Is all Art erotic?

[Serial_Apologist]

Pornography is generic; but is it possible to decide what is erotic without oneself being turned on? Or is "the erotic" judged by aesthetic rules? Or, if one says both, how can that possibly be other than "recollected (for the sake of unembarrassing public recounting) in intellectualised tranquillity"?

If eroticism is to be found in the first category, its response if one is not mistaken seems most comfortable within private assumptions where pure sex can be divorced from fully relating to the other. How many others have found this impossible - or is it some vestigial Christian conscience that holds some of us back, thankfully? Personally I feel on safe ground in believing Berger is right in saying that the erotic in art is brought to life when the artists has succeeded in transmitting to the viewer his or her awareness of the full presence of the subject. And I think this way of bearing witness to eroticism in art to be transcendent of sexuality and sexual orientation. Well, I still just about hope so!

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

"all" is the problem

[handsomefortune]

another problem is that the erotic isnt necessarily confined to images/etc.

neither does 'eroticism' necessarily only relate to sexual thoughts, or activity.

i believe hippies used to get 'turned on' to music, once upon a time .....

so, to link 'eroticism' with 'sex only' is disengenious imo. or at least this is how i interpret lateral's point upthread, about 'limitations'.

[Serial_Apologist]

i believe hippies used to get 'turned on' to music, once upon a time .....

so, to link 'eroticism' with 'sex only' is disengenious imo. or at least this is how i interpret lateral's point upthread, about 'limitations'.

In the wake of Timothy Leary's call to "Tune in, turn on and drop out", yes, but some of, er, us, took "turn on" to mean music capable of inducing the kinds of higher states of consciousness induced by meditation. I'd be ambivalent before describing such states as "erotic", though sexual practices have been proclaimed as means other than to procreation

I agree with your interpretation of lat's point. Wasn't quite sure he meant that, yesterday. The fact that a lot of this sort of stuff was being said by Alan Watts in his wonderful Book "Psychotherapy East and West" 50 years ago shows how far things have been delayed:

"...To appeal to Eros, psychoanalysis must overcome the remnants of antagonism in its own attitude to culture, and its use of jargon which still carries the implication that the erotic is disgusting. So often the psychoanalytic interpretation of culture seems to be nothing more than debunking. It finds erotic symbolism in all the deliberate creations of art, science and religion as if to say, 'What dirty animals you are after all!' But Freud's detection of the erotic in everything supposedly spiritual and sublime is really a marvellous revelation. It shows that, try as we may, spontaneity cannot be prevented, and the fact that man is a living organism cannot be concealed. There is no reason for shame in the recognition that our most lofty images and conceptions have an erotic symbolism. Psychotherapy and liberation are completed in the moment when shame and guilt collapse, when the organism is no longer compelled to defend itself for being an organism, and when the individual is ready to own his unconscious behaviour. But psychoanalysis does not, in practice, make it clear that the erotic is deeper than the genital. Beyond the play of the penis in the vagina lies the play of the organism in its environment - the polymorphous eroticism of man's original body as it comes from the womb". (P 188)

[Lateralthinking1]

[Serial_Apologist]

You're taking the Mickey, Lat!

[vinteuil]

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

.

" something that underpins everything, but if it means everything, it really means nothing." - rather well sums up Coleridge's feelings about God, as his pantheism expanded to embrace everything conceivable and unconceivable.

Which is a bit what I feel about this debate. Many of my favourite painters - Mantegna, Piero della Francesca, Chardin, Melendez, Corot, Poussin, Durer, Cotman - would not seem, on the face of it, to be particularly 'erotic'. By expanding the notion of 'erotic' to embrace a delight in the painterly qualities, an appreciation of light, texture, colour, form - one could, I suppose say that, well, yes, the sensual delight these paintings afford is an 'erotic' tickle. But by then I think we have expanded the meaning of the term so far as to make it - as don Basilio indicates - meaning-less.