Barbican's new exhibition which traces the history of sex in art (UK)
When police seized a photograph from the Baltic art gallery in Gateshead recently, taken by the celebrated American photographer Nan Goldin and owned by Sir Elton John, the directors of the Barbican art gallery must have felt pretty nervous.
The Barbican's new show, Seduced: Art and Sex from Antiquity to Now, deals with precisely the difference between art and pornography that the debate over Goldin's image of two small girls has reignited.
Is Klare and Edda belly-dancing an example of child pornography, or does the fact of Goldin's reputation as a serious documentary photographer, and the respectability of the Baltic as a museum, elevate the picture to the category of art?
What is sublime to one person can be smut to another, and Seduced does nothing if not tease out the difference between stimulating the mind and arousing the senses. Covering 2,000 years of representations of sex, Seduced sets out to seduce....
Read entire article at Telegraph (UK)
The Barbican's new show, Seduced: Art and Sex from Antiquity to Now, deals with precisely the difference between art and pornography that the debate over Goldin's image of two small girls has reignited.
Is Klare and Edda belly-dancing an example of child pornography, or does the fact of Goldin's reputation as a serious documentary photographer, and the respectability of the Baltic as a museum, elevate the picture to the category of art?
What is sublime to one person can be smut to another, and Seduced does nothing if not tease out the difference between stimulating the mind and arousing the senses. Covering 2,000 years of representations of sex, Seduced sets out to seduce....