Art or Porn?

...on the subject of pornography.

Approx 10 min read

As you guys may have noticed, I am very interested in two hot-button topics: AI and sex. While I have been known to enjoy a little button pushing here and there, I don’t think I’m passionate about these two topics because I like to push buttons as much as because of why these particular topics have that effect. In the case of AI and of sex, both subjects bring us to the intersection of power and our frail and flawed humanity. I am quite obsessed with power because it creates powerlessness and I am passionate about the significance of our flaws and frailty because I believe they are what bring our lives meaning. So, when a topic converges on both these subjects, you have my attention.

I see power use and abuse in absolutely everything human. I can not see a person order a donut without analyzing the power dynamics at play. And so it is when I was recently scanning Pintrest looking for an image and stumbled upon this painting that I stopped and felt the need respond.

Painting credit unknown.

This painting is painted in an impressionistic style – a style born out of Paris in the late 1800s. Only it was obvious to me immediately that this was a modern painting…not because of the crispness of the lines, not because of the hair styles and clothing worn by its subjects, but because of the posture assumed onto them.

I love early impressionist art and I am particularly enamoured with many of Sir William Russel Flints paintings of women. From the first time I saw them, Sir William’s paintings captured me because of the way in which he captured women. I saw in his paintings a truth I felt starved for in the modern depiction of women.

Painting by Sir William Russel Flint

In the above image by Sir William Russel Flint, these women look soft and relaxed, but they do not look vulnerable. There is something powerful in their comfort – their comfort in their surroundings, in their robes and in their bodies. That ease suggests power, it suggests agency, it suggests autonomy, it suggests…safety. Not to mention what it suggests about the man painting them. In this painting, the painter is not trying to make women objects manipulated to please him, in this painting the painter seems to be pleased by his subjects in their natural state…just as they are.

As a woman myself, as a person who has had the privilege of being in womens’ private, sacred spaces, I recognize the way the lounging woman’s right shoulder is collapsed to support her weight, her neck is jutted forward and her breasts are hanging limp as she unconsciously communes with her soothing, natural surroundings. In the woman sitting up, I see her hunched back and slightly awkwardly held up robe and have been there, in my own body. Both women are internal – it’s obvious in their stares. They are in the un-self-conscious ease of being unobserved.

Let’s compare that with the previous painting. In that modern painting, both women have assumed power-postures – their bodies look taught and strong, not supple and soft. And yet, there seems to be intense vulnerability in those women that I don’t see in Sir Williams’. Why do they look dangerously on the verge of being molested to me? Why do they look childish, almost like cartoons? I have gone back to this painting many times, looking for the reason, and it is my conclusion that the postures these young women have been painted in make me feel uncomfortable because I do not recgonize them in me. Not only the postures, but the shapes and proportions of their bodies. They are foreign. They are put on. They are how modern women pose when they want to please men. And, if you look closely, you can see that both women are in the outward state of attention. They are not feeling themselves, they are not at ease, they are conscious of and engaged with the other person. But women don’t pose like this for each other. The painting is a lie.

The postures painted into the modern painting (butts thrust back, lower back arched, upper back straight and tight, legs spread but not open, chests erect) are not postures women strike when alone or exclusively with other women. They are not postures that easily come from unconscious, natural movement. Those postures are manipulation – her to him and him to her. The painter is manipulating his subjects to please his eye and the women who actually strike those poses in real life are manipulating their own bodies to please “his” eye. Either way, it’s manipulation. And manipulation…is not sexy to me.

Painting credit unknown

Here is another modern image, painted to look like the women are in the kind of natural, innocent state of private repose that Sir William depicted so well over a hundred years ago, but it doesn’t feel natural, innocent or private at all, does it? Look closer. Notice the way the woman in blue is on her knees with her butt popped out and her tummy held flat; the way the other woman’s pink dress has fallen half-off while she attends to the task of writing a card; the way her shoulders are tight and lifted, but her dress suggests soft repose. The image is incongruous with truly unconscious female behavior. Again, it’s a manipulation. It feels posed. Subtler this time, but it’s in the details.

The reality is, that most of us today, even women, can struggle to recognize what unconscious female behavior actually looks like because we are all seeing women through our newly imposed, pornographic lens. Pornography, to me, is not about nudity or sex, it’s about the distortion of the erotic energy. What I see in these modern paintings is exactly that. Conversely, here is another old painting that, on its face, might seem overtly pornographic.

Painting credit unknown

There are two women, with their breasts completely out, one on her knees pulling on her own nipple. BUT, for me this image honours the feeling and truth of being a woman in the way the previous image does not. These bodies are natural with natural spine curvature, relaxed postures and some little tummy rolls. The way they are holding their bodies is completely unconscious of themselves or any male gaze, subtly giving me, the female viewer, permission to let my own shoulders drop and breathe. Women sometimes do play with their own nipples when alone or in total comfort, the same way men unconsciously tug on their own members. It is not a sexual act until perceived through a sexual lens. This image, like the first by Sir William, does not have the pornographic overlay, the distorted lens. It doesn’t feel like manipulation.

What both the older paintings feel like to me is the glorious and gorgeous experience of being female…not the unfortunate experience of being a sexualized object. To me, the sexuality of a woman in her natural state is not pornographic, it is erotic.

These modern paintings, to me, are as bad as AI – they are a cheap manipulation of human desire to satisfy a highjacked longing in our flawed and frail human nature. As we navigate a world with increasing saturation of art and imagery, let’s all, men and women alike, strive to be conscious of the ways we are glorifying the sensuality of what’s real, or the ways we elevate the message that artificiality is more desirable. Where our attention goes, there our beliefs will follow. The more attention we choose to pay to images that exult the manipulation, the more manipulation will feel natural and beautiful to us. The more attention we choose to pay to images that feed the beauty of our natural state, the more beauty our natural state with exude and the more connected to our own, natural beauty we will become.