Comments on: Coop's work in Taschen's The New Erotic Photography

By: Thad_E_Ginathom

Thad_E_Ginathom — Fri, 12 Oct 2012 09:00:00 +0000

Art: exercise for the right arm

By: Eric

Eric — Thu, 11 Oct 2012 20:06:00 +0000

It gets into what you consider to be art in the first place, and how you define it.

For what it’s worth, personally I look at it much the same way I look at photos of flowers or a nice landscape. It’s pretty to look at, it’s probably good photography on a technical level, but it doesn’t really have an emotional impact or layers of meaning or say anything about the human condition or any of that kind of stuff.

But (again, personally) I’m okay with that. In most cases I get more enjoyment out of a collection of good photography than I do out of “art”.

By: Brooks Ayola

Brooks Ayola — Thu, 11 Oct 2012 14:42:00 +0000

Oh! NSFW, Obviously!

By: Brooks Ayola

Brooks Ayola — Thu, 11 Oct 2012 14:41:00 +0000

Ha! Just flip through the samples on the TASCHEN web site and see if you think they are all skinny. :-)

http://www.taschen.com/pages/en/catalogue/sex/all/05764/facts.the_new_erotic_photography_vol_2.htm

By: Robert Cruickshank

Robert Cruickshank — Thu, 11 Oct 2012 13:39:00 +0000

Don’t know about the book, but that’s pretty much the last criticism anyone would make of Coop.

By: billstreeter

billstreeter — Thu, 11 Oct 2012 13:38:00 +0000

If you know Coop’s work you’ll know he doesn’t focus only on skinny women, far from it.

By: Marta Weist

Marta Weist — Thu, 11 Oct 2012 12:50:00 +0000

….and only skinny girls can be erotic? Ugh.

By: Michael Rosefield

Michael Rosefield — Thu, 11 Oct 2012 12:32:00 +0000

There might be technique to admire, though I usually don’t care about difficulty when it comes to art, but I think the artwork has to stand by itself as art. I’m not saying that can’t be done, and perhaps I am too cynical about art in general, but if the general impression is of sensuality more than conceptual intrigue, I’m going to be in wary-mode.

By: nowimnothing

nowimnothing — Thu, 11 Oct 2012 12:28:00 +0000

What about artistic nudes?

By: blueelm

blueelm — Thu, 11 Oct 2012 12:04:00 +0000

An awful lot of art is erotic without being “erotic art” which doesn’t make it easier, particularly when there are so many ham-fisted erotic artists who can neither manage to be artists or work in an industry like fashion. Good erotic art is just art. But then when making a book, like this one, do they decide what art is erotic? Because then it is somewhat unfair to blow it off.

Personally since pictures of naked ladies don’t excite me sexually, I tend to be very critical of everything including asking why this is worth my time to look at. historic erotic art is often very funny (just imagine some lord fapping to that fat pink lady rolling around on cherubs… hilarity).

By: Michael Rosefield

Michael Rosefield — Thu, 11 Oct 2012 09:15:00 +0000

I have never been able to take erotic art seriously, or indeed anything depicting naked women. It’s like Christian rock; perhaps there’s valid music in there somewhere, but it’s far too subsumed and corrupted by the intent to be anything more than an unknowing parody of art….

By: Stickarm

Stickarm — Thu, 11 Oct 2012 08:12:00 +0000

Oh, but this particular book has to have that text — if there isn’t any writing, people can’t pretend that they’re reading it for the articles.

By: Brooks Ayola

Brooks Ayola — Thu, 11 Oct 2012 05:55:00 +0000

My work is in this book too. As far as text, there are two pages of biographic text for each photographer, which is a short bio in three languages (English, German and French). The rest is wall to wall images. The content of the bios was derived from the answers we gave via a questionnaire. How interesting the text is, is purely a function of the answers we gave. Some will be interesting, some, not so much.

By: oasisob1

oasisob1 — Thu, 11 Oct 2012 05:14:00 +0000

Completely off-topic, but clicking through the sample pics and the “Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought” links brought me only to white girls, white girls and more white girls, until around the 10th click, when I found “Upskirt Voyeur: The Sexy World of Japanese Girls”. Um, what’s the deal? Why is it so hard to make Amazon realize that there are other colors of girls?

By: omar elaasar

omar elaasar — Thu, 11 Oct 2012 04:57:00 +0000

Tanschen’s books are rather beautiful, but they also tend to be rather pricey, and have pages full of walls of text. I’m sure there are a few that are rather fascinating, but for the most part I find the texts rather dry and nowhere near as interesting as the images.

Might be bizarre, but I buy art books mostly for the art.

By: omar elaasar

omar elaasar — Thu, 11 Oct 2012 04:55:00 +0000

apparently a couple of the artists in the book have taken to using old methods of photography to create their images

By: novium

novium — Thu, 11 Oct 2012 04:12:00 +0000

Page me when the sexy dudes show up.

By: Slartibartfatsdomino

Slartibartfatsdomino — Thu, 11 Oct 2012 03:53:00 +0000

IANAAH (I am not an art historian), but that one page looks a lot like the old erotic photography to me.

By: hymenopterid

hymenopterid — Thu, 11 Oct 2012 02:29:00 +0000

Sexy week at Boingboing continues…