Sex, Art, and Camille Paglia
I'm a big fan of the cultural provocateur Camille Paglia and pretty much think that she's said everything there is to say about culture, art, and academia at the moment. But her stance on pornography is something that I could never get my head around. She believes that pornography—from kiddie porn to bondage—is art. "Pornography and art are identical for me," she has said. "I think Michelangelo is a pornographer." I've really tried to see her side of this issue, and have even defended pornography as free speech, but I can't defend pornography as art. Pornography is either completely manufactured and commercial (see Playboy) or it is just gross (see everything else).
You're probably wondering where all this is coming from--why am I writing a post about pornography? Well, I came across (in The Daily Beast) a recently launched magazine that's making me think twice. That's because this magazine, which tastefully and evocatively features images of female nudity, is unlike the Maxims and Playboys of the world. Treat!, as the magazine is called, was founded by photographer Steve Shaw, 45, "to create something beautiful . . . My thought was, let’s do a magazine that shows women tastefully. Let’s take these beautiful models, take all the things that they are selling off, and do something creative.” He goes on to say, “Maxim had become the place where an aspiring actress will wear a cheesy bikini, ‘Get your boobs out and bend over’—and they don’t even want to do that. A lot of magazines feature nudity for shock value. And it’s disposable. I thought, ‘Who am I going to shoot for? [Expletive deleted] it! I’m going to start my own magazine.’”
Yes, the magazine can be pretentious and self-consciously artsy, but I give it an A for responding—artistically—to the vulgarity of today's porn industry. The women in these shoots don't look like pained or cheesy or manufactured hunks of meat (or silicone, as the case may be). They look beautiful. Treat! has been called "high fashion's Playboy," but I see it as a more erotic extension of Vogue. Since you probably don't want to click to the magazine's webpage when you're at work, let me show you a few of the more G-rated (ok, more like PG-13) photographs so you can judge for yourself.
The magazine's cover image (not pictured) shows the second model above posing naked near a river or lake. It is not, we are told, "airbrushed or photographically retouched. You can see a minute halo of body hair on her legs and breasts—something almost unheard of in the world of fashion photography, or even porn." This is woman in her natural state. And, as Paglia would be the first to tell you, nature is the sacred realm of women--and sex.
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Nov '10
Re: Sex, Art, and Camille Paglia
Why do you have to put up the really interesting stuff just when I have to go to dinner followed by an opening! But I'll be back...In the meantime, my own opinion of the 3 shots you've put up so far are just cheesecake and/or rather dull eye candy.
Edited on Jan 12 at 2:12pmFeb '11
Re: Sex, Art, and Camille Paglia
Camille is truly an original and challenging thinker. I always enjoy reading her, but I couldn't look at these pictures while waiting for my son's karate class to finish...
I was at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC several weeks ago, and saw a gorgeous faun statue of Bernini. I was overcome, and pointing out to my children the beauty and amazing skill it showed. They were very embarassed, because I pointed out how the faun's genitalia also functioned structurally in the statue. But it was very beautiful.
The tadpoles later asked me why so much of the art was naked. I told them it could be two reasons: 1. It is easier to draw or sculpt people with no clothes on because clothes are difficult to do well or 2. They were emphasizing the beauty of the human form. After a moment's consideration, my 5 and 8 year olds concurred with #1.
Sep '10
Re: Sex, Art, and Camille Paglia
One of the most mind-blowing books I ever read was Paglia's Sexual Personae, here is pretty good synopsis.
What little I know about sex (ha,ha) is that it's about mystery. Pornography has gone so far all the secrets are revealed and we will now start moving into another phase. There are also trends in what is considered sexy, just like everything else. Once everyone is doing something like bikini waxing and we all get used to it, then it becomes boring. Now hair on women will start to look more attractive.
And by the way, men are the new women when it comes to hair (women don't like it) and visual stimulation. Women are generally not visually stimulated, but they are trying to force this upon them. We men are really tired of the same type of woman in the same faux-sexy pose the fat lips and balloon breasts . Maybe I'm just older and jaded but it's too much. Women are getting the boob jobs not for us men. Every guy I know is turned off by fake boobs.
I also think Paglia is misguided and wrong on several things...
Edited on Jan 12 at 2:25pmRe: Sex, Art, and Camille Paglia
HalifaxCB: Why do you have to put up the really interesting stuff just when I have to go to dinner followed by an opening! But I'll be back...In the meantime, my own opinion of the 3 shots you've put up so far are just cheesecake and/or rather dull eye candy. · Jan 12 at 2:12pm
Edited on Jan 12 at 02:12 pm
Well, listen, I couldn't put up the mature rated stuff lest the specter of the Blue Yeti come to haunt me!
Sep '10
Re: Sex, Art, and Camille Paglia
Pornography is not art. Pornography is difficult to define (I knows it when I sees it) . Art takes effort, perspective, composition, and must give the viewer something more than an erection. People can disagree on certain degrees of porn/art and Paglia is most radical in her views. There is pornography that is definitely not art. However, since it can't be adequately defined, it should never be outlawed, but it shouldn't be in our faces either.
Re: Sex, Art, and Camille Paglia
Franco -- you really think that women are not generally visually stimulated?? This is not my experience!
Mama Toad -- Bernini really is something else. Talk about visually stimulating.
Aug '10
Re: Sex, Art, and Camille Paglia
Camille is a brilliant critic and observer, but she has to go home to dinner every night too. Her partner runs a museum you see.
Well, you get the point.
Sep '10
Re: Sex, Art, and Camille Paglia
Actually, flownover, they split up some time ago ... seems Camille fell hard for a Brazilian pop star.
flownover: Camille is a brilliant critic and observer, but she has to go home to dinner every night too. Her partner runs a museum you see.
Well, you get the point. · Jan 12 at 2:32pm
May '10
Re: Sex, Art, and Camille Paglia
Pornography is art, but it's art like slasher films are art: it gives people the worst of what they want, and crudely.
I hate it when people equate any profession or product with quality. If it's bad art, it's still art. If it's sloppy and biased journalism, it's still journalism. If it's gravely flawed science, it's still science. Pretending something or someone doesn't qualify in one's own field of pursuit comes across as snotty.
Anyway, eroticism can be artful and nudes are not always erotic. But modern advertising and cinema have made erotic poses, nude or otherwise, ubiquitous. Franco is right that the mystery is gone. It's a testament to the power of sexual attraction that people who have been exposed to such images their whole lives can still be stirred by them.
Beauty and sexiness are different, if related, types of visual appeal. Photographers and painters who specialize in nudes tend to dance around that line.
May '10
Re: Sex, Art, and Camille Paglia
Why must it appeal to more than lust to be art? Artists appeal to all sorts of desires, thoughts and emotions.
Art is deliberate. It involves design or selection. Simply turning on a camera and filming whatever happens is only art in the crudest sense, like a toddler's aimless scribbles. But plenty of Hollywood films demonstrate that appeals to sexual desire can be artful.
Interesting side note. Men and women tend to have different ratios of rod-to-cone receptor cells in their eyes. Thus, men and women quite literally see differently. Men's vision is more attentive to shapes while women's vision is more attentive to shading.
So one might expect a female photographer / editor to emphasize different aspects of a visual scene than a man would.
Jul '11
Re: Sex, Art, and Camille Paglia
There's a fine line with everything but what I consider pornographic has ruined quite a few marriages I know and has a detrimental effect on youth's image of the opposite sex as a piece of meat.
Nonetheless, art for its own sake with nudity can be quite tasteful. A fine line indeed.
Dec '10
Re: Sex, Art, and Camille Paglia
Leonard Nimoy used photography to link the nude female form to the feminine aspect of God in his project Shekhina.
Sep '10
Re: Sex, Art, and Camille Paglia
Emily Esfahani Smith: Franco -- you really think that women are not generally visually stimulated?? This is not my experience!
Mama Toad -- Bernini really is something else. Talk about visually stimulating. · Jan 12 at 2:31pm
There are exceptions, but how many magazines are there featuring naked guys (that aren't for gay men) One? And even that one is "tasteful".I was talking to a friend who is in the dating scene again, she told me she sometimes gets naked pics from a guy. She doesn't like that at all. I don't know any women that do. A lot of guys would be quite happy to get those kinds of pics from a prospective date.
Jun '10
Re: Sex, Art, and Camille Paglia
I'm afraid that most men (over 60%) would say, once the photography surpasses the quality of a direct-flash vacation snapshot, a racy photo is a racy photo. Just as for most women (again, over 60%) a shiny sports car is a shiny sports car.
Edited on Jan 12 at 3:04pmMar '11
Re: Sex, Art, and Camille Paglia
If all nude photography is considered "pornographic", the I take Camille's point.
But I think this is mistaken. Just as the sculptor can capture physical beauty--even in an erotic way--I think it is possible to capture the nude human form via photograph in a way that is elevating to the senses, and sublimates the erotic. Beauty itself is edifying.
At the same time however, there are forms of pornography which very explicitly seek to capture a voyeuristic debasement of human sexuality in its most visceral form and devoid of context and emotional content. These forms treat human beings as means, or even in a mechanical fashion. They do not elevate the senses toward the beautiful. These, therefore, I would not consider art.
Sep '10
Re: Sex, Art, and Camille Paglia
Aaron Miller
Why must it appeal to more than lust to be art?
Art is deliberate. It involves design or selection. Simply turning on a camera and filming whatever happens is only art in the crudest sense, like a toddler's aimless scribbles. But plenty of Hollywood films demonstrate that appeals to sexual desire can be artful.
Appeals to sexual desires can indeed be artful, for sure.
But if it's "aimless", it's not art. Can it be valuable and people appreciate it? Yes. The toddlers parents think it's great.
Let me ask this. A cloud forms. It's beautiful, it has a divinely interesting shape there hanging in the sky. Is it art? No, because there is no intention. It is random.
You take out your cell phone and push a button, you didn't focus you just captured it on technology. Is that art? Maybe. If you can repeatedly do this, you set up an exhibit and perhaps you can call yourself an artist.I agree 100% - art is deliberate. You have to be trying to achieve something in some way, and if you succeed with only one person, it can be considered art.
Edited on Jan 12 at 3:17pmMay '10
Re: Sex, Art, and Camille Paglia
I think that this is the usual case where the differences between men and women are argued by point examples rather than population distributions. In Steven Rhoads' meta-analysis book on females and males, he shows how the "stereotype" works.
The two populations' distribution curves overlap, with some difference in variation about the mean as well, but the generic statements that "men are visually stimulated" and "women are tactile-sensitive" really still apply at the population level. Individuals outside the first or second sigma (one or two standard deviations away from average) also show biochemical skews in the balance of measured testosterone and estrogen (which are both present in both sexes).
Generally, that means that the average level of actual measurable visually-derived erotic stimulation experienced by an "average" female is lower than the equivalent for a man, and generally females who are more stimulated visually also show higher inherent testosterone levels. And vice versa for males- one who is significantly more tactile and less visual tends to have an estrogen-testosterone mix more in the direction of the female levels.
Nov '11
Re: Sex, Art, and Camille Paglia
An adequate conception of art must include pornography.
Art includes bad art.
One does not intend that last sentence as an assertion that pornography is necessarily bad art. Instead one intends that sentence as a wedge for the idea that art is far more pervasive and comprehensive than most realize.
We resist a broader conception of art because we want to defend art as something always "beautiful and good," by which one means, morally good. The impulse to defend art is noble, but art does not deserve that defense, because art, as such, is not concerned with the morally good, only with the aesthetically good.
Some pornography might be good art. Similarly, one cannot insist that art be beautiful or even that good art be beautiful. Something beautiful can be pornographic; very good and beautiful art can also be rather pornographic.
People resist what I assert only because they aren't sufficiently suspicious. They unthinkingly accept that art, beauty, and nature are unqualifiedly good things.
They should instead be on guard about how, for better and for worse, both art and nature (one might include women, too) use beauty to entice, to disarm, to manipulate.
Edited on Jan 12 at 3:50pmJun '10
Re: Sex, Art, and Camille Paglia
Paglia is unique. I love listening to her. She's kind of like Hitchens but in the social sphere. She's on our side on a lot of very important issues but she has some areas that we might not be completely comfortable with.
Strange to say, but she is like this because she isn't just an intellectual. She's a sensualist with a first class mind. I love people who accept this world as they find it. Living in our bodies we must try and make sense of the inner and the outer world. She has struggled mightily and has come up with a unique angle on how things work here.
What I most love about Camille Paglia is how her mind penetrates things and then beautifully expresses herself.
And she is very brave.
Regarding the magazine: the human form will be perennially fascinating. Both men and women are very visual beings but very different in how their respective minds process the body. Aesthetic appreciation is there in large measure for both of them and women and men use aesthetics very similarly but they both adopt different standards for each gender (Metro-sexual lifestyle notwithstanding).
On one of his Male-Female Hours (every Wednesday, 2nd hour), Dennis Prager discussed whether women dress up for men or for other women. He had a woman caller put it to him thus: women like to be complemented by other women but they most want that complement to be in the hearing of men.
Edited on Jan 12 at 3:43pmSep '10
Re: Sex, Art, and Camille Paglia
Astonishing: An adequate conception of art must include pornography.
Art includes bad art.
One does not intend that last sentence as an assertion that pornography is necessarily bad art. Instead one intends that sentence as a wedge for the idea that art is far more pervasive and comprehensive than most realize.
We resist a broader conception of art because we want to defend art as something always "beautiful and good," by which one means, morally good. The impulse to defend art is noble, but art does not deserve that defense, because art, as such, is not concerned with the morally good, only with the aesthetically good.
Some pornography might be good art. Similarly, one cannot insist that art be beautiful or even that good art be beautiful. Something beautiful can be pornographic; very good and beautiful art can also be rather pornographic.
Very convincing. The link is, ironically, " 403 forbidden"
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