Erotic art in Pompeii and Herculaneum has been both exhibited as art and censored as pornography. The Roman cities around the bay of Naples were destroyed by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD , thereby preserving their buildings and artefacts until extensive archaeological excavations began in the 18th century. These digs revealed the cities to be rich in erotic artefacts such as statues, frescoes , and household items decorated with sexual themes. The ubiquity of such imagery and items indicates that the treatment of sexuality in ancient Rome was more relaxed than current Western culture. However, much of what might strike modern viewers as erotic imagery, such as oversized phalluses, could arguably be fertility imagery.
Ancient Egyptian Sexuality
Nude Art for Sale
The distinction between erotic art and pornography is often debated, but rarely agreed upon. As western society becomes increasingly liberal, art becomes more experimental and the distribution of porn, commonplace. As a result art and pornography continue to merge. For many, the porn industry represents an archaic and outmoded view of women. It continues to promote an ideology of objectification and submission which is considered anti-progressive.
Sexually explicit art is found in all cultures. Artists as diverse as Pablo Picasso and Jeff Koons blended high art and kitsch in an attempt to push the boundaries of good taste. There was a time, however, when works of art by great masters were considered vulgar and pornographic. And some of these artworks still have the power to be, if not shocking, then at least taboo.
By Damien Gayle. These remarkable images show some of the earliest known examples of what we these days might dub pornography. The Kangjiashimenji Petroglyphs, in Xinjiang, north-west China, depict an intense fertility ritual the likes of which is almost unique in the ancient world.