Art & Pornography

What is the difference between pornography and art, if there is one at all? It may be difficult to define, but easy to recognize. 

Recently, I took a trip with a friend to the Hammer museum and there I watched a video recording of a naked man strapped to wall in a dimly lit dungeon, while half naked man in studded leather pieced him with needles. Afterwards, his legs and hands were were chained to the floor and he was whipped by a half a dozen of other half naked men with his needles still protruding. It was painful to watch. It was homosadomasochism. It was vile. 

In the exact opposite direction, I have been looking for a replica of Michelangelo's Pieta to have in my garage so I can look at it when I meditate. A beautiful youthful Mary, who held her child after birth, in her purity of body and spirit, holds her son, the embodiment of purity, after death. 

The difference between the two, the difference between what is beautiful and what is ugly, can help shed light on the difference between pornography and mere nudity in art. In the Pieta, we see Jesus and Mary, and we see love, as heartbreaking as it may be in that particular moment. In the other piece, I don't recall the name of it, nor do in care to, but let's call it Satan's Alley, in Satan's Alley, we have lust. There is no love. In love, as Pope John Paul II says, you give yourself wholly to each other. In Mary and Jesus, the self giving love is not questionable. Jesus denies his mother nothing, and Mary is the first and most faithful disciple, even giving Jesus her humanity. In Satan's Alley, there is no self giving. The torturers take away the dignity of the other, for their own pleasure, while the tortured receives some perverted eroticism from it. There is only the selfish desire to take, not to give. 

With this framework, we can see the implications for distinguishing between art and pornography. Pornography exists for an individual to take. There is lust, but no love. When we look at nudity in art, the David or The Birth of Venus, we see something not for us to take, but to appreciate. There is a sense in which we do want to take it, but we are taking it to be united with it, not to own own it as a master owns a slave. I might see a beautiful fruit basket, and desire the fruit basket, but not to eat it. In a sense we love these expressions of beauty, and are prepared to do something about it because it is beautiful. We would defend the Pieta against damage, and preserve it for its own sake and become attached to it, but we don't feel attached to a collection of pornography. A pervert would only be attached to it in the same way a drug addict might be attached to drugs, to satisfy his own twisted fix, a depravity of the soul. But the beautiful nude, man created good and naked as God saw Adam and Eve, with no depravity whatsoever. May our museums remember that.