fchan

Art can be pornographic, but pornography is not necessarily art.

As Gloria Leonard once said, "The difference between porn and erotica is the lighting." 

Other's might say it's the artistic/literary merit of the work, or the humanization of the subject - "sexual parts having sex vs. people having sex" - Or whether the intent is to be experienced in the loins or the lobes (the brain, eh?). 

It's all terribly subjective, and claiming all furry 'yiff' as art is as silly as claiming any image that shows the naughty bits is automagically 'porn'. 

As for my opinion, I find it hard enough considering most of what the furry fandom puts out visually as worth looking at/storing/bothering with at all, let alone claiming that some divine act of human wankery has endowed it all as 'art'.  Of what I do consider worth bothering with, I'd say the very best is art, and the very worst merely porn.  And to tell you where I draw the line at what makes each different from the other would take way too long. 

Well, a drawing may be porn, but it's a lot more qualifiable as art than a video of two people having sex. Art is designed to be aesthetically appealing, so it's art and porn. Though you could argue that lighting and make up are the design elements of a porn movie.

Whether something is art or not is on a continuum, rather than black-and-white "it's art" or "it's not art."

Definition of art: The more effort X put into making 1 instance of an object appear a certain way, the more it can be considered X's "art."

I don't think there is an absolute standard; one can only say object X is more art than object Y based on evidence of effort.

Example:  Detailed paintings that take days or months of continuous effort to complete are certainly very art.  A blank piece of paper has almost zero art; no effort was made to make it look that way.  (One can make the argument that it would be the paper manufactuer's artwork, though...)

The end purpose of the artwork doesn't matter insofar as how much art it is.  An artwork whose primary purpose is sexual depiction or arousal can be considered pornographic.  Considering the etymology of the word "pornographic," one might technically say that only work that depicts genitals is pornographic.

>>1 needs to watch higher quality porn.  Or make your own.  If I ever win the lottery I'm totally producing my own high-quality porn.
 
>>3 I think sexual arousal, titillation, and even just depictions of sexiness is a great end in itself for artwork (and a lot else) to serve.  Why is that not a good enough meaning?  Works that do this and do this well are very meritorious IMHO.

>>6 Case in point.  A good quality pornographic drawing in many cases takes more effort than shooting a video.  Visualizing a picture and bringing it to form through a drawing takes a lot more skill and time than just sitting there with a camera filming two people doing things that they'd probably be doing anyway.  Picture is more art than many videos.  (Although I know we all can give examples of really crappy drawn porn that isn't).

>>9
Modern version of that story:

Online Artist does a sketch of a guy's online girlfriend's fursona, and charges him $50 for it through Paypal. The guy says "u bastrd it only took u an hour." The Online Artist replies "10 min cause I was watching Inu Yasha for 30 min and took a shower also so like 10-15 min."

>>11
Yet, if you simply edit out the naughty bits in a tasteful way, it's a masterpiece.

>>13
Now in other fandoms, though, they're just lousy with master artists. You can't walk two steps without tripping over a Da Vinci!

Porn is porn (and sometimes pr0n), no matter how detailed it is. 

>>12
No, then it's hentai.

Necro-thread is Un-Necro'd.