One of the impulses that made me look closely at pornographic images is
their unsettling ubiquity in contemporary everyday life. There is a contradiction
between porn images and my personal experience. And there is
also the fear that although I consider my sex life to be altogether vigorous,
it is more likely that pornography will have an impact on my sex life than
vice versa. What type of representation, then, does a porn image offer?
Pornography is most commonly defined negatively: by an enumeration of what it is not. Its opposite is art. Within the context of the visual arts (including the fine arts as well as performing and dramatic arts) pornography shares the same means of expression and media. Pornography and art are two exclusive areas of human activity that operate alongside one another, and at the same time from totally opposite positions. This conundrum, in terms of assigning a definition, was most clearly illustrated by Richard Nixon in the debate on the limits of pornography, when in response to the liberal findings of the Congressional Committee on Obscenity and Pornography he wrote in 1970 in an article in the New York Times: “The Commission contends that the proliferation of filthy books and plays has no lasting harmful efect on a man\'s character. If that be true, it must also be true that great books, great paintings and great plays have no ennobling effect on a man\'s conduct.” 2/ The elevating effect of art is therefore conditionally bound with the ill effects of pornography.
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Pornography is most commonly defined negatively: by an enumeration of what it is not. Its opposite is art. Within the context of the visual arts (including the fine arts as well as performing and dramatic arts) pornography shares the same means of expression and media. Pornography and art are two exclusive areas of human activity that operate alongside one another, and at the same time from totally opposite positions. This conundrum, in terms of assigning a definition, was most clearly illustrated by Richard Nixon in the debate on the limits of pornography, when in response to the liberal findings of the Congressional Committee on Obscenity and Pornography he wrote in 1970 in an article in the New York Times: “The Commission contends that the proliferation of filthy books and plays has no lasting harmful efect on a man\'s character. If that be true, it must also be true that great books, great paintings and great plays have no ennobling effect on a man\'s conduct.” 2/ The elevating effect of art is therefore conditionally bound with the ill effects of pornography.
(full article is available after purchasing a subscription - not available now)
