A Sacred Erotica (NSFW)

January 21, 2013

by Robert Mapplethorpe

Before anything else, I advise you to cover your eyes before reading this post. You can leave 2 fingers slightly open as if you’re shocked though, even if you’re alone. I’ll be talking about art, and maybe you’re not prepared for this yet. First of all make sure that you too have nipples and penis or vagina. If so, you can keep reading.

But I warned you.

Self-Swan, by ©Gonzalo Bénard

We all know that the line between nude and erotica can be quite thin, even though we have magnificent photographers working with conceptual nudes that are not erotica at all, except maybe for some twisted religious narrowed minds. I too was born and raised in a very conservative catholic family who keep thinking that we are somehow asexual angels able to procreate. In many websites, showing man’s pubic hair or women’s nipples is totally forbidden, almost as a major sin with theirs weight of guilty.

But if the line between Nude and Erotica is thin, now tell me about Erotica and Porn. Artists have been working on this since ages; even the most religious of the artists, in one moment of his career, tried something erotic, even if never showed anyone else. So, please, save me from biblical psalms: Leviticus was a pervert.

Essai cinématographique Two Women by Man Ray c 1930s

It is very difficult to separate Erotica from Porn. Even Hans Balmer can be seen Erotic or even porn with his famous dolls.

Doll by ©Hans Bellmer

by ©Pierre Molinier

From Pierre Molinier to other fetishist photographers we’ve seen a lot. Or almost everything. Molinier started as a landscape painter, and somehow only became famous for his erotic self-portraits dressed as woman around the 40’s, showing them later on at the 50’s. It took him several years to come out as a sexual being.

self portrait, by Pierre Molinier

But there’s another thin line very arguable: porn and art porn.  We now live in a world where everything start being called art, no matter what you do to express yourself, if you do, you call it art. “This is my art” can mean: “look at the shit I did that my blind grandmother told it’s a master piece”.  Nowadays if someone takes photos with an analogue camera is automatically art-photography, no matter what. We live in a world of artists. Even thieves are practicing the art of stealing. And they can sue you if you don’t recognize them as artists, as you can create traumas on them. Some of them have been quite famous and their works are now sold high prices in the best galleries. This is porn, not art.

caged sex, by ©Gonzalo Bénard

Anyway, we could do an entire bookshelf just trying to define concepts, including porn, obscenity, erotica or nudity…

Touching, by ©Gonzalo Bénard

José Saramago, the Nobel writer wrote: “It’s not porn that is obscene. Hunger is obscene”.
Japanese took it literally and start doing porn with squids.

by Daikichi Amano

Of course that you can be less or more obvious expressing yourself as an artist, but it’s an impossible mission to define the border. You have wonderful works of Erwin Olaf or Robert Mapplethorpe that are deeply erotic not showing anything. Others are more obvious and maybe less “interesting”.

Chessmen, by ©Erwin Olaf

by ©Erwin Olaf

But if you’re really into porn, you have Japanese culture that really takes it serious: give a Japanese a rope, a model and sticky animals and you’ll see them happy. And aroused.

“Forget everything you thought you knew about squid porn. What’s that? You didn’t? Oh, well allow me to introduce to you Daikichi Amano – straddling the line between art photos and hardcore porn by way of cephalopods. It has been alleged that this bizarre fetishism resulted from Japanese censorship laws, which prohibit genitalia shots (tentacles being obvious substitutes for penises)”. (source)

by Nobuyoshi Araki

edo porn by Shindo

Straight, gay or lesbian it doesn’t matter, there’s always a moment of sexual tension in anyone of us. Of forbidden pleasure, of fear imposed for our own cultures. For some nudity is natural, for others not. Sodomy was quite trendy in ancient Rome, however it’s punished with death in other countries. But if nudity can shock some, others are, that not even with porn get shocked, as they (we) see it as a natural act.

Le Ring, by Jean Paul Cadinot

And then we have art-pornographers who are art-photographers. Art-photographers knowing how to play with porn. Like Luigi and Luca. or Cadinot. Gio Black Peter. Or even Bruce laBruce. With their “Obscenities”.

by Luigi and Luca

Self Sucks, by ©Gio Black Peter

by ©Bruce laBruce

But then comes the fetishism. Each one with each own. Squids and other “animalia” to make a japanese feast. Joel-Peter Witkin can make some prudish Catholics faint when he uses corpses in sexual tension with animals. Food for our eyes, from courgettes to a whole fridge for a “9 weeks and a half”. Wips, ropes and many things kinky.

by ©Joel Peter Witkin

by ©Joel Peter Witkin

Even Jan Saudek can make some blush using not much more than (human) bodies and colours. But than again, religion has been always a pleasure for some fetishists. You can have wild fantasies with nuns and priests. And sacred rituals.

by ©Jan Saudek

by ©Jan Saudek

by ©Jan Saudek

Just don’t deny, you too have your own hidden fetish(es). And you know that. There are certain things that can arouse you more, and maybe that’s why you get shocked when you go to some art galleries. Or even forbid Courbet’s “Origin of the World” to be seen. As if religion has not been always hand-by-hand with pornography. Sometimes castrating it, in an act of self-guilty: Let’s punish the world so we can be equal in sins.

Octopus Head, by ©Gonzalo Bénard

Now… Let’s enjoy a blessed squid tonight?

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Jan, 2013

– post by ©Gonzalo Bénard for 2HeadS
follow @GBenard on twitter

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Preview and Purchase now:

  

“The Sacred Book of G” is a stream of consciousness, a thought provoking intimate journal written byGonzalo Bénard. After 3 days of brain death he reborn with a deep loss of memory. He reborn without any sense of his past — of his own roots — of his own self. Before that he’d spent his time creating defences to disguise his autism. He had lost it too. New born G had no memory and no defences.

“I, Energy” is a book on Cosmic Consciousness, Quantum Physics and Old Shamanism written by Gonzalo Bénard who not only lived in Himalayas with shamans and in a Buddhist monastery but also in the Western Sahara with old shamans. A guide on healing and transcendental meditation and how you can master your own mind, leading yourself the collective consciousness.

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Gonzalo Bénard is a lecturer, author, tutor of autistic teenagers, and a visual artist.His photography has been part of the annual programs of several universities around the world, mainly about the seriesOneness, Nudes and B Shot by a Stranger, and are in several private and public art collections such as Museum of Serralves, Cultural Centre of Cascais or Sir Elton John’s.
His photographs are also being used in Hollywood productions and TV series and you can see his work of photography at his webpage.

Follow @GBenard on twitter for daily updates.

On Amazon you can also purchase these 2 books of Gonzalo Bénard photography:
 

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