fit well into

conventional art history. Nudes ree07 is a direct quotation of Courbet’s Origin of the World. The

photographic “beaver shot” presented what the ideal female nude had always gracefully covered.

After centuries of idealization, the photographic nude presents public hair.62 There is no shortage

of female genitalia in the history of art. Painted in 1866, Origin of the World is in historical

proximity to the photography and is cropped suitably for a “beaver shot” photograph. It could

also be said that photographic reproductions of the painting are convincingly pornographic. Both

this painting and nudes ree07 support a heterosexual male viewpoint.

                                                                                                                         
62
Dennis, Art/Porn, 61.

45
  

The female’s red panties show considerable restraint in the world of pornography. They

suggestively lower the age of the women while at the same time displaying an intimate tone.

There is innocence to the scene depicted and it is certainly one of Ruff’s more tame nudes. Ruff

likely picked the image for its imaginative qualities. The viewer is forced to imagine what

follows in the next frames. There is accessibility in less-than-ideal pornography not present in

professional porn layouts. The perception of the image is more important than the content of the

image. Even after the viewer is satisfied by the content of the pornographic image, the viewer

continues to contemplate the work as a whole mindful of the artistic technique.

Ruff’s nudes not only comment on the effects of digital manipulation in photography but

on the proliferation of images on the Internet as a whole. Originally, the artist intended to use the

Internet to research the genre of nude photography. He quickly discovered fashion photography

but found the stylish, beautiful models uninspiring. Soon, he found pornography “which he

essentially found more honest than the entire representation of the nude in art.”63 Although

professional bodies are certainly popular in the world of pornography, the artist noticed that most

representations were amateurs. Pornography does not distinguish between amateur and

professional photography. In addition, Ruff takes his stills not from artful pornographic

photography but from smaller thumbnails and preview images. Websites use thumbnails and

previews to accommodate the bandwidth for a large number of images; this technique allows the

site to load quickly in an archival manner. This also allows viewer to more easily scan through

dozens of images simultaneously. The photograph is not really reality anymore but an image we

have of that reality. The continuous cycle of the pornographic image shows how we view and

exhibit sexual desires.

                                                                                                                         
63
Okwui Enwezor, Thomas Ruff, 142.

46
  

Conclusion

Traditionally, art has been a way to transcend the reality of the moment. The visual arts

are a facet of high culture. When artists begin to incorporate lowbrow features of culture into

high art, the value of art comes into question. Pornography challenges the high culture of art. A

work of art no longer solely belongs to high culture. Art can be produced from the lowbrow

fragments of our contemporary moment. Increasingly, art reflects our everyday experience.

Pornographic images have made their way into high cultural institutions. The inclusion of these

images reflects what we see on a daily basis and what we are interested in looking at.

There have been many attempts to censor pornography in public spaces. Pornographic

images proliferate unchecked on the web. Hysteria over the ill effects of pornography exposes

the cultural anxieties about the endless cycle of images. Technology is the medium of

pornography. Each new vehicle of dissemination has created new forms of pornography. Kelly

Dennis notes:

“From lithography to photograph, and from video games to the Internet, pornographic
images constituted some of the earliest visual forms created in each of these media.
Whereas the formal conventions of nineteenth-century photographic pornography
followed the technological evolution of the medium, twentieth-century pornography at
times drove the technology.”64

Pornographers, like artists, follow changes in technology and explore new mediums for

their expression. The Internet most likely will not be the last technological advance that sees the

pornographic landscape.

There will continue to be attempts at censorship and cancelled exhibitions but

                                                                                                                         
64
Dennis, Art/Porn, 128.

47
  

pornography should be featured in contemporary art. The subject should not be censored because

the censorship of art is dependent on existing legal systems. The law is not particularly interested

in aesthetic concerns. As the papacy learned, the suppression of images only adds to their

dissemination. A society can both consume pornography and appreciate art. The two activities

are not exclusive of each other.

48
  

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