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"Sexually progressive cultures gave us literature, philosophy, civilization and the rest, while sexually restrictive cultures gave us the Dark Ages and the Holocaust". (Alan Moore)" --Alan Moore
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With each new technological advance, pornography has both proliferated and degraded in its quality. Today, porn is everywhere, but nowhere is it art. "A History of Erotic Freedom" surveys 25,000 years of pornography arguing that a society's vibrancy and success are related to its permissiveness in sexual matters. Decrying that the consumption of contemporary ubiquitous pornography is still widely considered shameful, author Alan Moore calls for a new and more artistic pornography that could be openly discussed and would have a beneficial impact on society.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
The book is a gorgeous item of the high quality you'd expect from a publisher of art books. The essay it contains is illustrated throughout with a colourfully diverse range of pics. From reproductions of Ancient Greek bowls and statues through renaissance engravings and oil paintings to modern photographic art and film stills.
The essay is a history of tasty art and facetiae (what I wouldn't give to get a look at his library) and its suppression or express-ability in various cultures, as well as being Mr Moore's thesis that free expression of pornographic arts acts as a safety valve which diminishes sex crime in those cultures that allow such. This, of course, is not simply whether or not pornography is merely legal in a society, but whether it is accepted in that society. Porn is legal in the UK & US but it is still frowned on, and is kept in the gutter by the hysterical, anile prudery of the tabloid mainstream media. (That boring circular argument that goes: it's kept in the gutter where it gets filthy - that filth means it is only fit for the gutter.) Mr Moore compares the UK & US with other countries such as Denmark, Spain and Holland, where pornography, as it was in Ancient Greece and Rome, is part of mainstream culture and is an unshocking, quotidian thing. (And in the case of Spain this is despite being a Catholic country. But a Catholic country wherein the people are grown-up enough to expect their priests to take (female, at least) mistresses and sire the odd backstairs sprog here and there.) This is why I echo Mr Moore's call for pornography to be not excluded from mainstream art in this country, but do not share his optimism in seeing this happen. You can lead a horse to water... The Anglo-Saxon horse just won't drink water that it thinks is dirty. So while I don't expect to see Asian Babes in the doctor's waiting room (nor would I particularly want to) we can hope that the more talented artists and writers will begin to do things in this field. Such as, for example, the author's own Lost Girls - which is a wonderful piece of work. Anyway, 25,000 is erudite and informative, and is written with the characteristic wit, compassion and ability that we expect from this wonderful, hairy writer.
By the way, if you like '25,000' then may I recommend Wayland Young's 'Eros Denied' (available for a penny, last time I looked, on this very site). It was published in 1964, before the legalisation of hard-core porn in the UK, and it is therefore a testament to how little that decriminalisation really changed things that Mr Moore needs to be saying in 2009 what Mr Young was saying 45 years earlier.
The essay is a history of tasty art and facetiae (what I wouldn't give to get a look at his library) and its suppression or express-ability in various cultures, as well as being Mr Moore's thesis that free expression of pornographic arts acts as a safety valve which diminishes sex crime in those cultures that allow such. This, of course, is not simply whether or not pornography is merely legal in a society, but whether it is accepted in that society. Porn is legal in the UK & US but it is still frowned on, and is kept in the gutter by the hysterical, anile prudery of the tabloid mainstream media. (That boring circular argument that goes: it's kept in the gutter where it gets filthy - that filth means it is only fit for the gutter.) Mr Moore compares the UK & US with other countries such as Denmark, Spain and Holland, where pornography, as it was in Ancient Greece and Rome, is part of mainstream culture and is an unshocking, quotidian thing. (And in the case of Spain this is despite being a Catholic country. But a Catholic country wherein the people are grown-up enough to expect their priests to take (female, at least) mistresses and sire the odd backstairs sprog here and there.) This is why I echo Mr Moore's call for pornography to be not excluded from mainstream art in this country, but do not share his optimism in seeing this happen. You can lead a horse to water... The Anglo-Saxon horse just won't drink water that it thinks is dirty. So while I don't expect to see Asian Babes in the doctor's waiting room (nor would I particularly want to) we can hope that the more talented artists and writers will begin to do things in this field. Such as, for example, the author's own Lost Girls - which is a wonderful piece of work. Anyway, 25,000 is erudite and informative, and is written with the characteristic wit, compassion and ability that we expect from this wonderful, hairy writer.
By the way, if you like '25,000' then may I recommend Wayland Young's 'Eros Denied' (available for a penny, last time I looked, on this very site). It was published in 1964, before the legalisation of hard-core porn in the UK, and it is therefore a testament to how little that decriminalisation really changed things that Mr Moore needs to be saying in 2009 what Mr Young was saying 45 years earlier.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
This concise & beautifully presented tome contains Northampton's hairiest authors' musings upon pornography/erotic art throughout the ages, from the sculpting of the Venus Of Willendorf between 24,000 & 22,000 years ago to the present. He also addresses why pornography has historically been hailed as art when it is now perceived as something seedy to be concealed under the mattress.
Moore perceives a correlation between sexual liberation & socially enlightened societies, drawing upon examples such as the ancient Greeks, who were constantly surrounded by erotic friezes & statues of "Pan violating many of our current barnyard... and a really slutty nanny goat in the bargain." Conversely, he believes that Constantine's adaptation of Christianity led to the downfall of the Roman Empire & a cultural shift towards repression & sexual guilt which ushered in the Dark Ages. While early Christian churches also contained images of naked flesh to get punters on pews, the context was very different from that of ancient Greece, since "implicitly, it was acceptable to enjoy sexual imagery as long as you accepted also that such acts were sinful and felt suitably ashamed and guilty if you were in any way aroused by their depiction. This established the immediate link between the perusal of pornography and intense self-loathing or embarrassment, which sill exists today throughout most of the Western world."
This isn't an academic piece, so there's no referencing to reinforce Moore's musings, although of one particularly far-fetched Victorian practice, he impishly concedes that "yes, I know it sounds ridiculous, but I was told that by Malcolm McLaren, and if you can't trust Malcolm McLaren then whom can you trust?" This is an example of the tongue-in-cheek-while-making-a-serious-point charm which exudes from these beautiful pages.
And the pages are indeed beautiful - this thin volume houses quality paper lavished with numerous examples of erotic & nude art from a plethora of periods. There's a number of surprises, too - for instance, I have a passing admiration for Hokusai & have attended a couple of exhibitions of his work, yet had no idea that he had made erotic prints until I saw the examples reproduced herein. This is consistent with other examples Moore provides of noted artists whose erotic daubings were destroyed by their relations upon inheriting their estates; sexual appreciation seems to be constantly edited out of history.
Yet hope is on the horizon. If individual artists "have the nerve to plant their flags in the this despised & dangerous terrain... [then] the erotic might be elevated from her current status as a hooker everyone keeps chained up in the cellar but nobody talks about... back to her previous position as a goddess." Moore has planted his flag with this book & the controversial Lost Girls - let's see if anyone with a similar profile follows suit.
Moore perceives a correlation between sexual liberation & socially enlightened societies, drawing upon examples such as the ancient Greeks, who were constantly surrounded by erotic friezes & statues of "Pan violating many of our current barnyard... and a really slutty nanny goat in the bargain." Conversely, he believes that Constantine's adaptation of Christianity led to the downfall of the Roman Empire & a cultural shift towards repression & sexual guilt which ushered in the Dark Ages. While early Christian churches also contained images of naked flesh to get punters on pews, the context was very different from that of ancient Greece, since "implicitly, it was acceptable to enjoy sexual imagery as long as you accepted also that such acts were sinful and felt suitably ashamed and guilty if you were in any way aroused by their depiction. This established the immediate link between the perusal of pornography and intense self-loathing or embarrassment, which sill exists today throughout most of the Western world."
This isn't an academic piece, so there's no referencing to reinforce Moore's musings, although of one particularly far-fetched Victorian practice, he impishly concedes that "yes, I know it sounds ridiculous, but I was told that by Malcolm McLaren, and if you can't trust Malcolm McLaren then whom can you trust?" This is an example of the tongue-in-cheek-while-making-a-serious-point charm which exudes from these beautiful pages.
And the pages are indeed beautiful - this thin volume houses quality paper lavished with numerous examples of erotic & nude art from a plethora of periods. There's a number of surprises, too - for instance, I have a passing admiration for Hokusai & have attended a couple of exhibitions of his work, yet had no idea that he had made erotic prints until I saw the examples reproduced herein. This is consistent with other examples Moore provides of noted artists whose erotic daubings were destroyed by their relations upon inheriting their estates; sexual appreciation seems to be constantly edited out of history.
Yet hope is on the horizon. If individual artists "have the nerve to plant their flags in the this despised & dangerous terrain... [then] the erotic might be elevated from her current status as a hooker everyone keeps chained up in the cellar but nobody talks about... back to her previous position as a goddess." Moore has planted his flag with this book & the controversial Lost Girls - let's see if anyone with a similar profile follows suit.
11 of 12 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
The product description above summarizes this work well. Moore's writing is accessible and at times humorous. The hardback cover is a thing of beauty, and the images within are deliciously arousing. I would recommend this to anyone, not just those with a passion for art and/or pornography. Oh, and let's have more reviews of erotica, please? Down with repression! The only shameful sexual activity (and depictions of it) is that which is abusive and non-consensual. Let's make that distinction clear by embracing and celebrating sexuality that is based on mutual consent.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Superb!
Alan Moore does it again ... a mesmerizing and often hilarious account of porn through the epochs from one of the greatest writers of our time, and one of the most visionary of men... Read more
Published 2 months ago by SeaGoat under Sirius
Kindle will never replace a book like this!
This is a lovely book, nicely bound and with an interesting, and in places, quite funny essay. It only took me a few hours to read through it. Read more
Published 2 months ago by jbarrett
Yay! I'm a fan!
Now, believe it or not, I have met Mr. Moore and his wife, to whom he dedicated this book. They are larger than life and, let's face it, Mr. Read more
Published 9 months ago by Vanessa Wu
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