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Art versus pornography: the Mona Lisa versus “Moaning Lisa,” the “piece de resistance” versus a piece of a-… you get the picture. We can all agree that classic works of art such as Leonardo’s mysterious La Gioconda are in a higher league and quite different than regular porn store smut. Of course. But is there a time when we can’t tell the difference?

In Kurt Vonnegut’s God Bless You Mister Rosewater the main character’s ultra conservative senator father at one point quips that the difference between art and smut is essentially pubic hair. He says no beautiful works of real art contained the body hair of the pubic area and most respectful works at least contained the censorship of a nice Christian fig leaf. Heaven forbid the human body is viewed as it was made in the image of God. That would be blasphemy. Without going on a rant about neo-conservative religious views on censorship and book burning, Senator Rosewater brings up a good point here. Though I beg to differ.

Can Senator Rosewater be saying that Michelangelo’s David is pornographic because his perfect body shows a tuft of pubic hair? Uber-conservatives such as Queen Victoria in the past have requested that a fig leaf be placed over the shepherd boy’s petite uncircumcised wiener for her visit. We wouldn’t want the old monarch to faint at the sight of a penis, with pubic hair or not. One can’t begin to tell me that David is not a work of art because he decided not to trim his nether regions.

Yet we all know different societies and times hold different values. Primitive societies lacked shame when revealing their bodies in their dress and art, to include classic antiquity in Rome and Greece (see Pompeii frescoes). It was the uptight ultra religious societies of Europe that lasted from after Rome on through the Middle Ages and varying in certain levels up to and beyond the Victorian Age of the 19th century that often called for modesty and fig leaf attitudes. Some cultures, particularly in “civilized” countries such as England would have their citizens cover their whole body in dress even in scorching weather.

So you can imagine their art, and how they might consider it naughty that Honoré Fragonard gives us a glimpse of a leg in the Swing. Fragonard’s Swing represented a form of erotica, lacking nudity but hardly lacking imagination. The evident affair between the woman on the swing and the hiding man in the foreground perfectly poised to see up her dress made for a sultry situation that would make young fops in those days blush. The more revealing Stolen Kiss, painted in 1770 almost shows cleavage as the young woman removes her most outer garments and obviously anticipates a more intimate situation with her young lover, who eagerly kisses her. Many of Fragonard’s paintings involved ambiguous situations which subtly imply more “indecent” undertones.

Pubic hair in paintings made a debut later in Goya’s Naked Maja, who reclines comfortably showing her untrimmed naughty bits. Nobody really knows who Maja was exactly, but she sure shows off some dark pubic hair tot he viewer- though it has been thought the painting itself was meant to be a private addition to the more public Clothed Maja. No doubt in those times the Nude Maja was viewed as pornographic and unacceptable for fine art. But that would all change depending on social climates and individual points of view.

Seen above is Gustave Courbet’s Origin of the World. Painted in 1866, it shows the unashamed and detailed closeup of a woman spread-eagle revealing her genitals. Though the identity of the woman is known, in this painting the sitter, along with any surroundings, save for the sheets, are all unnecessary and subordinate to the main theme of the painting- the erotic depiction of a woman’s sex. The painting was shocking in its time, a time of questioning moral values. Courbet, along with Eduard Manet (Olympia) helped to revolutionize the depiction of nudity in fine art.

Throughout the years pioneers such as Fragonard have somewhat been pushing the envelope at some times with brash statements. Somewhere between art and pornography there lies subtle implications, or sexual innuendos. Just as Fragonard’s paintings imply the impending sexual encounter, such paintings as Kirchner’s Self Portrait with model imply the recent sex he’s had with the girl with his hair brush pointing toward his crotch. This is similar to some of Caravaggio’s darker subtleties like the David and Goliath with the David, holding the severed self-portrait head of Goliath, while holding the sword across his penis, or the Uffizi version of the Sacrifice of Isaac, which aside from the story and context of the situation, looks as if the child is a victim of rape more than anything else.

How about post-modern art? Take for instance My Lonesome Cowboy, by Takashi Murakami. It would be hard to defend this against accusations of porn. He’s ejaculating! Soft-core pornography on “Skin-emax” doesn’t even show erections, or penetrations, let alone the graphic depiction of male climax. In nude paintings throughout the ages the occurrence of an erection is few and far between. So some may argue that this particular variable may be the differing evidence of pornographic nature in art. It also occurred in ancient art such as the old Indian illustration for the Kama Sutra. Was that porn? Is Britney Spears Pregnant vulgar because of the position she’s in? Or is it a celebration of nature (The child is even crowning) and/or celebrities and/or female nudity in general?

It depends on the situation and presentation, but like most things it mostly depends on your own point of view. My Lonesome Cowboy is a work of art, and is not pornography, the same as many other works of art involving erections, sex, pubic hair, whether subtle or in-your-face. Art is too complex to be black or white, especially with so many questions on what can be considered art, completely aside from nude art. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. If tight-ass conservatives call a glimpse of pubic hair pornography, so be it- it hasn’t and won’t stop people from creating such art, or viewers from appreciating it.

See also Disrobed: Nude Paintings, Sculpture and Photography

I thought it would be funny if I presented twenty or so pictures taken from both paintings and downright porno and ask if you thought they were art or pornography- but I won’t be that cruel or indecent. However, some of the following unlikely paintings were met with criticism for their “indecent,” erotic, or pornographic nature, some in their own times, and some today: