voluptuary_manque
Literotica Guru
- Joined
- Sep 5, 2007
- Posts
- 30,841
Commercial Art. The importance isn't the aesthetic magnitude, it's the cute . . . and it is cute.
Art and naked children
- Thread starter starrkers
- Start date
Commercial Art. The importance isn't the aesthetic magnitude, it's the cute . . . and it is cute.
MrsDeathlynx
Literotica Guru
- Joined
- Jan 14, 2007
- Posts
- 5,812
I think it's art. Then again I think it rediculous that if you take a picture of your baby in the tub naked and go to a store to develop it they are required to report you for taking the picture...
starrkers
Down two, then left
- Joined
- Nov 30, 2006
- Posts
- 10,427
I wouldn't call it porn, except maybe the very softest variety, and I don't believe it violates the rules of Lit, regardless of her age.
What I did wonder about the news article is this: Why is the government subsidizing the magazine in the first place?
I don't think the picture on the first post is porn either.
ETA: I think the Coppertone ad is a drawing, not a photo. I wouldn't call it porn either, but I don't know about calling it art.
The Government hands out a lot of grants each year to prop up The Arts. There's no way they'd stay afloat any other way here, the market is too small and the artistes too great in number.
ishtat
Literotica Guru
- Joined
- Aug 29, 2004
- Posts
- 5,877
Agendas
I don't think Australians ever think of having a need to catch up with the UK - rather the reverse.
What is also interesting is:-
1.that the New South Wales State Government Labor Party is dominated by a rather odd ethnic group. Their names are Iemma the Premier, (Governor) Costa, Della Bosca, Sartori, Nori, Scipione. All middle age Italian/Catholic/Australians with family origins in Sicily and Calabria.
2. We have a visit by the Pope next week. Cynical ol' me suspects that these politicians may have had an audience in mind with someone else rather than the electorate .
3 The public doesn't seem to give a damn about this artifically created controversey.
I don't think Australians ever think of having a need to catch up with the UK - rather the reverse.
What is also interesting is:-
1.that the New South Wales State Government Labor Party is dominated by a rather odd ethnic group. Their names are Iemma the Premier, (Governor) Costa, Della Bosca, Sartori, Nori, Scipione. All middle age Italian/Catholic/Australians with family origins in Sicily and Calabria.
2. We have a visit by the Pope next week. Cynical ol' me suspects that these politicians may have had an audience in mind with someone else rather than the electorate .
3 The public doesn't seem to give a damn about this artifically created controversey.
keeblercrumb
Literotica Guru
- Joined
- Sep 15, 2007
- Posts
- 1,287
Rocket? No, I'm just glad to see ya!
And therein lay the rub with censorship and trying to legislate morality through the control of words and pictures.....
If there is someone out there who becomes sexually aroused from the sight of a rocket in launch mode, did I then post pornography when I selected it for my AV?
And so it is with child "porn" that involves nothing more than naked children. They do not arouse me and it seems ironic to me that that those who would deem it illegal child porn, by definition, must be aroused by it. Who are they legislating against? Themselves?
Luckily, of course, there are no other examples of hypocracy in our culture and laws....
-KC
And therein lay the rub with censorship and trying to legislate morality through the control of words and pictures.....
If there is someone out there who becomes sexually aroused from the sight of a rocket in launch mode, did I then post pornography when I selected it for my AV?
And so it is with child "porn" that involves nothing more than naked children. They do not arouse me and it seems ironic to me that that those who would deem it illegal child porn, by definition, must be aroused by it. Who are they legislating against? Themselves?
Luckily, of course, there are no other examples of hypocracy in our culture and laws....
-KC
Roxanne Appleby
Masterpiece
- Joined
- Aug 21, 2005
- Posts
- 11,231
Roxanne Appleby
Masterpiece
- Joined
- Aug 21, 2005
- Posts
- 11,231
I don't believe that.
There's a lot of people who call themselves artists but really are primarily controversialists. Depending on the political winds the number of these who make a living may increase or decrease with government subsidies, but private sponsors and buyers will always support some quantum of these.
Art used to be about celebrating "transcendental goods" - truth, beauty, the good. Beginning in the late 19th C the "intelligentsia" rejected the validity of those concepts, and artists began what ultimately became a project of making art ugly. Here's a great paper that describes all this detail: Why Art Became Ugly.
So what does all that have to do with government arts subsidies? The same "intelligentsia" who kicked off the project to make art ugly also tend to be statists and wealth redistributionists. Naturally they think taxpayers should pay to subsidize what they consider to be worthwhile "art." I disagree. I think it's unfair to force taxpayers to subsidize anyone's art. Unfair and unnecessary. Dangerous to the arts, too. Hitler subsidized a lot of painters and sculptors, as did Stalin.
Varian P
writing again
- Joined
- Jul 20, 2004
- Posts
- 1,429
I suppose a lot of these people who see porn in every image of a naked kid have such a fucked up mentality about things that they equate nudity with sexuality and eroticism, ergo, if a kid is naked in view of any but parental eyes, they are automatically masturbation fodder, and if Mom and Dad have a camera on the scene, it can only be to circulate images of their darlings in their friends' lucrative kiddie porn ring.
It's like back in the good old days, when all right thinking people postponed bathing as long as possible, and when they did break down once or twice a year to wash months of sweat from their bodies, still wore a gown in the tub lest they glimpse their own naked flesh and offend the lord.
Of the Australian government, or generally?
This is an excellent passage from 'Why Art Became Ugly':
"Artistic revolutions are made by a few key individuals. At the heart of every revolution is an artist who achieves originality. A novel theme, a fresh subject, or the inventive use of composition, figure, or color marks the beginning of a new era. Artists truly are gods: they create a world in their work, and they contribute to the creation of our cultural world."
Apart from that, I find your view incomprehensible and irrational.
Boxlicker101
Licker of Boxes
- Joined
- Apr 5, 2003
- Posts
- 33,665
Probably the poster child for "ugly art" was Mapplethorpe, who pissed in jars, passed it off as art and got the US government to hand him piles of money. So many people, including I, got mad about that. There was nothing I could do, but there was a lot that some people could do, and they did it.
Small correction Box, Mapplethorpe got people aware of the arts to give him financial support, from funding for the arts allocated by government. Governments do it that way since they know nothing about 'Art' and rely upon specialists to distribute funds for what they deem to be worthwhile art. If the fault lay anywhere, it is with the committees who decided what projects/artists were worthy of funding. Not all Mapplethorpe's work is pissing in jars, most of his work does seem to piss people off though.
Svenskaflicka
Fountain
- Joined
- Jun 9, 2002
- Posts
- 16,142
It's only child porn if you WANT it to be. To normal people, it's just a little kid near water, probably just took a swim.
Svenskaflicka
Fountain
- Joined
- Jun 9, 2002
- Posts
- 16,142
A woman on the page of the last link commented that she didn't want to risk having pics of her kids naked ending up as jerk-off material for paedophiles.
Understandable, but how can she prevent one of these people from seeing her kids in the street as she takes them grocery shopping, and then that guy thinks of those kids at night when he's jerking off?
Ofcourse, it's a little different, but you know what I mean. This world ISN'T a safe place, and it never has been. But we have enough trouble as it is in this world, we don't need to make up more by trying to find or create problems out of nothing.
Understandable, but how can she prevent one of these people from seeing her kids in the street as she takes them grocery shopping, and then that guy thinks of those kids at night when he's jerking off?
Ofcourse, it's a little different, but you know what I mean. This world ISN'T a safe place, and it never has been. But we have enough trouble as it is in this world, we don't need to make up more by trying to find or create problems out of nothing.
Boxlicker101
Licker of Boxes
- Joined
- Apr 5, 2003
- Posts
- 33,665
Quote:
Originally Posted by Boxlicker101
Probably the poster child for "ugly art" was Mapplethorpe, who pissed in jars, passed it off as art and got the US government to hand him piles of money. So many people, including I, got mad about that. There was nothing I could do, but there was a lot that some people could do, and they did it.
This may be true, but the most egregious examples were the jars of piss, especially those that also contained religious icons.Wherever the fault lay, it certainly lay somewhere. Had it been up to me, I wouldn't have given a penny to this guy for one of the jars of piss. If he was able to sell one to somebody who paid for it with their own money, more power to him, but I will never be able to believe that the taxpayers should give him anything.
Somehow, I cannot look upon a glass jar of piss that also contains a crucifix and a painting by Rembrandt and think of them as having anything in common.
Originally Posted by Boxlicker101
Probably the poster child for "ugly art" was Mapplethorpe, who pissed in jars, passed it off as art and got the US government to hand him piles of money. So many people, including I, got mad about that. There was nothing I could do, but there was a lot that some people could do, and they did it.
This may be true, but the most egregious examples were the jars of piss, especially those that also contained religious icons.
Wherever the fault lay, it certainly lay somewhere. Had it been up to me, I wouldn't have given a penny to this guy for one of the jars of piss. If he was able to sell one to somebody who paid for it with their own money, more power to him, but I will never be able to believe that the taxpayers should give him anything. Somehow, I cannot look upon a glass jar of piss that also contains a crucifix and a painting by Rembrandt and think of them as having anything in common.
voluptuary_manque
Literotica Guru
- Joined
- Sep 5, 2007
- Posts
- 30,841
And therein lies a serious problem for the arts. Those on the committees, IMO, use the the view of the arts that they have been sold on to make invidious comparisons between themselves and the "unwashed masses". This gets museums to buy such utter trivialities as 110 Bricks. Art that is off kilter for the rest of society is just fine for private collectors who are also attempting to "ingroup" themselves away from the Common Man but public art that gets paid for by the Common Man (and woman, obviously
) needs to show shared values, not divisive ones. That, after all, is what art is for. Yes it is. The subject was well established by a book of that name by Ellen Dissanayake and her thesis has been quantitatively tested and proven valid. You can look it up on ERIC.
voluptuary_manque
Literotica Guru
- Joined
- Sep 5, 2007
- Posts
- 30,841
Quote:
Originally Posted by Boxlicker101
Probably the poster child for "ugly art" was Mapplethorpe, who pissed in jars, passed it off as art and got the US government to hand him piles of money. So many people, including I, got mad about that. There was nothing I could do, but there was a lot that some people could do, and they did it.
This may be true, but the most egregious examples were the jars of piss, especially those that also contained religious icons.
Somehow, I cannot look upon a glass jar of piss that also contains a crucifix and a painting by Rembrandt and think of them as having anything in common.
This is a minor detail but Piss Christ wasn't by Mapplethorpe. It was Andres Serrano.
Last edited:
IrezumiKiss
Literotica Guru
- Joined
- Feb 11, 2007
- Posts
- 74,229
It's art.
Andres Serrano.
Cool guy, by the way. SVA grad like me, met him a few times.
Andres Serrano.
Cool guy, by the way. SVA grad like me, met him a few times.
Boxlicker101
Licker of Boxes
- Joined
- Apr 5, 2003
- Posts
- 33,665
You're right. Mapplethorpe and Serrano tended to get confused because both controversies came along about the same time. The former was just gay nudes, and was, in my opinion, genuine art. They were displayed in Cincinnati, which might well be the most reactionary major city in the US, and old Jesse Helms got mad about them, as could be expected.
As for the bottles of piss, I didn't find them offensive, just stupid, and I couldn't see paying anybody to produce photos of them, or the bottles themselves as art objects.
Since nobody can define just what is art and what isn't, maybe the taxpayers should just quit subsidizing any of it. Or, conversely, maybe I should put in for a grant as a writer of porn.
WRJames
Literotica Guru
- Joined
- Apr 15, 2007
- Posts
- 1,397
I'm not sure the whole question of "art" vs "pornography" makes much sense to begin with. Haven't artists been pushing the limits of what they could pass off as art as long as there has been resistance to the display of "pornography?"
I was struck by this when we went to Italy -- a lot of the fresco work in Pompei strikes us as frankly pornographic -- perhaps it was still within the boundaries of "art" when it was created?
The ceilings of the Medici palaces are covered with what can only be described as soft core porn -- dressed up in a mythological context, of course.
It is difficult to ignore the erotic content in some of Michelangelo's sculptures -- and impossible when you get to Bernini.
And there are Titian nudes where the lady's hand is placed to cover the vagina -- but it you like more closely - -that's not what's happening. Those fingers are at work! No wonder she has that smile on her face!
Anyway, to portray "art" as respectable and innocent is to miss the point.
I was struck by this when we went to Italy -- a lot of the fresco work in Pompei strikes us as frankly pornographic -- perhaps it was still within the boundaries of "art" when it was created?
The ceilings of the Medici palaces are covered with what can only be described as soft core porn -- dressed up in a mythological context, of course.
It is difficult to ignore the erotic content in some of Michelangelo's sculptures -- and impossible when you get to Bernini.
And there are Titian nudes where the lady's hand is placed to cover the vagina -- but it you like more closely - -that's not what's happening. Those fingers are at work! No wonder she has that smile on her face!
Anyway, to portray "art" as respectable and innocent is to miss the point.
HowardTheStern
Virgin
- Joined
- Jul 8, 2008
- Posts
- 7
Having sex with five year olds? I looked at some of your "so-called" literature that you have written. Sir, you are a truly sick and disgusting individual. Anyone who is searching for nude photographs of children, like yourself, so that you can post a comment on a bulletin board that is discussing nude pictures of children, and disguising it as a "discussion" has some serious mental problems going on. You should try and locate professional help, instead of continuing farther down this very dark path, Sir.
voluptuary_manque
Literotica Guru
- Joined
- Sep 5, 2007
- Posts
- 30,841
Oh God, another Troll to Ignore!
Boxlicker101
Licker of Boxes
- Joined
- Apr 5, 2003
- Posts
- 33,665
Quote:
Originally Posted by HowardTheStern
Having sex with five year olds? I looked at some of your "so-called" literature that you have written. Sir, you are a truly sick and disgusting individual. Anyone who is searching for nude photographs of children, like yourself, so that you can post a comment on a bulletin board that is discussing nude pictures of children, and disguising it as a "discussion" has some serious mental problems going on. You should try and locate professional help, instead of continuing farther down this very dark path, Sir.
No, this is almost certainly the alt of an ongoing troll. There is nothing erotic about the picture although, I will admit, a pedophile might disagree.
Originally Posted by HowardTheStern
Having sex with five year olds? I looked at some of your "so-called" literature that you have written. Sir, you are a truly sick and disgusting individual. Anyone who is searching for nude photographs of children, like yourself, so that you can post a comment on a bulletin board that is discussing nude pictures of children, and disguising it as a "discussion" has some serious mental problems going on. You should try and locate professional help, instead of continuing farther down this very dark path, Sir.
No, this is almost certainly the alt of an ongoing troll. There is nothing erotic about the picture although, I will admit, a pedophile might disagree.
voluptuary_manque
Literotica Guru
- Joined
- Sep 5, 2007
- Posts
- 30,841
Box, do you suspect that perhaps there are only about two or three genuine trolls here, poor lonely souls who have no life and are thus forced into obnoxiousness for attention? I certainly do.
