art porn...

In recent weeks I've discussed ethical porn and feminist porn but I feel that I now prefer something that has better production values and perhaps even aspires to an artistic input where the overall look and feel of the result is important. If it becomes truly artistic then is it any longer porn? Or might it then be described instead as erotica? Though perhaps some of this kind of work can become pretentious and lose the erotic charge.

There are sop many debates about what may or may not be art and some interesting examples in literature where banned books such as D H Lawrence's "Lady Chatterley's Lover" and Hubert Selby's "Last Exit To Brooklyn" were later seen not as obscene but as literature. There have been films where similar arguments have taken place. One example in the UK was Stanley Kubrick's "Clockwork Orange". That was originally controversial and banned but not by any stretch of the imagination porn. More recent examples of controversial mainstream films with a strong sexual element are for instance in Europe Lars Von Trier's "Nymphomaniac" and in the US John Cameron Mitchell's "Shortbus".

In photography there are now lots of photographers producing beautiful, stylised pictures of bondage and bdsm scenes. They certainly seem more artistic or erotic rather than pornographic.

In the end perhaps it is not a matter of whether it is art or not - but whether it brings another vision of sex and often bdsm.

Do any of the following work in that context?

From last week's post here is the site of women reading, Hysterical Literature.

Four chambers is a group that produce some very interesting videos some of which I rather like. Their website is here.

A favourite of mine that you may like is called TIGER. You can watch it on Vimeo here.

So are any of these porn or art or erotica or...
... none of the above?

What turns you on?