Shrug off the midmonday wearies
And meditate the base
The process
Three figures
Three brushes
Four sheets each
Whispering
The rhythmic sound
Of white on white
Back and forth
Up and down
Horizontal vertical diagonal
All is clean and soothing
Until
He decides he is entitled
(interloper!)
Clankingscrapingbangingcreekingbreaking
The trance
My final essay for intro to visual cultrure II.
Pornography, Erotica and the Obscene
A search through the constant ambiguity of sex and art
What is pornography?
My original intent for this essay was to simply compare and contrast famous representations of nudes in fine art to modern soft-core pornography throughout history. Unfortunately, this seemingly straight forward topic turned out to be more challenging than it seemed at first glance. As soon as I tried to define pornography I arrived at a block; pornography as a term is problematic as there is not one clear definition for what it means, instead there are many definitions fighting for dominance. As Justice Potter Stewart struggled to explain “hard-core” pornography, or what is obscene, by saying, “I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced . . . But I know it when I see it . . . ” The definition for such sexual representations remains ambiguous. Pornography is too subjective a subject to be articulated within one or two sentences, and therefore in my search for answers I continued to arrive at more questions. Continue reading
