Art is something entirely subjective. Each person has different criteria for what counts as art and while this is more obvious that anywhere else in modern art, it can also be seen in “pornographic art”. Artists often feel the need to depict in their art (no matter what kind of art that is) sexuality or nudity. Sex is a part of nature, so its depiction in art is completely natural, if not necessary. The problem comes when certainly people use said depictions of sex, either for a very specific personal use, or to criticize the piece of art in which said depiction of sex was. There’s nothing wrong with criticism, but a variety of people tend to consider art pieces with extensive depictions of sex as not art. This is nowhere more obvious than in cinema. When a film includes multiple and long sex scenes, many people start criticizing it for that negatively, without considering the importance and need of said scenes and just considering the fact that they exist and they depict sex. This sparks the question, at what point does art become pornography?
Like in everything else, when it comes to judging what counts as pornography and what counts as cinema, each person has different criteria. Said criteria often are very similar, but also very different. Some people make the argument that art stops being art and it becomes pornography, when the sex scenes depicted are very realistic and the actors actually have sex. A movie like that is Gaspar Noé’s “Love” which has been described as pornographic multiple times. Another set of people believe that art becomes pornography just when any kind of sex or nudity are depicted. If we count this opinion as correct, then a vast amount of films, paintings and sculptures stop being considered as art, just because they depict one of life’s most natural aspects. To me that sounds absolutely insane.
My opinion on that matter is often very different from most people’s. Personally I believe that the previous opinions are wrong and that there is only one distinctive differences between art and pornography. This is the fact that they are made for very different reasons and I think that that’s what separates them. Art can be made for a variety of reasons, from the artist’s need to express himself, to the studio’s need to make more money. Art can really be made for many different reasons, but pornography is always made for one, very specific reason, so that the viewer of the porn “film” can masturbate. Of course the studios that make porn have other reasons as well, like their need and want to make money, but they make said money because people use their creations to masturbate. Some people use films that depict sex to do that, but that’s not the reason why the film was made, that’s just something that the viewer decided to do.
Someone could make the argument that any kind of art that can also be used for someone to masturbate stops being art and it becomes pornography. I think that this argument can be very easily debunked, because you never know what is sexually arousing for someone. If someone is a necrophiliac and he finds murder movies or zombie movies arousing, does this mean that these movies are pornographic? Of course not. For better or worse, you can never know what someone will find arousing and use to masturbate, so that’s not a valid argument.
With that in mind we can see that if we count my opinion as the correct one, then art never becomes pornography, because art is never created for the same reasons as pornography. No matter how many sex scenes are in a movie and no matter how realistic and extensive they are, if they are made strictly for artistic reasons and not for the viewer to masturbate, then this movie is art and not pornography. It can be good art or bad art, but that doesn’t matter, because it’s still art.
This can spark another question, can pornography become art? As I said, for me what separates the two is the reason why they are made, so pornography can never become art. There are pornographic films with a story and very good direction and cinematography and when you take all that out maybe they don’t even have that much more sex than a Tinto Brass film, but they are made for a different reason, so they aren’t art.
So, to conclude, in my opinion what makes art art and pornography pornography isn’t how good it looks, nor how much story it has, nor the actual amount to sex it has, but simply the reason why it's made.
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