Pornhub's "Classic Nudes" Is Making Art Museums Sexy

Prudish pearl-clutchers and stodgy lawmakers have been attempting to separate porn from art for centuries. Any purported difference between the two can be hard to articulate, but as one Justice Potter Stewart famously proclaimed during a 1964 obscenity trial over the film Les Amants, you know it when you see it. The folks at Pornhub certainly know porn when they see it, and unfortunately for the generations of puritanical moralists desperate to keep their precious art separate from the evils of pornography, Pornhub has seen *it* in many of the most famous and revered artworks throughout history. To honor the erotic undertones that have long been a fixture of great art, Pornhub hopes to put the sex back in nude portraiture with “Classic Nudes,” a new interactive guide that will help viewers discover and enjoy erotic art on display throughout some of the most famous art museums in the world.

“There’s a treasure trove of erotic art around the world – depicting nudes, orgies, and more – that’s not available on Pornhub. These pre-Internet art pieces are currently sitting in museums, which we are now finally able to start visiting again as Covid restrictions are starting to lift ,” said Asa Akira, adult performer and Pornhub Brand Ambassador, in a press release. Visitors can follow Classic Nudes through any of six of the world’s most famous art museums, including The Louvre, The MET, The Prado, The Uffizi Gallery, The British Museum and the Musee d’Orsay (France). Pornhub’s guided tour of the nude paintings that have always been among some of the art world’s most revered masterpieces will guide museum visitors right past SFW landscapes and still-lifes and straight to the good stuff. “As people start to head back to The Louvre or The MET, they can simply open Classic Nudes, and I’ll be their guide,” said Akira. “Time to ditch those boring self-tour recordings and enjoy every single brushstroke of these erotic masterpieces with me.”

While generations of societal messaging telling us that porn is “bad” and art is “good” may make it seem odd or even scandalous for porn and art to finally come together in this way, the delineation between porn and erotic “art” has never been anything more than a sex-negative social construct. As we well know, mankind has been crafting representations of sex and nudity via whatever mediums have been available at any given point in time since the first caveman drew a penis on a cave wall. Renaissance artists painted the nudes we know and revere as great art because internet porn hadn’t been invented yet; any moral superiority we attach to those works of art is little more than a function of generations of moral prudery. Art can be porn, porn can be art, always has been.