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 Do we really know pornography when we see it? Pornography is condemned
for being "too close" while erotica is defended as "leaving room for
the imagination." And the art of the nude is treated as something much
more special, located even further away from the potential of arousal. Art/Porn
argues that these distinctions are based on an age-old antithesis
between sight and touch, an antithesis created and maintained for
centuries by art criticism.
Art/Porn: A History of Seeing and Touching
Art has always elicited a struggle between
the senses, between something to be viewed and something to be touched,
between visual and visceral pleasure. Images compel the senses in ways
that are both taboo and intrinsic to art. Contemporary responses to
images of the nude embody this longstanding tension. Our fears about
the materiality of art when in close proximity to our own bodies
exist in tandem with a regulation of sensory response which dates back
to Antiquity. Art/Porn reveals how--from fondling statues in
Antiquity to point-and-click Internet pornography--the worlds of art
and pornography are much closer than we think.
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