But is it Porn?

My supposed pornographic painting.

Recently I posted an image of my current work in progress on Facebook, as I often do. I usually get a few likes and sometimes even a comment or two. This recent image definitely got it's share of comments and likes, but one in particular caught my attention. A friend, and fellow artist, commented that I was getting into porn because of the way the women were positioned and there was cleavage shown. While I am sure he is probably kidding, it made me think about art and when is it considered porn.

Women are often portrayed naked in art, and yet, who would consider that porn? The general public probably wouldn't. So if it is not a state of nakedness, then what makes an image pornographic (aside from the obvious depiction of people copulating)? The phrase "I know it when I see it" was famously used by US Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart to describe his test for obsenity and is often used when someone attempts to categorize an observable fact when it lacks clearly defined parameters. Surely we can tell when an image of a naked woman is art and when it is porn because we know porn when we see it, right? But apparently we all don't agree on what we see or how we see things otherwise there would be no debate, and I have seen this debated a lot recently on Facebook.

Close-up of the woman I worked on yesterday.

I think it starts with how the woman are positioned for starters. Granted, this is all subjective, but I think that's a big portion of it. Are the women in a seductive position while in a state of undress? Even that parameter is questionable since I have seen art where the women were naked and seductively posed and yet did not feel like it was pornographic. The artist who made the comment about my image on Facebook paints Asian women who I would say were quite pornographic. Often times these woman are not completely naked, yet between the position and the general "feel" of his paintings, they feel pornographic to me. I know a few people who think differently.

I guess it is all a matter of opinion and not something that I necessarily have the answers to. The Facebook comment, in addition to other posts I have seen where people have been outraged by some of the "art" posted because of it's perceived degradation of women, just got me thinking so I thought I'd process some of these thoughts on my blog.

On a side, yet relevant note, at my opening reception on Friday at ArtHaus, a woman commented that when she was a teen, pornographic magazines used to put a black bar over the eyes of the models. My art reminded her of it and gave my pieces a bit of an edge because of what the bars have been used for in the past. She got a little "thrill" when she saw my work because of this. It's pretty funny that two people in less than a week made a porn reference about my work. Maybe there is something to that comment about my getting into porn with my work.... nah!