The History of Porn & Erotic Art

Pornography and erotic art is a pretty subjective thing. One person’s “Classical Masterpiece” is another’s “Spank Bank” and it really can come down to the eye of the beholder (or lawmaker in many cases), but one thing is for sure; People have been getting off to erotic images and depictions of sexual acts since before it even had a name. 

From prehistoric cave drawings and clay sculptures of men and women getting it on, to the ancient Greeks and Romans depicting gay sex and orgies on plates and vases and walls and basically anything else they could decorate, to all those dicks-out religious paintings that look suspiciously close to gay porn, horny humans love showing off their sexuality and sexual achievements to the world and we, as horny humans, love looking at it.

World’s First Porn Scene

While ancient statues of naked men and women have been discovered by historians for many years, they have mostly been thought of as “fertility” icons for ritualistic purposes more than for anything pornographic or for arousal and titillation, but in 2005 a group of German archaeologists discovered a couple of statue fragments dating back to around 5200 BC that looked to be emulating a pretty hot sexual act just for the sake of it. 

While there was some thought they could have been “dancing”, and some other experts believing they are just part of the above category of fertility icons, the lead archaeologist, Dr Harald Stäuble, theorised that because the figurines were realistic rather than stylistic, and the models positioned in such a way that the (rather well endowed) male figurine would slot nicely behind the female figurine (where as other fertility statues, both male and female, were separate entities from each other), that this was far more likely to be a depiction of sex for the sake of depicting sex, and not for any ritualistic purposes at all.

Fucking Frescoes

As mentioned above, the Romans and the Greeks were very much into sex of all kinds. In fact, up until the invent of Christianity and Catholicism, they had sex for procreation, sex for pleasure, sex for breakfast, lunch and dinner, and sex with anyone who wanted to have sex with them. Gay sex, lesbian sex, orgy-all-in-together- sex. Paid for sex. Sold sex. Sex sex sex! We know this because they wrote about it, sang about it, philosophised about it, and boy did they like to draw and sculpt it. In fact the word pornography itself comes from the Ancient Greek words Porni (which means prostitute) and graphein (meaning writing) to make the word “pornographos” which literally means “writing about prostitutes” and some of the most erotic of art was found on the walls of what most historians agree to be brothels. When Pompeii was excavated there was great cause for embarrassment to many European aristocrats who liked to fashion themselves on the courts of Ancient Rome, when hundreds of very sexually explicit statues, paintings and mosaics were found in many of the ruins from citizens of all classes.

Christian Cockblocking

Like those European aristocrats, the idea of sex for pleasure was obscene and shunned by the Catholics of the 16th century and in 1557 Pope Paul IV started the first index of banned books. While many of the banned books were prohibited for heretical ideas a lot of them also fell into the category of what we now call erotica (and even worse were the erotic heretical ones!). By the way, this practice of the Vatican banning books went on for centuries, only ending in 1965 with Pope Paul VI (nice little bookend if you think about it).

Of course, this practice of banning erotic art and literature was all well and good for the common peasants, but the rich and powerful and in charge always had a way of getting around it… Just look at the Sistine Chapel ceiling if you’re not sure what I’m talking about. Dicks and boobs and naked nymphs were fine in the eyes of “religious art” and while most of the kings and the popes and their cohorts were orgy-ing it up behind the walls of the Vatican City or the Medici Castle, regular men and women were often beaten, tortured, and raped if they were found to be doing the same.

Olympia

It is interesting to note that while artists have been painting and immortalising the naked female form for centuries there was one painting in France in 1865 that almost caused a riot. The painting, by Edouard Manet, is called Olympia and it depicts a naked woman reclining on a bed with a cat, with a servant offering her a bouquet of flowers. To look at this painting now there is very little to show why it was so controversial, but when it was unveiled it caused so much of a commotion two policemen were hired to protect the canvas. Why you ask? Well not only did the public feel it was mocking another artist’s work (Venus of Urbino by Titian) and using marks of the devil (the black cat with its back arched and tail raised), but they were also convinced that, unlike the religious connotations of the Venus painting it was actually more likely depicting a prostitute being given flowers from a previous client. Manet was no stranger to controversy with many of his paintings, including one called “Luncheon on the Grass” which depicts naked women picnicking with clothed men, getting very similar reactions and being rejected by the salon because his naked women were obviously not goddesses and probably prostitutes instead.

Private Porn

Throughout all of the art and the sculptures and bans, and in almost all countries and across cultures, private erotic art for one’s self pleasure always seems to find a way. The Japanese carved intricate wooden blocks with beautifully detailed images of erotic scenes that were used as printing blocks to print the design on paper and cloth. In China erotic writing and art was celebrated and extensive with art being found to date back as far as the Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368). In the 15th century, in the area of what we now know as Tunisia, a book called The Perfumed Garden was a beautifully written Arabic sex manual full of advice and information on sex, sex positions, pleasure, and art, and of course everyone knows about the amazing Indian Kama Sutra, the incredibly intricate and involved sex position and sexual pleasure handbook that is dated back to around the 3rd century, however porn for private consumption really hit the big time in France, and then the rest of the world, when the camera and the mass production of photographs became a thing around the middle of the 19th century.

Dirty Photographs and Moving Pictures

It would seem as soon as humans find a new artistic medium the first thing we think of is “can I use it to get me off”. We know this from clay sculptures, marble sculptures, mosaic art, paintings, books, and of course photographs. When the very first camera came out in 1816 I can guarantee you some dude took a picture of his junk to show to a lady just because he could. 

The trend of taking nude photographs of women began around 1839 in France, however this form of photography was slow and expensive and was legally only supposed to be used for artistic purposes for artists to study the female (and male) form. There were ways around this however, and soon many erotic type photographs were being classed as “academia” just so the artists could legally get away with creating them.

When cameras and producing photographs became a far easier and faster method pornography photos became more common and popular and by the late 1800s Paris went from having only 13 photo studios to over 400, most of which produced illicit pictures for the public to consume, and that eventually made their way to England where the trend of peep show theatres, selling and swapping naked photographs, and indeed the mass producing of them for public consumption (albeit illegally) was born.

It was also around this time that the very first erotic films started being produced with the now famous La Coucher de la Mariee – a 7 minute French strip tease, and Fatima’s Coochie-Coochie Dance – a belly dancing film, became the very first (or at least the earliest surviving)  porn films ever made, with Coochie-Coochie being one of the earliest censored films.

Porn As We Know It

In the 1940s in America the pin-up trend became some of the very first “sexy” art with WWII soldiers ripping out pictures of sexy models and “pinning them up” on the walls of where they were stationed. This trend became so popular that when Hugh Hefner bought a photograph of Marilyn Monroe for the very first Playboy centrefold in 1953, an entire industry was born and the way we buy, consume, and view sexy and pornographic material was entered into the mainstream consciousness. Not long after this, in the mid 1960s, Penthouse magazine was born, with women not only looking directly at the camera while disrobing or touching themselves creating a far more personal approach, but they also contained pubic hair and full frontal nudity which had never been seen in publicly produced “artworks” before. 

Fast forward to the 1970s, and Larry Flint, producer of the infamous Hustler magazine, caused all sorts of trouble with his very explicit contents and extreme sexual photographs, eventually ending up in the American supreme court, as immortalised in the brilliant Woody Harrelson film The People Versus Larry Flint, and with the final rulings paving the way for all types of pornography and erotic magazines to be created for not only the mainstream but for the LGBTI community, fetishists, and other left-of-centre sexual desires.

The Future of Porn

These days pornography is everywhere. In fact most of what we look at as just regular advertising or modelling would get your head cut off or your bits burnt off in almost any other time period in history… And that’s just what we use for selling yoghurt!

Photographs, stories, movies, live acts showing full sexual activity in all its glory, all of this and more has slotted itself into the mainstream and no matter what the people in charge do or say or try to shame folks for, it’s not going away any time soon. With the invent of personal, privately consumed media from magazines we can buy to the phone in your pocket and the world-wide-web it connects us to, humans will always find a way to look at, enjoy, and wank over the naked form and it’s various activities. While the puritans and religious zealots wring their hands and hypothesise about the downfall of society as we know it, they really seem to be missing the big picture… Society as we know it has ALWAYS been like this. From sculpting dongs and pornos out of clay, to painting naked ladies and photographing our bits, society is full of horn-dogs and the only thing banning, punishing, and censoring does is create dangerous situations for providers and purveyors, and instils us all with misguided shame.

The future of pornography is lit with amazing bright stars. With women taking the reins, with ethically produced ideals that focus on pleasure and respect, and with the satisfaction of all consumers in mind. The future is bright, yes, but it does come with a small caveat; The best way to make sure this amazing industry is kept out of the hands of the censors and governments, and those who wish to exploit and use it for their own selfish gains rather than the good of the industry as a whole, and to put it properly into the hands of those who create and perform it is to not only fight for the rights of all sex workers and their jobs, but to also make sure you always pay for your porn. Yes free sites are everywhere. Yes it’s easy to just click on it and get your rocks off, but to make sure the content you are seeing is properly created for all the performers and creators in an ethical and respectful environment, get out your wallet. Pay the (usually very small) fee to enjoy it, and be part of the global push for porn and everything that surrounds it to be as amazing and as sexy as it can and should be.