What is erotic art? Do all paintings with a sexual theme qualify aserotic? How to distinguish between erotica and erotic art? In what wayare aesthetic experiences related to, or different from, eroticexperiences and are they at all compatible? Both people and works ofart can be sensually appealing, but is the beauty in each casesubstantially the same? How helpful is the distinction between thenude and the naked? Can we draw a strict line between erotic art andpornography? We tend to think of art as complex and of pornography asone-dimensional, but how compelling is that differentiation?Pornography is often considered harmful, objectifying, andexploitative, but to what extent is erotic art immune to moralcriticism of this sort? In addressing such questions this entry willprovide an overview of current philosophical debates on erotic art. Itwill also place those debates in historical perspective and, in theclosing section, explore some important avenues for futureresearch.

• 1. What is Erotic Art?
  • 1.1 A Definition of Erotic Art
  • 1.2 Some Further Distinctions
• 2. Modern Aesthetics and the Problem of Erotic Art
  • 2.1 The Aesthetic Disenfranchisement of the Erotic
  • 2.2 The Legacy of Modern Aesthetics
  • 2.3 The Aesthetic Rehabilitation of the Erotic
• 3. Contemporary Aesthetics and the Problem of Pornographic Art
• 4. Erotic Art vs Pornography: Beyond Aesthetics
  • 4.1 Erotic Art, Art History, and the Cultural History of Pornography
  • 4.2 Erotic Art, Feminist Theory, and Objectification
• 5. Further questions
• Bibliography
  • Painting, Sculptures, and Photographs Referenced
  • Literature and Films Referenced
• Academic Tools
• Other Internet Resources
• Related Entries

1. What is Erotic Art?

1.1 A Definition of Erotic Art

InSex and Reason, Richard Posner proposes to use the word“erotic” to describe

presentations and representations that are, or at least are taken bysome viewers to be, in some sense “about” sexual activity.(Posner 1994: 351)

This characterization needs some narrowing down if one wants to arriveat a definition that captures the extension of what we ordinarilythink counts as erotic art. For one thing, an extensionally adequatedefinition should exclude scientific-behavioral studies or medicalillustrations of sexual activity (which tend to be neither erotic norartistic in nature). Furthermore, it’s not the case, simplybecause some viewers take a painting or a sculpture to be about sexualactivity, that we areipso facto dealing with an eroticrepresentation. Someone who is unfamiliar with the story of theChristian Bible might take a crucifixion painting to be a depiction ofa sado-masochistic act, but that would be insufficient grounds tocall, say,Tintoretto’sCrucifixion(1565) a work of erotic art.

Peter Webb’s definition of erotic art as

art on a sexual theme related specifically to emotions rather thanmerely actions, and sexual depictions which are justifiable onaesthetic grounds (Webb 1975: 2)

is already closer to the mark. But even though Webb’s emphasison emotions is understandable from an etymological point ofview—the term “erotic” derives from the Greek word“eros” meaning love or passion—he does not succeedin spelling out the necessary or sufficient conditions for erotic art.Man Ray’s photographThe Prayer(1930) shows only the hands, feet, and buttocks of a woman; itis not a sexual depiction in the strict sense and there is no show ofemotions. Still, it is widely considered to be an erotic masterpiece.Conversely,Ian McEwan’s novellaOn ChesilBeach, set in the early 1960s and telling the story of awedding night that goes horribly wrong, does qualify as “art ona sexual theme related specifically to emotions” and yet itwould be misleading to label it as erotic literature.

Instead of claiming that erotic art isabout sexual feelingsor desires, one could say that erotic artelicits sexualfeelings or desires. But this characterization would also be toobroad. A pious Madonna and Child painting may elicit sexual feelingsor desires in some people, but that in and of itself does not make iterotic art. Theintention to be sexually stimulating appearscrucial, as Jerrold Levinson acknowledges in his definition of eroticart as

art which aims to engage viewers sexually through explicit sexualcontent, and that succeeds, to some extent, in doing so. (Levinson2006: 252)

But does erotic art need to be explicit? Take Nobuyoshi Araki’sfamous close-up photograph of a woman’s eye, sometimes entitledThe Look. The artist has tilted thepicture 90 degrees to make it suggestive of female genitalia, therebysoliciting sensuous feelings and associations in spectators. It ishighly erotic, though it has no explicit sexual content.

A more adequate definition, and one that will be adhered to in thisarticle, is the following: erotic art is art that is made with theintention to stimulate its target audience sexually, and that succeedsto some extent in doing so. This raises the further question whatsexual stimulation precisely entails. According to Guy Sircello (1979:119) it is the inducing of sexual feelings where the latter might be(1) feelings in our sexual parts, or (2) feelings in other erogenousparts—typically generated by or generating feelings in sexualparts. However, a kick below the belt will give a man certain feelingsin his sexual parts, but not of the sort that erotic art is supposedto bring about. So, an important qualification is needed. Sexualstimulation is probably best understood as the inducing of sexualfeelings, desires and imaginings, that would generally be regarded aspleasant in themselves. Alternatively, one could adoptMatthew Kieran’s nutshell definition of erotic art as art which“essentially aims at eliciting sexual thoughts, feelings andassociations found to be arousing” (2001: 32).

1.2 Some Further Distinctions

Levinson (2005) makes a useful distinction between erotic art and whathe callserotica, that is, images intended to sexuallystimulate but not to reward artistic interest (such as provocativelingerie ads). In general, it is good to keep in mind that the domainof erotic art only constitutes a small subsection of the much largerclass of items that are called erotic (erotic massages, erotic games,erotic toys, etc.). Erotic art also seems to fall within the broadercategory ofsexually themed art. All works of erotic art havea sexual theme, it could be argued, but not the other way around: manyartworks with a sexual theme are not works of erotic art. IanMcEwan’sOn Chesil Beach has already been mentioned.Another example might beTracey Emin’sIsAnal Sex Legal? (1998), which simply consists of thatquestion writ large in pink neon light. (The piece is usuallyexhibited together with its complement,Is LegalSex Anal? also from 1998).

Sexually themed art should be distinguished fromsexuallystimulating art, i.e., art that stimulates its target audiencesexually, even though it may not have had the aim to do so. While somemay find it difficult to think of any examples in this category,Sircello argues on phenomenological grounds that everything that istruly beautiful, and hence every work of art that is truly beautiful,will be experienced as sexually titillating. For instance, when hestudiesThe Burghers of Calais, withits stooped and despondent old men,

the beauty of Rodin’s restless surface leads me … to rubthat glorious bronze, and once again comes that warmth in thetesticles, that stirring in the penis, that itch in the nipples andthe tongue. (1979: 225)

Similarly,

when I inspect the austere and meticulous Zurbaran still life, noticethe painstaking precision of its details … (I) feel forthwiththose stirrings in the groin. (1979: 225)

However, while Sircello judges his arousal to be “neitherabnormal nor idiosyncratic” and to be fully “appropriateand natural” (1979: 226) not everyone might agree with thatassessment.

The counterpart of sexually stimulating art isfailed eroticart (or as Levinson 2006 would have it “nominally eroticart”): art that aims but does not succeed in stimulating itstarget audience sexually (see also Mag Uidhir 2010).Anti-eroticart, on the other hand, is art that aims to inducenegative sexual feelings, thoughts, and imaginings in itstarget audience.Otto Dix’sOldCouple (1923) orGeorge Grosz’sSex Murder in the Ackerstrasse (1916–7) couldserve as illustrations. More recently, feminist artists such as KikiSmith have explored the dark, violent, abject aspects of sexuality intheir work (see, for instance,Smith’sTale, 1992, andBlood Pool,1992).

Finally, because censorship and moral policing have often preventedartists from making work that is openly erotic, it is worth drawingattention to the existence ofcovertly erotic art, that is,art made with thecovert intention to stimulate its targetaudience sexually and that succeeds to some extent in doing so. A goodexample are the so called “sukashi shunga” (hidden shunga)that were popular in Japan at the beginning of the 20^thcentury. Shunga are woodblock prints, often created by Japan’sleading artists, depicting highly erotic scenes. While there werealready regulations in the early 18^th century against thedistribution of shunga, it was only at the end of the 19^thcentury, in the wake of Japan’s increasing openness towards theWest, that censorship laws were really being enforced. As a result,hidden (see-through) shunga prints were designed to escape the stricteye of the censor. What at first sight appear to be beautifully drawnpostcards depicting landscapes with some space in the middle and atthe corners to write one’s message, when held up to the light,turn out to be sexually explicit lovemaking scenes (Aki 2013: 47). Anexample of an entirely different kind might be Maria Scanu’ssculpture ofMadonna del Naviganti (1999) orVermeer’sMilk Maid (1657–58).Given that milk maids had a reputation for sexual availability in 17thcentury Holland, some scholars have argued that the painting has acovert erotic message, with the foot warmer on the floor suggestingfeminine desire (because foot warmers would heat not only the feet buteverything under a woman’s skirt) and one of the Delft tiles inthe scene depicting Cupid, while another tile shows a traveling manpossibly suggesting that the maid is thinking of an absent lover(Liedtke 2009).

2. Modern Aesthetics and the Problem of Erotic Art

Are thereüberhaupt any works of erotic art? This mayseem a silly question, especially to anyone who is familiar with arthistory and with the well-established tradition of erotic art inparticular. But to students of modern aesthetics, that is, thephilosophy of art and beauty from roughly the beginning of the18^th century to the end of the 19^th century,that question will not appear absurd at all.

2.1 The Aesthetic Disenfranchisement of the Erotic

Modern aesthetics famously built a wall between aesthetic pleasure, onthe one hand, and sensual or sexual pleasures, on the other hand,leaving precious little room for works that aim to combine the two.The problem becomes clear when we consider Immanuel Kant’sCritique of Judgment (1790), arguably the most central andinfluential work of that period. According to Kant, a pure aestheticjudgment is based entirely on a feeling of disinterested pleasure,i.e., a pleasure that does not depend on or generate a desire for theobject. But since works of erotic art are meant precisely to tap intoand stimulate our sexual appetites and desires, it is hard to see howthey can be the object of an aesthetic judgment. They are ratherprimed to be the object of what Kant calls a judgment of theagreeable, based on an “interested pleasure”, in this casethe titillation provided by the alluring depictions of attractivebodies and seductive poses. The sensual pleasure offered by suchrepresentations is very different from the enjoyment that occurs in anaesthetic experience and which results from the free play of thecognitive faculties of imagination and understanding. According toKant, it is because aesthetic judgments are grounded not in anyinterest, but rather in the subjective conditions of cognition, whichare shared by all rational beings, that they can lay claim touniversality. The pleasure solicited by erotic art can obviously notlay claim to such universality since it will depend on one’ssexual preferences and inclinations.

Kant was not the first to introduce disinterestedness as hallmark ofthe aesthetic and isolate it as such from what is merely sensually orsexually appealing. Anthony Ashley Cooper, the third Earl ofShaftesbury, is often credited with this insight. In hisCharacteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times (1711)Shaftesbury already stated that the response solicited by beauty isone of rational and refined contemplation, far removed from the crudepleasures that we receive through our senses.

A problem that immediately arises for Shaftesbury’s account isthe one posed by the “dazzling form” of a beautiful woman(1964 [1711]: 136). Here, beauty and sensual appeal, far from beingantithetical, actually seem to go hand in hand. Still, Shaftesburyinsists that the two kinds of pleasure are utterly distinct, eventhough, in this particular case, erotic pleasure may indeed follow inthe wake of aesthetic pleasure. One could make a comparison, hewrites, with someone who goes from contemplating the beauty of a treeto fantasizing about its tasty fruits. Both activities arepleasurable, but the pleasures involved are very different: one is adisinterested aesthetic pleasure, the other is a pleasure informed byour self-interest. It points to a sensual joy, based on an appetitethat we have in common with animals, or “brutes” asShaftesbury prefers to call them. The contemplation of beauty, bycontrast, is unique to us rational beings. That’s because beautyis exclusively an object of the mind.

But can one really draw the distinction in such absolute terms? Whenwe admire an attractive man or woman, isn’t it precisely theirbeauty that activates the senses and gives rise to certainbodily passions? And if so, doesn’t this prove that the two areintimately linked? Shaftesbury dismisses this line of thought almostout of hand. After all, we wouldn’t say that it is thebeauty of the fruit that attracts and brings joy to theprowling animal in search of food; or that it is the beauty of thefood served at the dinner table that makes us humans hungry. Whatwhets and satisfies appetite of both humans and animals is not thestriking form, but what lies beneath that striking form, that which ismere matter. (Accordingly, the more a mouthwatering dish or body isviewed, the further they are from satisfying by mere view.) Just as itis not the material that makes a sculpture beautiful, but rather theartistic intentions and designs that shape the material, so it is notthe body in itself, something that is mere matter, that isbeautiful:

What is it you admire but mind, or the effect of mind? Tis mind alonewhich forms. All which is void of mind is horrid, and matter formlessis deformity itself. (1964 [1711]: 132)

Mind is the only true object of beauty. Moreover, it is onlythrough the mind that beauty can be apprehended andappreciated, for if animals can’t know and enjoy beautyprecisely because they have only senses, it follows that mancan’t conceive or enjoy beauty through his senses (the“brutish part”).

It is evident that, for Shaftesbury, erotic art, which is all aboutpresenting desirable bodies and stirring up sensual pleasures, canhave no legitimate place within the realm of the aesthetic. Yet, apartfrom a brief passage in which he denounces the “self-improvingartist” who makes a fortune by “studying bodies”(1964 [1711]: 144), Shaftesbury does not explicitly criticize orattack any kind of art or artist. (Like Kant, his primary focus is notart, but beauty.) Someone who does explicitly take up such a criticalstance, however, is Arthur Schopenhauer. If Shaftesbury is thephilosopher who inspired Kant to develop the theory ofdisinterestedness, then Schopenhauer is the philosopher who, inspiredby Kant, has taken this notion of disinterestedness and worked it upinto a fully-fledged philosophy of art.

This is not the place to discuss all the minutiae ofSchopenhauer’sThe World as Will and Representation(1818). Crucial, for our purposes, is his concept of “dasReizende”, which will here be translated as “thestimulating.” The stimulating is “that which excites thewill by directly presenting to it satisfaction, fulfillment”(Schopenhauer 1969 [1818]: 207). It ought to be shunned at all pricein art, says Schopenhauer, because it

draws the beholder down from pure contemplation, demanded by everyapprehension of the beautiful, since it necessarily stirs his will byobjects that directly appeal to it. Thus the beholder no longerremains pure subject of knowing, but becomes the needy and dependentsubject of willing. (Schopenhauer 1969 [1818]: 207)

This is contrary to the aim of art, which is to facilitate will-lesscontemplation of the Ideas.

Schopenhauer is quite specific about what the stimulating consistsin:

In historical painting and in sculpture (it) consists in nude figures,the position, semi-drapery, and whole treatment of which arecalculated to excite lustful feeling in the beholder. (1969 [1818]:207–8)

It is important to note that he does not object to depicting the nudefigure as such—after all, “the ancients” did so“almost always free from … fault” (ibid.).What he objects to is a particulartreatment of the nude, onewhich is designed to excite lustful feelings in the beholder. In otherwords, what he targets and denounces is erotic art. Like Shaftesburyand Kant he is drawn to make a comparison with food. Fruit isadmissible as a subject matter for paintings

for it exhibits itself as a further development of the flower, and asa beautiful product of nature through form and colour, without ourbeing positively forced to think of its edibility. (ibid.:207–8)

But what is not admissible are prepared and served-up dishes, depictedwith a high degree of realism. Dutch still life paintings depictingoysters, herrings, crabs, bread, butter, beer, wine, excite theappetite and are objectionable for the exact same reasons as eroticpaintings and sculptures, which excite sexual appetite, areobjectionable: they stimulate the will and as such put an end to anyaesthetic contemplation of the object. Given that the function of artis to facilitate aesthetic experience, it follows for Schopenhauerthat “the stimulating … is everywhere to be avoided inart” (ibid: 208; see also Neill 2012).

2.2 The Legacy of Modern Aesthetics

Modern aesthetics has cast a long shadow into the 20^th andeven the 21^st century, and the idea that the aesthetic andthe erotic are fundamentally incompatible has proved to be veryinfluential throughout.

Clive Bell, the great champion of aesthetic formalism, inscribeshimself neatly in that tradition. In his landmark book,Art(1914), he begins by drawing a sharp contrast between the aestheticemotion, which is provoked by works of art in virtue of a certainpleasing combination of lines and colors, and sexual feelings anddesires which are provoked by sensually appealing bodies. The twocould not be more different, he thinks:

let no one imagine, because he has made merry in the warm tilth andquaint nooks of romance, that he can even guess at the austere andthrilling raptures of those who have climbed the cold, white peaks ofart. (1961 [1914]: 42)

Nevertheless, Bell acknowledges, as did Shaftesbury, that the twoemotions are often confused partly because in everyday speech the word“beauty” is used indiscriminately for items that fall ineach of the two categories (beautiful works of art, attractive men andwomen). To prevent any further confusion, he insists therefore onusing the word “significant form,” instead of beauty, forthe combination of lines and colors that produces the aestheticemotion. (Shaftesbury, one will recall, was revisionist in theopposite direction, refusing to employ the word beauty for that whichis merely desirable.)

What about those works of art that appeal to our sensual feelings anddesires and that are so popular with the man in the street?

The art that they call “beautiful” is generally closelyrelated to the women. A beautiful picture is a photograph of a prettygirl; beautiful music, the music that provokes emotions similar tothose provoked by young ladies in musical farces; and beautifulpoetry, the poetry that recalls the same emotions felt, twenty yearsearlier, for the rector’s daughter. (1961 [1914]:28–29)

Bell has no patience with ignorant folks who seek out pictures, poems,or music for these reasons. They are simply confusing the sensual andthe aesthetic. Of course, this does not mean that paintings depictingpretty girls cannot be art. They can, but if they are art, they willbe sodespite their erotic content. For example, whenManet’sOlympia, a picture of aprostitute, caused a storm of indignation in Paris of the 1860s, EmileZola defended the painting in terms that Bell would have approvedof:

Tell them aloud, dear master, that you are not what they think youare, that a painting is for you a mere pretext for analysis. Youneeded … clear and luminous tones, and you introduced abouquet; you needed black tones and you placed in a corner a Negressand a cat. (Zola 1991: 161)

For Bell and his fellow formalists, significant form is the onlyimportant artistic criterion. Where it comes to insulating theaesthetic from the erotic, many prominent philosophers in the20^th century have followed in Bell’s footsteps, evenwhen they do not subscribe to his formalism. InThe Principles ofArt (1938), R. G. Collingwood observes how “the words‘beauty’, ‘beautiful’, as actually used, haveno aesthetic implication” since they often indicate “thesatisfaction of some desire or the arousing of some emotion”(1938: 38–41). For Collingwood, a beautiful man or womanordinarily means one whom we find sexually desirable. And he firmlystates that this “has nothing whatever to do with aestheticexperience. It has to do with that other kind of experience that Platocallederos” (1938: 41). Similarly, Monroe Beardsleyinsisted on a strict divide between the two sorts of responses andrevised his theory of aesthetic experience when it was pointed out tohim that it did not exclude sexual experiences from the realm of theaesthetic (Beardsley 1982). Edward Bullough famously posited“psychical distance” as a prerequisite for experiencingart and concluded that

explicit references to organic affections, … especially tosexual matters, lie normally below the Distance-limit, and can betouched on by Art only with special precautions. (1969: 403)

Even in the 21^st century one will find philosophers who aredeeply sceptical about the aesthetic and artistic potential of theerotic. Mohan Matthen, for instance, states that “erotic arttends not to be great art” because

even when erotica are artistic … they have too direct an effecton sexual response, and this distracts the viewer’s attentionaway from the work itself. (2011: 354)

The more erotic a work of art, the more difficult it is to appreciateaesthetically. Matthen makes this claim in an essay review ofTheArt Instinct (2009), a book on evolutionary aesthetics written byDenis Dutton, who also claims that eroticism is best avoided in art,though for different reasons than Matthen. While the latter considersthe sexual response too distracting, Dutton argues that it is rathertoo crude and too basic to count as a proper aesthetic response. Ahigh degree of meaning-complexity is the hallmark of all great art,according to Dutton, but while love is complex, “(s)ex itself isjust too simple” (2009: 238). As a consequence,

love is the most pervasive theme for representative arts everywhere,(whereas) explicit eroticism does not tend to figure importantly inthe greatest masterpieces. (2009: 238)

Just like a bowl of corn syrup and a plate of sugar will never bedinner, Dutton flippantly observes, erotic paintings, novels, andpoems will never qualify as art of the highest order. (It is certainlynoteworthy that Dutton, who is the antipode of modern aesthetics indoing away with the very notion of a disinterested pleasure andassuming that matters of sexual reproduction are vital in explainingour interest in art and aesthetics, actually finds himself in thecompany of Schopenhauer, Kant, and Shaftesbury where erotic art isconcerned.)

To recapitulate: if (disinterested, contemplative) aesthetic responsesare indeed irreconcilable with (interested, bodily) sexual responses,as so many philosophers of art in the past have thought, then therehardly remains any conceptual space for works that aim for both kindsof response. Yet, we do, as a matter of fact, have this longstandingtradition of erotic art, not just in the West but also in manynon-Western cultures. How to account for this?

Proponents of modern aesthetics could simply bite the bullet here andargue, as Mohan Matthen does, that erotic art tends not to be greatart, or, following Bell, that erotic paintings, books, poems can onlyattain art status despite their erotic content. But that is a bigbullet to bite, by any standard. Not only are there so manyoutstanding works of erotic art, but the eroticism of these works isalso more often than not an integral part of their status and value asart. To be sure, there are nude paintings and sculptures which seem toqualify first and foremost as studies in formal beauty (certainsculptures of Henry Moore come to mind). But anyone who would regard,say,The Naked Maja by Goya (c.1797–1800) orLes Délassementsd’Eros by Gerda Wegener (1925) as a mere formal exercisewould entirely misunderstand and fail to appreciate what these worksare about. That is why the great majority of aestheticians todayprefer the other horn of the dilemma. Instead of denying the existenceof genuinely erotic art, they will deny that aesthetic and eroticresponses are antithetical and hence reject the basic tenets of modernaesthetics.

2.3 The Aesthetic Rehabilitation of the Erotic

Modern aesthetics and its 20^th century formalist andexperientialist heirs have been criticized from many sides. Butinstead of offering a general critique, let us consider briefly someof the philosophers who, in attacking modern aesthetics, haveexplicitly pleaded for the inclusion of the sexual within the domainof aesthetics.

One of the most vehement early critics was Friedrich Nietzsche. In anoft-quoted passage inOn the Genealogy of Morals (1887:III.6) Nietzsche shifts attention to the artist’s point of viewto reveal a fundamental flaw in modern aesthetics:

When our aestheticians tirelessly rehearse, in support of Kant’sview, that the spell of beauty enables us to view even nude femalestatues “disinterestedly” we may be allowed to laugh alittle at their expense. The experiences of artists in this delicatematter are rather more “interesting”; certainly Pygmalionwas not entirely devoid of aesthetic feeling.

(NB: For Nietzsche’s texts we have relied on the classic editionof Colli & Montinari, 1967–78.On the Genealogy ofMorals is abbreviated as GM,The Will to Power isabbreviated as WP, andTwilight of the Idols is abbreviatedas TI. The translations we have used are listed in thebibliography)

Pygmalion fell under the spell of the beautiful statue he had created,but his enjoyment was certainly not bereft of any desire. ForNietzsche, the case of Pygmalion is not exceptional, but ratheremblematic: “All art works tonically, increases strength,inflames desire” (WP §809). And, as he writes inTwilight of the Idols (1889),

all beauty incites to procreation—… precisely this is theproprium of its effect, from the most sensual regions up intothe most spiritual…. (TI IX.22)

To believe, as Schopenhauer, Kant, Shaftesbury seem to have done, thatin matters of beauty and art there is such a thing as“immaculate perception” (an aesthetic regard pure of anydesire), is simply to deceive oneself.

Far from building a wall between the aesthetic and the sexual,Nietzsche sees them as intimately linked: “The demand for artand beauty is an indirect demand for the ecstasies of sexuality”(WP §805). The two experiences really share the same structureand phenomenology. As with sexual experience, if there is to be“any aesthetic doing or seeing, one physiological condition isindispensable: rapture” (TI IX, 8). And the pleasure that onereceives is not a disembodied, cognitive pleasure—a unique kindof experience that would set us apart from animals. No,

art reminds (us) of states of animal vigour: it is on the one hand anexcess and overflow of bloomingcorporeality into the worldof images and desires: on the other, an excitation of the animalfunctions through the images and desires of intensified life. (WP§802)

Thus, while the erotic masterpieces of the past must qualify asregrettable anomalies for someone like Schopenhauer, Nietzsche has notrouble at all in giving them a place.

Within contemporary aesthetics, Alexander Nehamas and RichardShusterman have made a serious and sustained effort to make room forthe erotic within aesthetics and art. In the first few pages of hisbookOnly a Promise of Happiness (2007), Nehamas lays hiscards on the table. Mentioning Kant and Schopenhauer as hisadversaries, he states uncompromisingly that “the only reactionappropriate to beauty iseros—love, the desire topossess it” (2007: 6). Whileeros should notnecessarily be understood in a sexual sense here, Nehamas does thinkthat erotic encounters provide an instructive model for aestheticexperiences in general:

The most abstract and intellectual beauty provokes the urge to possessit no less than the most sensual inspires the passion to come to knowit better. (2007: 7)

Each judgment of beauty is future oriented, is identical with thespark of desire, and contains, in the words of Stendhal, a promise ofhappiness (Stendhal 1926: 74; Nehamas 2007: 55).

For Nehamas, too, erotic art is not at all a recalcitrant exception inneed of explanation. Quite the contrary, it offers the best possibleinroad to understanding what beauty and art are all about. It’snot a coincidence that the touchstone work of art, to which Nehamasreturns again and again, is Manet’sOlympia. Far frombeing an exercise in formal beauty, as Zola would have it, this is apainting that is precisely designed

to jolt the audience, especially the men, into acknowledging that whatthey were enjoying was not a painted canvas or an idealized figurewith an edifying message but a naked woman of their own place andtime. (Nehamas 2007: 27)

It is erotic in every sense of the word and for Nehamas it does whatall great art should do: spark the audience’s desire.

If Nehamas mainly takes issue with the disavowal of desire withinmodern aesthetics, Richard Shusterman’s main target is the“idealist-rationalist repugnance for the body” which hefinds is permeating the entire tradition of Western philosophy (2005:324; see also Irvin (ed.) 2016). To counter this, Shusterman proposesa new discipline, “somaesthetics,” which aims to study the“experience and use of one’s body as a locus ofsensory-aesthetic appreciation and creative self-fashioning”(1999: 302) and which has as one of its main subsidiary ambitions to“(i)mprove our appreciation of the artistry, beauty, meaningthat sexual experience can offer” (2008: 85). In several of hisessays he argues that sexual experience itself can qualify as anaesthetic experience, since most of the crucial features attributed toaesthetic experiences are also attributable to erotic experiences:they are pursued and valued for their own sake, they are rich inintensity and stand out distinctively from the flow of ordinaryhumdrum experience, they display harmonies of structure and developingform, they are being subjectively savored but also intentionallydirected at an object, they deeply engage thought, feeling, andimagination, and stimulate both body and mind (2007: 57, 2008: 93).Hence, instead of ignoring or disenfranchising the tradition of eroticart, Shusterman pleads for the reassertion of an “arserotica” which would not just involve a renewed attention forcertain works of the past, but would entail the development of genuineerotic art forms that could help increase our understanding of therelation between aesthetics and sex, deliver aesthetically rewardingerotic experiences, and deepen our appreciation of the aestheticpotential of other somatic practices (2007: 57; 2021).

3. Contemporary Aesthetics and the Problem of Pornographic Art

While not everyone will take the aesthetic recuperation of the eroticas far as Shusterman and Nehamas, very few philosophers today willdeny the existence and aesthetic legitimacy of erotic art. So, doesthis mean that the wall between the sexual and the aesthetic has beentorn down? Not entirely. It seems more accurate to say that the battlelines have been redrawn. The suspicion towards the erotic may havelargely subsided in contemporary aesthetics, but it has been replacedby a very pronounced scepticism of the pornographic. Many philosophersof art, including Roger Scruton, Jerrold Levinson, and Christy MagUidhir, deny that there is (or can be) such a thing as pornographicart. In other words, they advocate a strict divide between erotic artand pornography. Some of their scepticism, one cannot fail to notice,bears a significant resemblance to the earlier resistance againsterotic art.

Pornographic representations are sexually explicit and rich inanatomical detail, Scruton points out, whereas works of erotic artrely on suggestion and, instead of focusing on certain body parts,will try to capture the individuality, personality, and subjectivityof the represented person. InTitian’sVenus of Urbino (1538), for instance, it is not thesexual organs but the face, as “window to the soul,” thatprovides the focus of attention (1986: 154, 2005: 11, 2009: 149). Apornographic image, by contrast, “is like a magic wand thatturns subjects into objects, people into things—and therebydisenchants them, destroying the source of their beauty” (2009:163). As part of his project to rehabilitate beauty as the centralaesthetic and artistic category, Scruton also appeals to thedistinction between “the nude” and “the naked”made famous by Kenneth Clark (1956). The artistic nude constitutes, asthe subtitle of Clark’s book indicates, a “Study in IdealForm”: the body is beautifully shaped and framed by theconventions of art. The people in pornographic images are not nude,but naked. They are deprived of clothes, and as such exposed in anembarrassing way. Furthermore, while the Titian nude retains adetached serenity, pornography arouses the viewer, which is always“an aesthetic defect, a ‘fall’ into another kind ofinterest than that which has beauty as its target” (2009:160).

Levinson also wishes to separate erotic art from pornography in termsof the kind of response they call for, yet his argument is markedlydifferent from Scruton’s. Here’s a summary ofLevinson’s argument:

1. Erotic art consists of images centrally aimed at a certain sort ofreception (R1).
2. Pornography consists of images centrally aimed at a certain sortof reception (R2).
3. R1 essentially involves attention to form/vehicle/medium/manner,and so entails treating images as in part opaque.
4. R2 essentially excludes attention to form/vehicle/medium/manner,and so entails treating images as wholly transparent.
5. R1 and R2 are incompatible.
6. Hence, nothing can be both erotic art and pornography; or at theleast, nothing can be coherently projected as both erotic art andpornography; or at the very least, nothing can succeed as erotic artand pornography at the same time. (2005: 239)

Elsewhere in the article Levinson makes it clear that by“R1” he means aesthetic delight or aesthetic experienceand that “R2” refers to sexual arousal and release:

the aims of true pornography and the aims of art, erotic art included,are not compatible, but war against one another (…). Oneinduces you, in the name of arousal and release, to ignore therepresentation so as to get at the represented, the other induces you,in the name of aesthetic delight, to dwell on the representation.(2005: 234)

This has been the single most influential argument in recent debateson the relation between erotic art and pornography, winning manysupporters (Matthen 2011; Nanay 2012; Neill 2012) but also attractinga substantial amount of criticism (see, for instance, Kania 2012;Davies 2012; van Brabandt and Prinz 2012; Patridge 2013). While onemay want to challenge some of Levinson’s premises (as Maes 2009does in a systematic way), one could also question whether his ratherradical conclusion really follows from said premises. After all, itseems that onecan (coherently and successfully) aim atincompatible audience responses, as long as one does not expect theseresponses to be elicited at the same time, in the same audience (seeMaes 2011).

As opposed to key representatives of modern aesthetics, both Levinsonand Scruton have no problem acknowledging the existence of erotic art.However, they do object very strongly to the possibility of therebeing pornographic art, and it’s not hard to discern in theirrespective objections—which rely on notions such as beauty,contemplation, ideal form, aesthetic experience—the remnants andresidual influence of modern aesthetics. This is less obvious inChristy Mag Uidhir’s attempt to draw a line between pornographyand art. While Scruton insists on the controversial connection betweenart and beauty, and Levinson builds his case on the idea that a workof art’s main purpose is to produce an aesthetic experience anddraw attention to its own formal features, Mag Uidhir’s argumentdoes not rely on any such substantial claims. He does not even claimthat art has or should have a purpose. Mag Uidhir asks us only toaccept thatif a work of art has a purpose, including perhapsthe purpose of sexual titillation as is the case in erotic art, thenthat purpose must be manner specific. Here’s how he arrives athis exclusivist position (2009: 194):

1. If something is pornography, then that something has the purposeof sexual arousal (of some audience).
2. If something is pornography, then that something has the purposeof sexual arousal and that purpose is manner inspecific.
3. If something is art, then if that something has a purpose, thenthat purpose is manner specific.
4. If something is art, then if that something has the purpose ofsexual arousal, then that purpose is manner specific.
5. A purpose cannot be both manner specific and mannerinspecific.
6. Therefore, if something is pornography, then it is not art.

For a purpose to be manner specific, according to Mag Uidhir, is forit to be essentially constituted both by an action (or state ofaffairs) and a manner, such that the purpose is to perform that action(or bring about that state of affairs) in that particular manner. Apurpose is manner inspecific, on the other hand, if failure to performthe action (or bring about the state of affairs) in the prescribedmanner does not necessarily constitute failure to satisfy thepurpose.

Mag Uidhir’s approach is markedly different from Scruton’sand Levinson’s. Still, regarding the central issue, he alignshimself squarely with other sceptics. He, too, thinks that artists orpornographers attempting to produce something that is both (erotic)art and pornography, in fact attempt the impossible. However, recentcritics of Mag Uidhir have raised doubts about his second premise(Davies 2012; Patridge 2013), as well as the general validity of hisargument (Maes 2012). These critics belong to a growing number ofphilosophers who find exclusivists’ arguments unconvincing andargue for the existence of pornographic art as a subclass of eroticart (Kieran 2001, van Brabandt and Prinz 2012, Fokt 2012).

4. Erotic Art vs Pornography: Beyond Aesthetics

Besides aesthetics, there are at least two other areas of academicstudy where the distinction between erotic art and pornography hasbeen at the centre of serious philosophical debate: feminist theoryand art history.

4.1 Erotic Art, Art History, and the Cultural History of Pornography

Art historians who write about erotic art are often quite anxious todraw a strict dividing line between “high brow” erotic artand “low brow” pornography. Kenneth Clark, mentionedearlier, famously stated to the Longford Committee InvestigatingPornography:

To my mind art exists in the realm of contemplation … themoment art becomes an incentive to action it loses its true character.(Longford 1972: 280)

This was his main objection to pornography: that it was in essence anincentive to sexual acts. However, as a justification for the radicalseparation of art and pornography this will not do. For one thing,Clark seems to overlook the fact that there are numerous religious orpolitically inspired masterpieces that call on people to change theirlives or perform certain actions (theIsenheimAltarpiece, 1512–16, orDelacroix’sLiberty Leading the People,1830, come to mind).

This brings us to another rationale for separating erotic art andpornography that is very popular among art historians (and is somewhatreminiscent of Dutton’s expressed reservations towards eroticismin art). Art is necessarily multi-layered, it is argued, whereaspornography is one-dimensional; it has only one job to do andtherefore lacks the formal and structural intricacy, the cognitivecomplexity, and interpretive openness of art (see, for example, Webb1975: 6; Mahon 2005: 14; Wallace et al. 2007: 15). But while theIsenheim Altarpiece andLiberty Leading the Peoplemay indeed be very complex works, there is good reason to believe thatthe insistence on the simplicity of pornography is itself the resultof an oversimplification. Let us examine this claim in moredetail.

(1)A simple purpose? It is tempting to think of pornographyas having only one, very rudimentary purpose: sexual arousal of theaudience. But a look at very early pornographic works, those that wereproduced in France and England between 1500 and 1800, shows howmisleading that conception is. Almost all pornographic works of thatera deliberately used the shock of sex to criticize religious andpolitical authorities (Hunt 1996: 35). With their truth-telling tropethey were meant to function as a powerful antidote to the many formsof repression in society and often had the explicit aim to educatepeople about politics, religion, society, and of course, sex (Lubey2022). It is not a coincidence that these books were known in 18thcentury France as “livres philosophiques” (they wereconsidered just as dangerous to society as philosophical treatises)and that the rise in pornography around 1740 coincided with thehey-day of the Enlightenment (Hunt 1996; Darnton 1995). Quite a few ofthe pornographic novels of that time even carried the term“philosophy” in the title (think ofSade’sLa Philosophie dans le Boudoir,1795) and some of them were actually written by prominentphilosophers who were keen to use this extremely popular genre todivulge some of their ideas to the masses (think ofDiderot’sLes Bijoux Indiscrets,1748).

In one of the most notorious examples of the genre,ThérèsePhilosophe (1748),written by the philosopher Jean-Baptiste de Boyer, Marquisd’Argens, a great variety of copulations is used to communicatewhat is in essence a materialist and mechanistic metaphysics. Inanonymous bedrooms, bodies brought together by individual need andinterest collide just like the atoms of the natural philosophers(Jacob 1996: 160). And the bodies themselves are described as machinespowered by the relentless motion inherent in matter, by passions theycannot control:

The arrangement of our organs, the disposition of our fibers, acertain movement of our fluids, all determine the type of passionswhich work upon us, directing our reason and our will in the smallestas well as the greatest actions we perform. (ThérèsePhilosophe, excerpted in Darnton 1995: 100)

Or, as the main character herself observes:

Men and women couple like machines. Love for them is a tingling in theepidermis, a surge of liquids, a rush of particles through the fibers,and nothing more. (Thérèse Philosophe,excerpted in Leemans 2002: 257)

(2)Formal and structural simplicity? Pornography of theenlightenment era also serves to tackle another misconception. It hasbeen argued that, because the main aim of pornographers is to sexuallyarouse the audience, they are forced to include as many sexuallyexplicit scenes as possible, leaving precious little room for plotdevelopment or formal intricacies (Steiner 1975). The pornographer“concocts no better than a crude excuse for a beginning; andonce having begun, it goes on and on and ends nowhere” (Sontag1994: 39). Pornography, as Adorno already noted, lacks thebeginning-middle-end form characteristic of literature (Sontag 1994:39). Yet, again, this gives us far from a waterproof criterion fordistinguishing erotic literature from pornography. For instance, thestructural complexity of the pornographic novel,Histoirede Dom B… Portier des Chartreux(1741), with its embedded stories and variety of narrators, hasoften been noted by scholars (Frappier-Mazur 1996: 211). The carefulcomposition ofThérèse, where the author hasarranged the parts to maximize the refraction, so that wherever thereader turns he seems to see throbbing sexuality, provides anothercounterexample (Darnton 1995).

(3)One-dimensional in its effect on the audience? It couldbe thought that sexual arousal is such a powerful, bodily state thatit must block out all other functions, most notably our cognitivefaculties. Levinson claims that this is precisely what distinguishessexual arousal from sexual stimulation, which he thinks isnot incompatible with the cognitive activity required foraesthetic appreciation (2005: 232). Other philosophers have challengedthis controversial distinction (Blackburn 2006: 52; Maes 2012).Moreover, even if one were to accept the animal-like nature of sexualarousal, that does not mean that it cannot be cognitively rewardingand artistically appropriate. As one commentator ofCleland’sFanny Hill notes:

The stimulus of reading a scene inFanny Hill makes in thereader’s own nature the point made in the text. The reader maybe moved to reconsider the merits of stoicism, revaluate the powers ofthe mind to control the body, reread his Descartes and think again ofthe dividing line between mind and the bête-machine. (Braudy1991: 85)

(4)Simple to interpret? While questions of interpretationarise frequently in relation to works of erotic art, people rarelyseem to have interpretive qualms where pornography is concerned.Indeed, if an interpretation typically attempts to account for thoseelements in a work whose presence is not immediately obvious to thetarget audience (Carroll 2009), there may seem no need for aninterpretation in the case of pornography since it is all too obviouswhy such films or novels include one sexually explicit scene afteranother. Still, here too it is important not to jump to conclusions.There are (at least) two different kinds of interpretative projectsone could engage in, each with its own set of lead questions.“What is the work about?” is one question one could ask.Another question is “What does the work reveal about the authoror the time, place, culture, society in which it was made?”While the former is central to the discipline of art criticism, thelatter question will usually be the starting point of interpretationsoffered by cultural historians, sociologists, psychoanalysts. Theselatter interpretations, where pornography is concerned, will beeverything but simple given the incredible complexity of thepornographic landscape with its huge catalogue of taboos, body types,sex acts, and other things that get people’s blood flowing.Pornography offers us, in the words of Laura Kipnis, “the royalroad to the cultural psyche” (2006: 118) and as such can proveto be a gold mine for interpretations. The other question—Whatis the work about?—seems less pertinent, especially in relationto the formulaic and repetitive video clips one finds on pornwebsites. Nevertheless, there are other types of pornography whereissues about meaning and “aboutness” do seem highlyrelevant, such as the philosophical pornography mentioned above andthe feminist pornography that will be discussed in the nextsection.

In closing, it is worth mentioning a thesis recently put forward byEaton (2018), based on art historical considerations regarding thefunction of erotic images in 16th-century Italy. Eaton argues that theroot of the erotic art/pornography distinction was—at least inthat particular context—class. The need for a special categoryof unsanctioned illicit images arose at the very time when printculture was beginning to threaten elite privilege. What made an eroticrepresentation exceed the boundaries of acceptability, Eaton suggests,was not its extreme libidinosity but, rather, its widespreadavailability and, thereby, its threat to one of the mechanisms ofsustaining class privilege.

4.2 Erotic Art, Feminist Theory, and Objectification

In a short but oft-quoted essay, Gloria Steinem describes what is forher “a clear and present difference”:

Look at any photo or film of people making love, really making love.… there is usually sensuality and touch and warmth, anacceptance of bodies and nerve endings. … Now look at anydepiction of sex in which there is clear force, or an unequal powerthat spells coercion. … The first is erotic: a mutuallypleasurable, sexual expression between people who have enough power tobe there by positive choice. … The second is pornographic: itsmessage is violence, dominance, and conquest. (Steinem 1995: 31)

This idea that there is an importantmoral difference betweenerotic art and pornography, in so far as pornography focuses on sexthat is aggressive, emotionless, or alienated, while the focus oferotic art is on love, passion, and equality between partners, hasbeen very influential (see, for example, Ellis 2006: 30; Mahon 2005:15; Ridington 1989: 27). However, delineating the distinctiveness oferotic art, as opposed to pornography, in terms of a particularcontent will not in and of itself establish that the latter isimmoral, while the former is not. As Theodore Gracyk (1987) hasargued, the morally objectionable character of a representation cannever be just a matter of represented subject matter. For an artistcan decide to depict rape or other aggressive forms of abuse in anattempt to precisely warn and protest against such degradation ofwomen or men (recall the work of Kiki Smith). That is why HelenLongino is careful to define pornography as

verbal or pictorial material which represents or describes sexualbehavior that is degrading or abusive to one or more of theparticipantsin such a way as to endorse the degradation.(1980: 43, our emphasis)

Longino is only one of the many authors who have tried to capture whatis morally problematic about pornography. But the intricacies of thatdebate will not concern us here. Our focus is on erotic art, ratherthan pornography. Still, it is worth considering some of the morebasic arguments, because they can be, and have been, put to use indiscussions on the distinction between erotic art and pornography.

Perhaps the most straightforward way to argue that pornography ismorally objectionable (in a way that erotic art is not) is to arguethat it is harmful. The harm that pornography does may occur in theproduction phase, and take the form of coercion, brutality, violence,or rape. But even if no harm takes place in the making of pornography,and models are treated fairly and with respect, there can still bepost-production harms. Some have argued that the pornographicmaterials themselvesconstitute harm because, as a form ofhate speech, they silence and subordinate women (MacKinnon 1987;Langton 1993, 2009; Maitra 2009). Others have emphasized that exposureto pornographic material maycause harm (Eaton 2007). Thelatter claim is further refined by specifying the frequency ofexposure (isolated/cumulative), the nature of the material(egalitarian/inegalitarian), the kind of harm inflicted(physical/psychological), and whom it is mainly inflicted on(consumer/third party). By systematically eroticizing aspects ofgender inequality, inegalitarian pornography is mainly thought tocause harm to a third party, in particular women, through thepernicious effect it has on its consumers (Eaton 2007).

“Exploitation” and “objectification” are termsthat are used particularly often to describe what is wrong withpornography. Martha Nussbaum (1995), for instance, has written aseminal essay on different forms of objectification and how they applyto pornography (see also Stock 2015). Artists like Nancy Spero havedefined pornography as “stuff that exploits women’sbodies” (quoted in Cembalest 1989: 142). It might be thought,and indeed Spero and others have argued, that these ethical terms mayserve to demarcate (erotic) art from pornography—pornographybeing exploitative or objectifying in a way that (erotic) art isnot.

This way of drawing the line is significantly problematized by theemergence of feminist pornography. Examples are films likeSkin.Like.Sun(2010, dir. Jennifer Lyon Bell andMurielle Scherre) andWhen We Are Together, We Can BeEverywhere (2015, dir. Marit Östberg),MollyKiely’s graphic novelThat Kind ofGirl (1999), orDirty Diaries,a collection of Swedish movie shorts (2009). Mutual pleasureand consent are absolutely key in these pornographic works which seemto exhibit none of the moral flaws manifest in mainstream pornography(no exploitation, objectification, or eroticization of genderinequality). What is more, in rejecting sexual repression,self-oppression, and hypocrisy, these works are often said to have apositive, consciousness-raising force (Willis 1995; Taormino et al.2013; Maes 2017; 2020; Eaton 2017).

But even if one were to disregard this rapidly growing subgenre ofpornography, and argue that there is something deeply wrong withany type of pornography, that in itself would still notjustify a strict divide between erotic art and pornography. For everyplausible account of the relation between moral and artisticvalue—whether it is autonomism, ethicism, immoralism, orcontextualism—will acknowledge that works of art, includingworks of erotic art, can be deeply morally flawed (Gaut 2007; see alsoEaton 2003 for an in depth analysis ofTitian’sRape of Europa, 1562). Whatis more, it appears that whatever (moral) objection one wants to bringforward against mainstream pornography, it is likely to apply to someerotic art as well (Patridge 2013). First, harm may be inflicted whenerotic art is being produced (Brown 2002 tells the harrowing story ofCellini and the Nymph of Fontainebleau). Second, some erotic art mayalsoconstitute harm. At least, Langton and MacKinnon’sarguments seem to carry over seamlessly to (certain strands of) eroticart. One of the difficult questions for Langton and MacKinnon—dopornographers possess the appropriate authority to perform the speechacts of silencing and subordinating women?—appears even easierto answer in the affirmative in the case of artists since theirperceived authority is much less contentious. Third, some erotic artmay cause harm in the same way as pornography, that is, by eroticizingaspects of gender inequality and thus shaping people’s sexualpreferences in such a way that sustains the current inequality betweengenders (Eaton 2012). Finally, a detailed case is made by,respectively, Cooke 2012 and Eaton 2012 that neither exploitation norobjectification is unique to pornography and that both are present inmany works of erotic art—a presence that is frequentlyunacknowledged precisely because critics tend to focus exclusively onpornography and too often consider art to be above (moral)criticism.

To conclude, it does not seem possible to make a clear-cut distinctionbetween erotic art and pornography based on moral or feminist grounds.Critiques of pornography have focused on features that are shared by amuch wider class of cultural products and by (some) works of eroticart in particular. This is not necessarily bad news for feminists. Onthe contrary, feminists could embrace this conclusion as it impliesthat their critiques are wider ranging than they at first appear to be(see Kania 2012; Mikkola (ed.) 2017; Mikkola 2019).

5. Further questions

Many more philosophical questions remain to be examined in relation toerotic art. The following will likely play an important role in futureresearch on this topic. First, what exactly does it mean for arepresentation to be voyeuristic and what, if anything, is thedifference between voyeurism in artistic and non-artisticrepresentations? The question was already raised in JohnBerger’s classicWays of Seeing (1972) and has sincethen been addressed in Schellekens 2012 and Eaton 2012. The latteralso offers a philosophical re-interpretation of the influential butstrongly psychoanalytically informed concept of the “malegaze” (Mulvey 1989). To say that a work embodies the male gaze,Eaton submits, is simply to say that it prescribes that its audienceperceives the woman represented as primarily a sex object. As such,the tradition of the female nude in Western art promotes sexuallyobjectifying, heteronormative erotic taste, and thereby has insidiouseffects on gender equality. Following on from this, Lavallee (2016)argues that Eaton’s thesis is mainly based on the experiences ofwhite women and does not pay adequate attention to the lives ofnonwhite women. This act of exclusion exposes a more general bias indiscussions of female representations in art. Different kinds ofbodies have been subjected to different kinds of objectifyingconstrual. Lavallee therefore suggests that the ethics of nudity inart must be extended to take such variation into account (see alsoTaylor 2016, especially chapter 4).

Second, what is the role of transgression in erotic art? Whilefeminist philosophers have rightly highlighted the moral dangersinvolved in the production and dissemination of sexual imagery, otherphilosophers and most notably Georges Bataille (1985, 1986), haveargued that norm-breaking, and in particular the violation of socialor moral norms about sexual behavior, is indispensable for sexualarousal and provides a basis for other affective states, such asdisgust, humor, and awe, which are often in play in sexual encountersand representations. (For a demystified and less radical version ofthis argument, see Newall 2012. For a general discussion of the roleof transgression in art, see Julius 2002).

Third, how does the degree of eroticism of a work of erotic art relateto its goodness as art, and how do the criteria for assessing eroticart differ from those appropriate to assessing art of other sorts? Byreflecting on the appreciation and artistic status of art with anon-artistic primary intended function, such as religious, politicalor erotic art, Davies (2012) makes a good start in answering thesequestions.

Fourth, there are interesting differences between art forms that areworth investigating. For instance, philosophical discussions of eroticart have often focused on visual art or literature. But Benovsky(2021) draws attention to erotic experiences qua proprioceptiveexperiences and defends the claim that, under the right circumstances,such experiences can bring about proprioceptive artworks. Adil MustafaAhmad notes in relation to Islamic art that

practically all that is perceived as erotic (acceptable, sublime) whendescribed in literature is seen as pornographic (off-putting andvulgar) if projected in painting and sculpture. (Ahmad 1994: 281)

In Western art, too, there appear to be different degrees ofpermissibility if one compares literature with the visual arts. How toexplain this? How to explain, furthermore, the absence, ornear-absence, of the genre of erotic art in what are sometimes calledthe non-representational arts? There seems to be very little eroticarchitecture and it is not entirely clear whether there is anyabsolute music that qualifies as erotic. There are erotic dances, ofcourse, but these are rarely performed within an art context orconsidered as art works.

To illuminate the latter phenomenon it might be helpful to reflect onissues of fictionality and imagination—a fifth importantresearch strand. As Cain Todd (2012) argues, the awareness offictionality of sexual representations ensures that one’simaginative engagement implies merely imagined“desire-like” states, whereas the voyeuristic appreciationof a stripper’s erotic dance seems to preclude this sort ofengagement, and in virtue of doing so, involves real sexual desire.One might think that, characteristically, arousal-directed imaginingtowards a sexual representation isde se in that one uses theimage as a prop to imagine committing or witnessing certain sexualacts and, indeed, Todd argues that the engagement with sexual imagerycan possess certain cognitive values, insofar as it involves the selfinde se imaginative projects. But notwithstanding theapparent plausibility of such claims, this is denied by Stock (2012)who argues that enjoying erotica does not always involve imaginingsomething about oneself.

Sixth, if erotic art and pornography are not mutually exclusive, whyis there not more art that qualifies as both? Van Brabandt and Prinz(2012) address this question in relation to cinema. Despite the manyresemblances between art films and pornographic films—jump cuts,long takes, “Brechtian” acting, a cinemavérité-like grittiness, arousal of strong emotions, anexploration of the extremes of human experience and of the margins ofsociety—they argue that market forces are mainly to be blamedfor the lack of overlap between the two. Mari Mikkola (2013), bycontrast, builds on recent work in the ontology of artifacts tospeculate about the possibility of porno-art—a new class ofobjects growing out of the extant categories of pornography and art,without being reducible to either one.

Seventh, obscenity and censorship issues will continue to play a keypart in research on erotic art. They crop up in philosophicaldiscussions of the nude (Nead 1992; Hammer 1997; Danto 2000; Scruton2009) and of art that challenges the classical ideal of beauty(O’Hear 1991, Danto 1995, Mey 2007). They are also central tostipulative distinctions between erotic art and pornography(Maes 2012). George P. Elliott, for instance, defines pornographyas

the representation of directly or indirectly erotic acts with anintrusive vividness which offends decency without aestheticjustification. (1970: 74–75)

A normative definition of this kind will bring to mind certain legaldescriptions of obscenity such as the U.S. Supreme Court’snotorious Miller test, set forth inMiller v. California(1973). This test proposed a three-pronged criterion for obscenity:x is obscene if (1) it is found appealing to the prurientinterest by an average person applying contemporary communitystandards, (2) it depicts sexual conduct, specifically defined by theapplicable state law, in a patently offensive way and (3) taken as awhole, it lacks serious literary, artistic, political or scientificvalue. The Miller test has proved problematic in many respects, one ofits most evident flaws being the conflation of two ideas—thepornographic and the obscene (Nussbaum 2004). Recent philosophicalattempts to define the obscene have avoided thismistake—allowing for non-pornographic obscenities and obsceneerotic art (e.g., Kieran 2002).

Finally, if erotic representations and art works help to shape how wesee and engage with bodies, how can they be mobilised to challenge (orperpetuate) oppression based on race, sexual orientation, age, size,and disability? Audre Lorde’s “Uses of the Erotic”(1978) has been a seminal text. But while Davidson (2016), Cahill(2016), Lintott & Irvin (2016), Mikkola (ed., 2017) andThorneycroft (2021) offer some recent perspectives, much more workstill needs to be done on this front.

In sum, it will be clear that any serious thinking about erotic artleads to fundamental questions about the nature of aesthetics, themoral impact and status of representations, and the boundaries of art.As such there can be little doubt that this topic will prove to befruitful for further philosophical investigation.

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Acknowledgments

The author would like to acknowledge the helpful suggestions andcomments offered in the preparation this article by Anne Eaton, IngerLeemans, Wijnand Mijnhardt, Annelies Monseré, Michael Newall,Katrien Schaubroeck. He also thanks the publisher Palgrave Macmillanfor permission to re-use a few paragraphs from his introduction to thebookPornographic Art and the Aesthetics of Pornography(2013).