JEFFREY HART
417
the battlefield, religious ecstasy, and the surgical operating room
which might prove shocking or disturbing, but that is no reason to
exclude them from the realm of art. I can even imagine making a
college faculty meeting the subject of a work of art, though the treat–
ment would inevitably be satirical. And there is no reason why art
cannot deal with erotic experience.
Within the field of erotic art we can make the customary
analyses and judgements. How well is it executed? Is it tragic or
comic? What is its meaning? Does it possess originality? Of what
kind? What is its relationship to the artist's other work?
I have before me on my desk, as I write, seven items of erotic
art. I do not doubt that many people would consider one or more of
them "pornographic," and it is even possible that some would fall
within the legal definition of pornography as currently applied by
the courts, though I am not certain about that. All seven items,
however, seem to me interesting and valid works of the imagination ,
and I will describe them briefly:
(1) A book called
Eros in Antiquity,
published in 1978, consists of
splendid photographs, in color, by Antonia Mulas. They depict
Greek and Roman works of sculpture characterized by erotic motifs.
We have vases and urns, medallions, bas relief representations, and
three-dimensional statues. The sexual acts being represented are
very explicit and sometimes complicated. There is no doubt that
many of these items are works of art of a very high order, indeed
priceless. Looking at some of these urns, one wonders afresh just ex–
actly what was going on in the frieze on Keats's Grecian urn: "Bold
lover, never, never canst thou kiss,! Though winning near the goal
"
(2) An etching done by Picasso in 1968 exhibits a sexual act,
with a voyeur peeking though a curtain into the boudoir. The style
of the etching is elegant and witty, and continuous with Picasso's
style in other etchings of the same period about other kinds of
behavior.
It
would certainly be impossible to argue that this erotic
drawing is not a work of art.
(3) A 1969 pencil drawing by the American artist Betty Dod–
son, a powerful piece of realism, depicts a couple engaged in oral
sex. Dodson's execution is magnificent, and, incidentally, destroys
the contention that erotic art is exclusively produced by males.
(4) A collection of photographs by the great photographer E.
J.
Bellocq, a sort of photographic Toulouse-Lautrec, taken around
1912, portrays prostitutes in bordellos. Bellocq, who was deformed,
