Art That Has Turned You On

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We're defining art for the purposes of this thread as - human creative endeavour whose primary purpose is not or seems not to be sexual arousal. So not 'porn' or even 'erotica' in other words.

I suppose what I'm getting at is - have you ever found your physical sexual reaction to something overriding your other critical reactions? So maybe you looked at Dejeuner Sur L'Herbe and instead of considering its place in art history thought blimey theyve got their kits off (v. simplified reaction).

This thread arises because in the Jeff Koons thread people are talking about the artistic merit of the Cicciolina stuff and while I've not seen it for many a year I recall it not being the artistic merit I was particularly interested in.

― Tom, Saturday, 11 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

A couple of responses :

For the use of the male body :
The Ashcan school , Michaelangelo, Cadmus,Korus Sculptures, Fischl , ? Lukas, Mapplethorpe

For exmaning what sex means
Warhol, Nauman, Koons, Goldin , Clarke, Moghul mintures

Things that do not seem sexual but pull on my cock

Pollock,deKooning,Holbein,Twombly, Klee . Kline

― anthony, Saturday, 11 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I used to hide from nude paintings when little because they were RUDE.

― DG, Saturday, 11 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Mel Ramos - Philip Morris 1965, sexy picture! uh huh.

Never found anything abstract sexual.

― jel, Saturday, 11 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Hibiki Tokiwa's photos are sexy. And the drawings of Henmaro Machino (one of the Hiropon Factory artists) are absurd yet sexy: a big caterpillar with a Betty Boop face and prominent genitalia. The mixture of disgust, fascination and arousal an image like that can provoke is interesting.

― Momus, Saturday, 11 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

when i was thirteen, j.scott campbell.

― ethan, Saturday, 11 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

mapplethorpe, dali

― Geoff, Sunday, 12 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Strangely I am never really aroused by Mapplethorpe's work. Nor Goldin's pictures. Maybe I am a faker and am actually a-sexual deep down. I don't even get aroused when being exposed to Gregg Arraki's movies. I am a freak. Herb Ritts' work does slightly put me out of balance. Sometimes.

― nathalie, Sunday, 12 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Strike that. Caught Out There by NERD is slightly turning me on. I have to go to work. Bummer.

― nathalie, Sunday, 12 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I find mapplethorpe intruiges my formalist senses more then my erotic senses.
But Clarkes tulsa. Now that is oh so sexy in a droogy roughtrade methed out addict kind of way. !

― anthony, Sunday, 12 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

During the 80's Mappelthorpe's photos were brought before the US supreme court, attacked as pornography. the supreme court defended them based on their aesthetic merits, attempting to prove through their composition, contrast, value, etc, that they were 'fine art'. Of course Mappelthrope is/was never far from erotica or porn. And we like naughty pictures. Shame that we puritan americans feel the need to impose some kind of bullshit 'aesthetics' onto our sex pics to avoid having them be censored. Another point: naked people do not equal porn/sex. Look at Spencer Tunick's photos. He uses the body in an abstract way. Yet his work has also been controversial. Is it possible that our alienation from our bodies drives us to see nudity in a sexual light? Or is my attempt to differentiate sexual response in a post-industrial society from, say, aincient greece, bullshit? In other words, have things always been this way?

― turner, Sunday, 12 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

That said his work is too self conciously formal and allusionary to be entirly cheap porn.

― anthony, Sunday, 12 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

It's just frustrating that people feel the need to legitimize erotic art on it's aesthetic grounds. This seems like a subtle form of censorship. Are we saying that erotica must be beautiful to be acceptable? We don't say that about other kinds of art. What if abstract expressionism had been outlawed because the courts didn't find it pleasing to the eye?

― turner, Sunday, 12 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I have to admit that I do keep reading the title of this post as "art that has turned on you", which is kind of intriguing too.

― jel, Sunday, 12 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Henri Rosseau, and--- I used to love those Waterhouse girls.

― 1 1 2 3 5, Sunday, 12 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I am in conflict. I love Rimbaud. I love to love you baby, but alas you wouldn't see me standing even if I was wearing a dildo around my waste. Or on my head. Giving head in many different ways. I am talking out of armpits yet AGAIN.

― nathalie (nathalie), Sunday, 12 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

But decidng that all overtly sexual work has no aesthic concerns is also makign it too simple.

― anthony, Sunday, 12 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Of course not. But then how you valuate it... Why do it on an aesthetic level when intention is to arouse you, the viewer/listener.

― nathalie (nathalie), Sunday, 12 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I really do not know that. On one hand by over ephmazing the aesthics you censor the sex, but if yuo treat it liek common porn you fail to appreciate how diffent the allusions and aesthics are.

― anthony, Sunday, 12 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Besides, surely what turns you on is related to YOUR aesthetics: shape, luminosity, density of fur, scale pattern, bendiness...?

― mark s, Sunday, 12 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Is it true, as suggested in the Observer today (I think it was the Obs.), that Kenneth Clark refused to countenance the possibility that the women Rembrandt painted were his wives and mistresses because essentially he was a genius and would never have fancied a fat lass? (Clark's position may have been simplified somewhat by me).

― Tom, Sunday, 12 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Anthony - the solution seems simple. Look at the piece of sexual art before and after you come: your post-coital (or post-wank) response may well be different from your pre-coital.

― Tom, Sunday, 12 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

But i cannot get myself to wank or fuck to art.
There was one exception, depsrate and lonley in southern alberta , in a strange house , waiting for morning where i would baptize the dead i decided to wank. Te only porn i could find was a book of michaelangelo paintings and a JC Penny Catolog.
Micaelangelo was hotter and did the job.

― anthony, Sunday, 12 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

What, Kenneth motherfucking "Lord Clark of Civilisation" Clark? Lucky I'm not a 17th-century painter of genius — he wouldn't have known where to put himself...

― mark s, Sunday, 12 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Sorry: I meant to say, Anthony, that is the best story you told so far. You are our god.

― mark s, Sunday, 12 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Thank you. I am glad my repressed religous upbringing is amusing .

― anthony, Sunday, 12 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Kenneth [father of Alan, yes?] Clark = tortoise. Not the band, the reptile.

― DG, Sunday, 12 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

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