Vases and mad orgies: sexual expression varies with culture

They have to be requested from the librarians at the Fine Arts Library. You can only look at two at a time and only in their reading room. Their pages are full of sexually explicit and implicit paintings, sketches and photographs that range from the highly amusing to the intensely arousing. No, I'm not talking about Hustler, Penthouse or Playboy. The pages I perused earlier this week belonged to the books of IU's erotic art collection. \nSo what is the difference between our modern concept of pornography and "erotic art?" People have always been fascinated by sex, but why?\nI was absolutely shocked by the sheer amount and diversity of sexual art. It spans millennia and oceans. Nigel Cawthorne's book, "Secrets of Love: The Erotic Arts through the Ages" said, "Artists and painters have struggled to depict the human sex experience. For in sex we are most truly human -- at once both animal and god-like."\nWhat fascinated me the most, however, was the propensity for culture-specific fetishes. \nThe Indians are best known for the Kama Sutra, a picture book of intricate sexual positions. Flexibility was most likely a desirable trait. \nThe ancient Greeks and Romans, from the looks of it, lived up to their reputations as wild and crazy partiers. Several vases and frescoes found in Pompeii feature mad orgies. \nThe English, known for their insufferable priggishness, have little to add to the erotic art world. The only painting that I came across that was attributed to the English was of several soldiers, fully clothed, spanking each other. \nThe ancient Chinese valued the well-endowed. Men were shown with larger-than-life phalluses. In fact, one screen painting actually shows a comparison contest between several of these "gifted" men. \nThe French, however, take the cake for the most nympho-maniacal culture that I encountered. From misty-eyed, plump young girls lounging on divans to transvestites to examples of bestiality and the first examples of inter-racial copulation; it is no wonder why Paris is known as the city of love.\nI was amazed at how every medium for expression, every genre of art and every world culture had something to contribute to this erotica. I wondered what our culture and our world will contribute, and I came to the conclusion that our modern concept of pornography is what will one day become antiquated. Our great-great grandchildren will one day giggle about what makes us blush. \nWhat is the difference between a naked woman in oil paint versus a naked woman on glossy paper or the television screen? Nothing. The sexual content is just as potent, only the medium varies.\nPeople are often offended by what they consider to be "pornography." Some of whom, have no problem viewing "good art" that depicts nudes. Because there is a difference between "naked" and "nude."\nI am not suggesting that these people rush out to buy this month's issue of Playboy for its artistic value, but as Norman Shapiro, a "pornographic artist" who spoke at IU's Kinsey Institute in 2001, said, "Around me, people differentiate between 'porn' and 'erotica' one being the less respectable, acceptable than the other ... to me, what I do is pornographic. Is it for that not art? I don't think so. 'Porn' is my genre -- what I call my access to making art."\nArt mirrors the society in which it is created.