A Brief but Awesome History of Sex in Art

Society hasn’t always had the greatest track record when it comes to talking about sex. But when it comes to the depictions of sex in our art, we have a very long and interesting history of it!

Here’s a brief but awesome guide to that very subject.

Literature

When people think about sex in literature, the assumption seems to be that it can’t have that deep a history. The very word ‘literature’, despite being the label for modern writing, conjures up old images. It makes us think as far back as the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and perhaps even longer ago than that. When we think to those times, we don’t usually think of many “sexy” images. We tend to think of those times as very sexually repressive. How could there possibly be books published in that time that would deal with sex in a deep or entertaining way?

Well, while it’s a popular thought that ‘dirty’ literature couldn’t have existed back then, it’s simply not true. Erotic literature began to circulate heavily in France (of course) in the mid-seventeenth century. You may think that such literature can’t really be that titillating or graphic by today’s standards. And, for sure, the bulk of it is pretty tame when you look at the bulk of erotic literature today. But make no mistake: plenty of it is more explicit than you might imagine!

In fact, it was only around the nineteenth and twentieth centuries that the government start to get really uptight about this sort of stuff. A great example of this is found in the legal cases regarding the English novel Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure. Though it caused controversy in its day, this controversy actually seems to have increased over time. The book was in circulation for much of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. But it was in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries that the book actually started being the target of obscenity trials! The book was banned for over 140 years, before the ban was lifted in the 1960s in both the USA and the United Kingdom.

Painting and sculpting

Of course, this isn’t to say that erotic literature only began circulating in the 1700s. There are much older examples of the stuff. It just wasn’t really considered as its own genre until the seventeenth century or so. But if you think that’s old, then the erotic depictions found in painting and sculptures may surprise you even more.

Going back to the times of the Ancient Greeks and Romans, we see plenty of examples of erotica. Sexual scenes were painted onto ceramics. They were also carved into wood and stone. Your mind may travel immediately to the nude statues of gods and emperors that we often see, especially from the Roman Empire. Well, I’m not talking about those. I’m referring to things that are absolutely, unquestionably portraying the deed. And we’re not talking about tame depictions, here. These guys were showing off all of it. Many acts that started to be considered taboo in later centuries were displayed with relative nonchalance back then.

One thing to consider is that many of these depictions weren’t necessarily created to titillate. Sure, that was part of a lot of it. But people were a lot more open and free about the whole business back then. These guys didn’t really have a concept of what we would today call pornography. But hey, if you want, we can go even further back than the Classical eras of Greece and Rome. Want to know what some of the prehistoric “cavemen” were doing for entertainment? That’s right: even they were painting themselves some erotica!

Film

Ah, here we go. The medium of film and video! For many, this is what erotic art actually began. It is, of course, the most widely known and consumed form of erotica. Unfortunately for you, I’m going to be keeping this to the ‘artistic entertainment’ side of things. As for the, erm, other forms, I’m sure I can trust you to do your own research.

With film, the level of abstraction between depiction and viewership declined sharply. In other words, a viewer’s mind didn’t have the opportunity to gussy up depictions of sex and nudity however they wished. This has resulted in it being the host to the most controversial depictions of the stuff in history. In its early days, the idea that film could even be an art form was laughed at by many. So the idea that such depictions could be ‘artistic’ and not simply there to ‘corrupt the nation’ was largely ignored. Despite the fact that there’s very little evidence of anything explicit being put out there, censorship came hard and fast.

Things definitely got easier for the medium of film after a while. Since the forties, there have been marked instances of increased tolerance through every decade. Still, the film world was rocked back in the seventies by the film Don’t Look Now, a psychological horror film. Even people who were in the room at the time that scene was shot can’t seem to decide if it as simulated or not! Since then, several films with graphic depictions of sex have emerged that definitely have artistic merit. From the nineties to the current day, explicit depictions in great films is no longer all that shocking. There are a bunch of good movies on Netflix that highlight this.

Video games

Are video games an art form? Not really. Technically, though, they do contain artistic depictions of things, and that includes sex. But the history of sex in video games is decidedly more awkward than that of any other medium.

The fact is that, for years, all the scenes of sexual activity in video games just… didn’t look very good. You can only do so much with a video game character without it looking preposterous, after all. Usually, the depictions have been best when they’re subtle. Many of us recall the “WooHoo” feature in The Sims! That kind of depiction is better for video games: it’s intentionally funny and actually serves a purpose. For the most part, however, it just looks awkward and is clearly only there to make the game seem more “adult”.