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Is Art More Important Than Sex ?

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02:16 / 12.09.04

For the purposes of this discussion, Art includes telly, dance bands and comics, just as much as it does Andy Warhol or Georges Bataille.

If it's ok to be into football these days, I think it's ok to indulge in the opposite. So be as pretentious as you like.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

09:23 / 12.09.04

It's the age-old "sex, drugs or rock'n'roll" question, isn't it? (I always go for rock'n'roll. Much as I'd hate to live my life without the other two, it would be less painful.)

So I'd say art.

10:16 / 12.09.04

Okay, you've defined 'art', but what does 'sex' include? Could I still kiss and cuddle? Could I still wank? Could I wank with someone else in the room? What about telephone/text sex?

10:24 / 12.09.04

Good point Deva. If Art in this case means telly, music, comics etcetera, I would logically assume that Sex would include cuddling, kissing, wanking, in fact any expression of emotion associated with sex/love. Which would probably also lead to things like hate, anger and disgust being forbidden. So we'd have our Art, but would not be able to express our joy (or disgust) at having it.

Faced with a life where I can love someone but not sing about it, or a life where I can sing but not love what I am singing about, I'd take the bullet.

11:40 / 12.09.04

For the sake of argument, giving up sex in favour of art would preclude everything except, er, self-love. and the occasional empty, cheap and meaningless one-night stand, say two in a year, but not with the same person. You'd be starved of affection, but not necessarily mindless gratification.

ONLY NICE THINGS

11:49 / 12.09.04

Two sexings a year? And that's the no-sex option?

Dude, have you posted this on the wrong message board?

12:13 / 12.09.04

So I could still wank over a cheap print of a Picasso nude, then?

Result.

12:50 / 12.09.04

The other month I got involved in a photography project in which we simulated a one-night stand. If the shot's tastefully lit and my tongue just happens to be running across someone's clitoris, who's gonna complain?

13:30 / 12.09.04

the occasional empty, cheap and meaningless one-night stand, say two in a year, but not with the same person

That perfectly sums up my "love" life.

Would I still be allowed to watch porn? And would that be classed as art or sex?

unheimlich manoeuvre

15:51 / 12.09.04

If it's ok to be into football these days, I think it's ok to indulge in the opposite. So be as pretentious as you like.

i would argue (pretentiously) that Art and Sex are part of the same idea if you consider meaning/expression/purpose of Life. i doubt i could, would or should cope without either.

Tryphena Absent

16:03 / 12.09.04

This world you've conceived of sounds extremely boring. I'm leaving. On a jet plane.

Matthew Fluxington

16:25 / 12.09.04

I think that the arts mean much more to me than anything else in the world, and so I'd pick art over sex without hesitation. It's pretty easy for me to live without sex, but if I had to live without art, I'd want to die.

Ex

10:30 / 13.09.04

I'm more verbal than visual, so I'd go for sex. I like images but I have to work at it.
If you'd offered a choice between sex and written matter, then I'd have gone for the words.

Whisky Priestess

10:39 / 13.09.04

The other month I got involved in a photography project in which we simulated a one-night stand. If the shot's tastefully lit and my tongue just happens to be running across someone's clitoris, who's gonna complain?

I really want this to appear in "Cosmo Girl" as a photo love story.

I know, I know, it's more a "Bliss" thing ...

10:44 / 13.09.04

I think 'written matter's' included in 'art', Ex, unless George Bataille was a painter in his spare time...

I'm still confused about the 'lack of sex' thing. It's being defined as not being deprived of orgasms, of which I could have as many as I liked through the magic of wanking, but being starved of affection? Dude, most of the affection I have in my life is non-sexual anyway (I, like, I bet, most people, have a ton more friends than I do shagging partners).

(In terms of the conditions of my actual life as it currently stands, though, this would work out as a choice between losing my gf as a shagging partner and losing my gf as a novelist. So it would come to the same thing either way, and I might as well give up sex since I have a ton more writer friends than I do shagging friends.)

Goodness Gracious Meme

11:29 / 13.09.04

yeah, this is much more complicated for me as well. But I like the complications....

How about art from which I get sexual excitement and/or erotic charge? So says the Bengali who currently has stuck to her fridge:

a)a beautiful shot of Bill Burroughs and David Bowie.
b)a fab Linda Benglis self portrait/advert. NOT worksafe - it's basically a naked woman with a large penis and sunglasses

and a hard drive full of Sirius/Snape and Cecila Tan.

Is that sex or art? Is sex anything that gives me sexual feelings? George Bataille is a fascinating example, for me personally as his writing is very much a part of my sense of erotics, see also Dennis Cooper. Note, I'm not saying they neccessarily 'give me the horn', but there's eroticism in me when I'm with them...

Am I allowed BDSM as it may well not involve genitalia/penetration/be utterly seperate?

What about BDSM/practices that are 'altered state' rather than sexual/erotic?

And like Deva where's the line drawn around sex as orgasm - which is easy enough to manage alone? Or sex with other people? Am I still allowed nonsexual touch/cuddle buddies?

Goodness Gracious Meme

11:48 / 13.09.04

Oh, and am I allowed to *make* art as an erotic/sexual practice? (as it actually might well be a good way to get started on 'baby's first slash'

)

Matthew Fluxington

12:04 / 13.09.04

When I answered this question I looked at it like this -

Sex = all kinds of sex and sexuality, plus any kind of physical or emotional affection which isn't either purely cordial or familial.

Art = all forms of non-crafts art, ie drawing/painting, sculpture, music, film/tv/theatre, literature. Functional aspects of art, like product design and architecture wouldn't count, though I would not be able to take part in that or any other form of art.

Ex

12:04 / 13.09.04

unless George Bataille was a painter in his spare time...

Wank. Missed that (or rather, confused him with a surrealist film director, briefly).

In which case, art, complicated by two more questions in addition to those already provided:

- Does 'art' include really shit books, films and images, or is there no kind of merit implied by 'art'? I still don't think I could scrape by on a diet of appalling stuff - especially if you'd get half way through a cinematic excursion with your arm round your paramour, the quality of the film would suddenly pick up and the Sex Police would arrive and drag you away from your carnal fumblings.

- Can I have cybersex? It's just wanking. With words. If other people can't be involved, can I have cybersex with that Turingbot who cropped up in the conversation last week? It was hotttt.

Words are still winning.

Matthew Fluxington

12:07 / 13.09.04

Does 'art' include really shit books, films and images, or is there no kind of merit implied by 'art'?

Yes, definitely. I hate it when people decide what is art based on what they approve of critically - that's such outdated bullshit. I really love Pauline Kael, but she often goes off on those tangents, and it seems so horribly dated all these years later. Art is a broad thing, and though it is fair for us to determine what is good art and bad art, it's ridiculous for us to deny something of being art just because we think it sucks.

Goodness Gracious Meme

12:15 / 13.09.04

Ooh, good qu's. I think for me, it's not art or sex? Think I have chunks of visual, textual and sonic responses involved here - am I still allowed to listen/dance to music - this, as I've said a million times on here, can be a deeplty sexy/erotic/sensual thing for me?

Am I allowed to dance with one or more people?

I think, basically I'm finding 'sex' and 'art' difficult to disentangle from each other in the first instance...

Matthew Fluxington

12:21 / 13.09.04

It probably says a lot about me that I can easily separate the two, huh? Because one option seems to represent "my life" and the other is "not really my life, unfortunately."

Goodness Gracious Meme

12:32 / 13.09.04

Maybe it does, presumably it says just as much about me. And thinking about why I'm finding them hard to separate, it's not that every day is a riot of bacchanalian orgiastics...

So much as that I think that sexual energy/erotics, for want of a better phrase, is a huge part of how I interact with the world, as is creative energy, and that they very often intertwine....

Lilly Nowhere Late

12:35 / 13.09.04

Agree, agree! Sex is art and art is sex. .
.
.
.

I must have both.
But I like the jet plane idea- going anywhere good ADL?

Goodness Gracious Meme

12:37 / 13.09.04

Ie, I get/invest sexual energy in art, and creative energy in sex...

Goodness Gracious Meme

12:39 / 13.09.04

yay Lily. ex-actly!

Matthew Fluxington

12:43 / 13.09.04

I think that there is an obvious crossover (particularly in art, which is mostly a comment on human life), but I think that physicality is crucial - you can easily have art without physicality, or experience art in a way which is far more cerebral than physical, but it's rare for sex not to involve the body. If you're like me, and you've spent your whole life pretending that your body is an ancillary part of your existence, then the lines separating the two become very obvious.

Goodness Gracious Meme

12:50 / 13.09.04

I'd say you've hit on something interesting there, thanks Flux.

I often find my experience of creative arts is a physical one, but then I think perhaps that physicality/holistic experience is something I often aim/exeprience for in life and in my response to creativity.

Similarly, I would not agree that sexuality is primarily physical - was thinking about the wanking/BDSM egs above, and I certainly experience sexual desire/erotics with and without my body....

Slash and cybersex, for example, can much more textual/conceptual but are for me, expressions and experiences of sexuality

Goodness Gracious Meme

12:53 / 13.09.04

I'm someone, when my body has been a source of self-hatred/utter ugliness (which has happened - there have been periods where I'd say I've been pretty much 'objectively' hideous), found life absolutely excruciating and unbearable...

Matthew Fluxington

13:07 / 13.09.04

I wasn't denying that sex can happen without the body, but I do think that it's hard to pull it off - masturbation involves the genitals and/or sexual parts of the body, and S+M more often than not involves physicality of some kind.

Goodness Gracious Meme

13:38 / 13.09.04

And I'm saying that's a matter of personal inclination/orientation.

I've given two egs above of things which for me are often very erotic and sexual but can be entirely texutal/conceptual. See also Ex's comments above on 'wanking with text'.

And sure S/M is pretty much by definition physically based, but that's why I prefer and use the umbrella term of BDSM more often. As it allows for the variance/sublety of

Bondage/Discipline
Dominiation/Submission
Sadism/
Masochism....

In whch D/S for example, can be entirely, and I have and do experience it like that at times, unphysical and instead a pyschological/conceptual process, a spoken narrative...

And as I say above, BDSM practices for me are not always about sex in the one-night-stand/orgasm definition above.

Tryphena Absent

14:05 / 13.09.04

But I like the jet plane idea- going anywhere good ADL?

I thought I'd go to your world Lilly. Or at least somewhere similar. I'm certainly not hanging around in a land where I can't have sex or don't get to sit in the Rothko room- conditionally. I'd probably end up dead in a ha ha.

Lilly Nowhere Late

14:36 / 13.09.04

Yes well, welcome to my world. In fact I think I shall make it the primary law that no one can have sex without being creative or experience art without getting off. If one does one without the other, they simply will be shot in the head.
I just have one silly little question, is slash "pee" or do I need to re-read some of the above?
I'm going off to devise my world now. First I'll have to appoint a ruler...

Lilly Nowhere Late

14:42 / 13.09.04

I'm leaning towards choosing a "Venus In Furs" styled despot with really really good shoes. In fact, I think Louis Vuitton's recent red/black satin boudoir pumps essentially support this whole notion of sexisart=artissex.

Goodness Gracious Meme

15:09 / 13.09.04

ooh, Lily, can I book a chaise-lounge...

And slash is, well, slash

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