ISRAEL: Pornographic art show turns heads

Hundreds of Israelis flocked to the opening of a Tel Aviv art exhibition Thursday (August 3, 2007) that examined the titillating relationship between art and pornography. The exhibition, titled 'Pornography: my love' featured 24 different artists with paintings that ranged in scope from pornographic caricatures of Adolf Hitler to satirical images of a plastic sex doll in a rowboat. Exhibition curator Yuval Keidar said the collection was conceived from an interest in how artists dealt with pornography. "The project started with pornography. I was interested in pornographic images in art with high level, with high quality and gradually I discovered that people, good, serious artists, they use the pornography in order to describe human relations and even love," he said. The differing exhibits, some bold, and some more timid, were like his children, he said, and he expressed no preference for any one piece. The exhibition also showed how views toward sex and pornography had changed in recent times. "Pornography is not new, Adam and Eve did it and still it's done now days and there's nothing new in that. Human relations, human attitude toward sex was between prude and pornographic, let's say, and the tendency now is to touch pornography, but with, with certain respect, somehow," Keidar said. Dozens of visitors to the gallery shuffled past the explicit images, often pointing to an item and commenting to their companions. The risqué exhibition was on show in Tel Aviv, Israel's largest city, also known for its more less conventional and mainly secular lifestyle.

ITN Source | August 12, 2007

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