What is pornography? A mere sociological phenomenon or an aesthetic category? And above all, how has pornographic representation changed over the last few years with the evolution of the media? With a broad approach encompassing various spheres of contemporary reality, from photography, the visual arts and web performances to television and cinema, Bruno Di Marino examines the many facets of the presentation of obscenity. From Courbet’s Origine du Monde, Duchamp’s objects, Man Ray’s Four Seasons and performances of an erotic and political nature, this in-depth historical and art-critical investigation takes us behind the scenes of porn with the photographs of Sultan and Greenfield-Sanders, and on to the big screen with the successful alliance of experimental and X-rated cinema in the “hot” films of masters like Gioli and Warhol, pornographic found footage and the new frontiers of video art and video clips. The key turning point comes with transition from the private sphere to the Internet with the infinite universe of YouPorn and the proliferation of increasingly daring forms of interchange between the real and immaterial worlds.
The last two decades have seen a spectacularization and normalization of pornography that has definitively violated its taboo also – and indeed above all – for the female public, giving rise to a uncontrolled increase in amateur production and hence a crisis for professional hardcore. Having become a fragmentary and boundless hypermedia archive of forms, codes, languages and images, pornography is now a world midway between fiction and reality that even threatens to transform essential aspects of everyday life into a sort of mise-en-scène.
La piccola morte al lavoro. Per un’estetica dell’immagine pornografica
La legittimazione dell’immagine hard
Il porno è un genere?
Il visibile pornografico
Pornografia e desiderio
La scrittura del corpo Barthes/Sade
Produzione e consumo
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Pornografie. L’osceno nell’arte contemporanea
In principio era Courbet
Gli oggetti di Duchamp e le “stagioni” di Man Ray
L’immaginario erotico dei surrealisti e oltre
Manichini e falli: l’oscenità tra grottesco e giocoso
La performance tra politica e sessualità
Fotografia e pornografia
Dietro le quinte del porno: Sultan e Greenfield-Sanders
Il porno, il pop e il kitsch
La pittura hard tra iperrealismo e nuovo espressionismo
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Pellicole calde e creature in fiamme. Sperimentazione audiovisiva e cinema a luci rosse
Genet, Smith, Warhol
Serialità e ambiguità
Il found-footage pornografico
Le pellicole calde di Gioli
Desiato o l’eros formato Super 8
Kern e il cinema della trasgressione
l paradiso perduto di Roy Stuart
Pornografia, videoarte e videoclip
Quando l’hard diventa sperimentale
L’artcore di Blake e Ninn
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Dal privé alla rete. Pratiche pornografiche di scambio tra reale e immateriale
L’immagine dello scambio
Oltre il vetro, dentro lo schermo
L’universo infinito di YouPorn
Atti osceni in luogo pubblico
La messa in scena di un contratto
Macchine celibi
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