Is all Art erotic?

[eighthobstruction]

> like a pre-winded babe <

....Wazzat mean ???....don't get it....something to do with crying/burping/ cholic/gripe juice???

[Lateralthinking1]

handsomefortune - I think I was implying that it was a bit of typical, mild, mischief-making on GG's part. Eroticism is a subject that has always been close to her heart. We are intended to hear her statement as an observation on something that is mainly separate from her, ie art. She, in fact, knows that she is an artist herself. She also knows that a viewpoint cannot in any case reside wholly separately from the one who holds it. It was cleverly disingenuous and attention seeking. Plus ca change.

Additionally, eroticism since the 1960s has benefited from its historical contrasts with eroticism in the Victorian era. Sure, it was prevalent in the 1800s, as it is now, but only, and astonishingly still after nearly fifty years, has it been permitted since that century to be seen as somehow opening out expression.

By having human beings as its main reference point, it is actually narrow conceptually by being human-centric. It presents as creatively expansive something which, in relationship terms, is about some closure on the rest of the world. And while it might be creative in encouraging the imaginatively routine, it does so as if that were some infinite space for innovation. Of course, some might think it is, and enjoy living it, but if so those are just their perspectives for it is of little broader artistic relevance.

There are other points around which to revolve. My gut feeling is that art which is truly revolutionary would be found in different dimensional perspectives, perhaps particularly now. The insistence that all art is erotic might in fact be the ultimate in artistic stifling on approaches to art itself. It narcissistically locks art in dictatorially and gives it little room for manoeuvre. - Lat.

[amateur51]

... well, of course, she is a notorious paedophile...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beautiful_Boy

As are most boys of that age, if you catch my drift

[Serial_Apologist]

I am grateful for handsomefortune, for discovering some of these clips from John Berger's 1970 TV series "Ways of Seeing", and putting them up for us on the old R3 board. Berger says it all so much better than I:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u72AIab-Gdc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNZNB-SfC7w

How little "we" have moved on since that programme was made 40 years ago! Having seen cavatina's "erotic poems" on her "poetry thread", eroticism in that literary genre seems to me embarrassingly banale represented through metaphors of towers etc in poetic form. As for novels, well, haven't we moved on from the thrills offered by lady Chatterley and similar later such stuff? It seems erotic art addressed a world of the forbidden, whereas today the forbidden gives way to the revealed in every High Street every friday and Saturday night at closing time... but untouchable. As regards pornography and the age-old question "is it art?", it is certainly a reductionist form of displacement activity. From the evidence of Anna Spann's porn DVD's for women, full of the same sort of stuff that's supposed to appeal to men, I'm not sure that represents any kind of improvement either, since the alienated power relations described so well 40 years ago by Berger have merely become shared alienated power relations. The source of the alienation lies elsewhere, outside the province of aesthetic appreciation, I would argue.

S-A

[scottycelt]

I recall Germaine Greer claming that all British men are gay ...

Hardly surprising, as any sensible British male is most unlikely to even try and touch the screeching Aussie harridan with a mile-long barge pole ...

[Lateralthinking1]

I am not for the overt censorship of pornography. However, I do believe very strongly that there is a direct link between its increasing social assimilation and the attitudes that drive the current rampant forms of indifferent capitalism. There is equally no doubt in my mind that those capitalist forms are an enemy of art - all the dulling down. More generally, I would see sex being far more closely related to the thought processes of economy, in all of its interpretations, than it is to artistic sensibility.

[amateur51]

Hardly surprising, as any sensible British male is most unlikely to even try and touch the screeching Aussie harridan with a mile-long barge pole ...

Name just ONE, scotty

[amateur51]

The original question is 'Is all Art erotic?'

Given the responses so far, perhaps it should be re-phrased as 'Is all Art heteroerotic?'

Certainly Mr Berger seems to be steering our considerations in that direction

[Serial_Apologist]

The original question is 'Is all Art erotic?'

Given the responses so far, perhaps it should be re-phrased as 'Is all Art heteroerotic?'

Certainly Mr Berger seems to be steering our considerations in that direction

Very fair comment.

That said I am unqualified to comment; is, then, "the erotic" that differently defined with regards to sexuality?

[Don Basilio]

All art is erotic if you define "erotic" as something that underpins everything, but if it means everything, it really means nothing.

I am delighted to see the forthright and individual Ms Greer join the excellent Miss Broughton among the women of which Mr Grew thinks highly. I am saving Cometh up as the Flower for a time I need inspiration.

[french frank]

If you google "All art is erotic", you find that it is not an original comment by Germaine Greer, having been attributed also to Klimt, Picasso and Adolf Loos.

Would it be more true to say: "Eroticism is in the eye of the beholder"?

[Stillhomewardbound]

Venus de Milo was noted for her charms, but strictly between us/
You're cuter than Venus, and what's more you've got arms!!

[handsomefortune]

> Would it be more true to say: "Eroticism is in the eye of the beholder"? <

yes it would be truer imv french frank, but far less contentious an idea, unlikely to cause the same interest.

(but fancy greer quoting loos, klimt or picasso initially, and in the 21st c)!

[umslopogaas]

Tom Lehrer again, "Smut", dredged up from a faltering memory of a 1960s LP (yes I do still have it somewhere, if there is sufficient interest I'll attempt to find it and fill in the missing bits). I'm sure the following bits are not in the right order, but here goes anyway:

"Smut! Give me smut and nothing but!
A dirty novel I cant shut, if its uncut and unsubt ... le.
Bring on the obscene murals, neckties, chandeliers, stained glass windows, anything.
More, more, I'm still not satisfied.

Stories of tortures, used by debauchers,
Lurid, licentious and vile
Make me smile.
Novels that pander to my taste for candour
Give me a pleasure sublime.
Let's face it, I love slime.

All books can be indecent books
But recent books are bolder
For filth I'm glad to say is in the mind of the beholder.
When correctly viewed, everything is lewd
I could tell you things about Peter Pan
And the Wizard of Oz ... THERE'S a dirty old man!"

Sung by the man himself, its a virtuoso performance, and a very clever anti-pornography polemic disguised as a hymn of praise to the very subject he attacks. Lehrer was, and I hope still is, a great comic.

[french frank]

yes it would be truer imv french frank, but far less contentious an idea, unlikely to cause the same interest.

Oh, d**n!