Erotic art

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Detail of an antique oinochoe (wine jug). Shuvalov painter around 430 BC Chr.

Works of erotic art ( erotica , singular eroticon ) are works of art with a predominantly erotic subject , i.e. literary texts, pictures, sculptures, films, comics, etc., the subject of which is the representation of sexual acts or situations.

Differentiation from pornography

The delimitation of the term to pornography has changed over time, is assessed differently in the individual cultures and depends on conventions and the personal feelings of the viewer.

A strict separation between art and pornography is no longer made in German law, as the Federal Constitutional Court found in its Mutzenbacher decision . Accordingly, a work can be both a work of art, which means that it is subject to the so-called art reservation of § 1 Para. 2 No. 2 GjS and is also specially protected by Art. 5 GG, Paragraph 3 , as well as being a "seriously harmful to young people" in the sense of § 6 GjS and is therefore indexed.

In German case law , a definition of the OLG Düsseldorf is regularly given literally or analogously for pornography . According to this, pornography is “rough representations of the sexual that degrade the human being to a mere, interchangeable object of sexual desire in a way that incites the sexual drive. These representations have no meaningful connection with other expressions of life and only use traces of thought as a pretext for provocative sexuality. "

In contrast to the more recent German case law, in the USA, for example, a distinction is still made between works of art on the one hand, which are protected by the 1st Amendment to the Constitution of the United States , and on the other hand, pornographic work, which is not a work of art and does not have such protection enjoy. The term “ obscene ” is essential in this context . A decision by the Supreme Court of the United States in the Miller v. California from 1973, in which one of three criteria - the so-called Miller test - determined for the profanity of a work that “the work as a whole lacks serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value”. Accordingly, in lawsuits involving indexed books in the USA, it was repeatedly a question of whether a text represented a work of art or not, for example in the proceedings relating to Fanny Hill by John Cleland , Ulysses by James Joyce and Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller .

In the scientific discussion, the term erotography is used to describe the border area between what is regarded as erotic and what is considered pornography.

Collections of erotic art

Satyr and nymph , mosaic from the House of the Faun , Pompeii ,AD 79

The censors who tried, where it was not possible to destroy the works of erotic art, or at least to set limits on their distribution, were on the other hand the collectors of erotic art who tried to give the persecuted works a home. In addition to the activities of collectors who followed their lovers or obsessions, significant collections of erotic art were also created through efforts to withhold these works from the public without wanting to destroy them.

Pan copulates with a goat . Sculpture from the Gabinetto Segreto , now in the Naples National Archaeological Museum

An early and important collection of this kind came about through the finds of ancient erotica in Pompeii . Works that were believed to have remained hidden because of their obscenity were kept in the so-called Gabinetto Segreto in Naples. The room containing the collection was even bricked up at times in the 19th century. The works have only been permanently accessible since 2000. Other well-known “secret museums” are the so-called Secretum of the British Museum in London , which has now been dissolved, and the department of the Bibliothèque nationale in, which is called L'enfer (French for “hell”, roughly equivalent to the German “ poison cabinet ” as the name of a Remota department) Paris.

Legend has it that the largest collection of erotic art ever is housed in the Vatican , but there is no evidence that such an extensive collection exists. Probably the largest collections of Erotica worldwide are or were at research institutions in the USA, namely the collections of

Important private collectors of erotic art were for example:

literature

  • Masterpieces of erotic art , Directmedia Publishing , Berlin 2007, digital library , volume 35 of the small digital library (CD-ROM), ISBN 978-3-89853-335-5 .
  • Eva Gesine Baur : Masterpieces of erotic art. DuMont, Cologne 2002, ISBN 3-8321-7140-1 .
  • Claus Becker , Karl Ludwig Leonhardt (ed.): Museum of Erotic Art. Heyne, Munich 1992, ISBN 3-453-06268-X .
  • Gerritt Engel, JB Higgins, kingdome 19 , Maja u. Christiane Pausch: Wolff. Querverlag , Berlin 1990, ISBN 3-89656-033-6 .
  • Eduard Fuchs : History of Erotic Art. 3 vols., Langen, Munich 1908 to 1923.
  • Eberhard and Phyllis Kronhausen: Erotic Art. Carroll & Graf Publishers, New York 1993, ISBN 0-88184-970-7 .
  • Philip Rawson: The Erotic Art of the East. (World history of erotic art, Volume 1) Hoffmann and Campe, Hamburg 1969.
  • Carol Squiers, Jennifer Pearson Yamashiro, Betsy Stirratt, Jeffrey A. Wolin: Peek. Photographs from the Kinsey Institute. Arena Editions, Santa Fe 2000, ISBN 1-892041-35-9 .
  • Peter Weiermeier (Ed.): The cold look. Erotic art 17th to 20th centuries . Catalog of the exhibition of the same name at the Frankfurter Kunstverein, Frankfurt am Main 1995; Ed. Stemmle, Kilchberg / Zurich 1995, ISBN 3-905514-61-3 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Article “Art reservation”  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. in the online press law lexicon@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.initiative-tageszeitung.de  
  2. ↑ E.g. Kammergericht , judgment of February 8, 2008, Az .: (4) 1 Ss 312-07 (192/07) with reference to BGHSt 37, 55 (60); BGHSt32, 40 (44 ff.); Higher Regional Court Karlsruhe NJW 1974, 2015 (2016); BVerwG, NJW 2002, p. 2966 (2969).
  3. ↑ Oberlandesgericht Düsseldorf, judgment of March 28, 1974, Az .: 1 Ss 847/73, NJW 1974, p. 1474 (on the constituent element of the pornographic representation according to the new version of § 184 StGB).
  4. ^ "The work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value". See Miller v. California, 413 US 15, 24 (1973)
  5. ↑ Vincenzo Orlando: About museums, collectors and erotic art. In: Becker, Leonhardt (ed.): Museum of Erotic Art. Heyne, Munich 1992, pp. 15-25.
  6. ^ FAZ from April 19, 2006
  7. ^ A b Erwin J. Haeberle: A Brief History of Sexological Collections 2011.