-1 LIBERALISM WITH ITS PANTS DOWN

[1985 BOOK REVIEW: The Erotic Arts by Peter

Webb]

JOHN A. WALKER (COPYRIGHT 2009)

Jacket of The Erotic Arts with a sculpture The Princess by Brancusi.

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Without controversy progress is impossible. The weapons to use in the fight against

prejudice are knowledge and honesty and these will prove invincible. Peter Webb,

1973/4

The publication in 1983 of a new revised edition of THE EROTIC ARTS (first

edition 1975) provides an opportunity for an evaluation of this book's contribution

to the discipline of art history and to the cause of human freedom. Some

preliminary remarks: only Webb's name is cited on the cover and title page in spite

of the fact that the text includes essays by various authors. A more accurate and

honest title page would state 'Peter Webb and others'. It is significant that al1 the

contributors to this volume are men. The feminist viewpoint concerning the highly

contentious subject of sexual imagery is not, therefore, represented by a woman

(apart from the odd quotation and paraphrase).

How innovative and original was Webb's book? According to the jacket's blurb it

was a ‘pioneering venture’. This claim is refuted by the text itself: ‘The pioneer of

studies in erotic art was Edward Fuchs, a German professor who published a series of

learned books on the subject in Munich in the early years of this century’ (p. l 03).

One could also cite the more recent activities of Drs Phyllis and Eberhard

Kronhausen who established a col1ection of erotic art and mounted two large scale

exhibitions on this theme in Denmark and Sweden in 1968 and '69.

 1960s: SEXUAL LIBERATION

Webb's interest in sexual imagery was aroused in 1968. It was thus part of the

more general social demand for sexual and political liberation associated with the

Underground and Civil Rights movements of that decade. These movements did

achieve significant changes which resulted in a greater degree of sexual freedom

than obtained before the 1960s; the consequences of that change, however, soon

attracted the pejorative label 'the permissive society'. Although first published in the

mid-1970s, THE EROTIC ARTS reeks of the liberationist ideologies of the 1960s:

‘the idea that anything to do with sex is immoral is a dangerous one, and should be

attacked by everyone concerned about freedom’ (p. XXIII); ‘sexual awareness leading

to a freer and happier society’ (p. XXVI); ‘In using sex as a revolutionary weapon

in the fight for a free society’ (p. XXVI). 1960s guru figures such as Norman Brown,

Herbert Marcuse and Wilhelm Reich are cited in Webb's introduction. Marcuse's

idea of 'polymorphous perversity' is noted approvingly. Reich is paraphrased thus:

‘the desperate need of modern man for unrepressed sexuality ... sexual repression as

one of the principal mechanisms of political domination’. The politics of the anti-

pornography lobby is characterised as predominantly right-wing and sexual

repression is linked directly to political repression via the argument that totalitarian

regimes always suppress sexual freedom.

A stranger to Webb might conclude from the above that he is a radical extremist

in political as well as sexual matters. But nothing could be further from the truth.

He is a self-confessed liberal; he is, in most respects, a pillar of orthodoxy.

With touching naivety, sexual liberation is presented in Webb's introduction as

politically revolutionary in itself, as if liberation in this one sphere would solve all

the world's political and economic inequalities and injustices. Marxists are often

accused of being Utopians and determinists in matters of history but listen to Webb:

‘Society is moving inexorably towards the goal of individual freedom’ (p. XXVIII).

(Would that he was right). In his appendix to the new edition Webb finds it

necessary to qualify his earlier views as he notes the conservative reaction, the new

puritanism of the 1980s. This development elicits the plaintive remark: ‘PLAYGIRL

no longer carried erections; and hard-core material was very difficult to find’. (p. 455).

‘This book’, claims Webb, ‘is about celebration"; it is ‘diametrically in opposition to

any form of exploitation’ (p. XXVII). Yet one has only to consider the existence of

sadism to realise that there is a negative dimension to sexual desire. Eroticism

cannot, therefore, be celebrated uncritically. Furthermore, various kinds of

exploitation are integral to the workings of the sex and sex-image industries in our

present society. A fundamental social transformation is needed before this situation

can be improved significantly.

CENSORSHIP v HUMAN FREEDOM

Webb subscribes to what may be called 'the breakthrough concept of freedom ':

one by one the barriers of censorship are overcome; gradually more and more

becomes permissible until the utopia of absolute freedom is achieved. Each

relaxation of censorship is seen as a victory over the forces of repression, reaction,

puritanism and prudery. Does this mean that Webb favours the total abolition of

censorship? Does this mean that he is willing for any kind of sexual material to be
made including snuff movies (films made by and for sadists in which real people are

tortured and murdered for the enjoyment of others)? Webb replies to such

questions in his new appendix: ‘No critic. however liberal, would want to condone

murder for entertainment’ (p. 454). This being so one presumes that Webb now

accepts that there are limits to individual freedom, that certain laws and censorship

bodies are socially necessary and desirable. Thus the vision of absolute freedom -

which was in reality a desire to transcend society altogether - is shown to have been

the mirage of an immature mind.

What Webb does not seem to realise is that sexual taboos and censorship barriers

are essential to the maintenance of sexual titillation. If everything was permitted,

sex would soon lose its appeal because nothing would be forbidden, no mysteries

would remain. The real mechanism underlying the pressure for ever more

liberalisation is surely exhaustion and boredom with existing sexual practices and

representations. To renew flagging desires, to sell more pornography, the barriers of

censorship have to be continually transgressed. Yet their complete elimination

would ruin the whole 'economy of desire'.

ART HISTORY: METHOD

Underlying THE EROTIC ARTS is a totalising impulse: a desire to encompass

everything in the realm of sexual imagery - ancient and modern, tribal and Euro-

pean, soft core and hard core. The scope of the book is immense: from sculpture to

film, from pre-historic artifacts to postwar performance art. Clearly, the book is

ambitious. However, in art-historical terms it is extremely conventional and

simplistic in the sense that it is, in reality, a mammoth survey course transposed to
print. Unfortunately, Webb is not alone amongst art historians in favouring the

chronological 'cave painting to Caro' conception of the history of art. One of the

major weaknesses of this approach is that it does violence to the historical and

cultural specificity of the material included. For example, the material culture of

prehistoric and tribal societies was not considered by them to be 'art' in the modern

western sense of objects for aesthetic contemplation displayed in museums. General

surveys which fail to consider the concept and social institution of art as itself a

historical and culturally specific phenomenon can only result in a misrepresentation

of the past and other cultures.

How can one characterise Webb's method as an art historian and sexual freedom

fighter? It can be summed up as 'overkill by accumulation'. Eroticism is described

within literature, film, theatre, painting, sculpture, etc., etc. Sheer quantity is

supplied in lieu of quality. The commonplace that eroticism and sexuality are

widespread and all-pervasive is relentlessly driven home. Chapter after chapter

consists of the piling up of example after example. No sooner is one erotic artist or

art work introduced then we are on to the next in a breathless rush. Webb does not

seem to have considered the more economic method of choosing representative

examples to discuss, this would have enabled lengthier examinations of particular

artists and works to have taken place. Webb's method resembles that of the collector

or connoisseur: someone who feels compelled to acquire a complete set of something.

In Freudian terms the method is anal-retentive. Unhappily, the appendix to the new

edition is no different: the relentless accumulation of examples continues as if the

author's appetite could never be satiated.

 The superfluity of information in THE EROTIC ARTS and its chaotic presentation

serves to exhaust and confuse the reader. Significant points are lost amongst a mass

of detail. And despite the book's great length, almost no space is devoted to

reflection and comparisons across the centuries and cultures to highlight the

changes and differences in attitudes towards eroticism from one epoch to another,

from one society to another. The main reason for this is the compartmented

structure caused by the division of labour amongst a number of writers. As the main

author, Webb ought to have supplied the links and contextualisation, but his myopic

empiricism makes this impossible.

DESCRIPTION v FACT FETISHISM

In THE EROTIC ARTS priority is given to facts and description rather than to

analysis and theory. But often Webb's descriptions are completely redundant. For

example, on page 439 there occurs this account of a photograph by Robert

Mapplethorpe: "'MARC, NEW YORK' (1976) shows the right shoulder and naked

torso of a tattooed man leaning on a table. His well developed genitals are meticulously

positioned on the table top, carefully exposed by his crotch less leather trousers’. Since

the photograph in question is reproduced on the same page, the description is

superfluous. (It's as if Webb could not trust his readers to use their eyes.)

Furthermore, these unnecessary descriptions are sometimes imprecise. For example,

'NAKED LOVE' by Gilbert and George is said to contain 'a falling angel' when it is

in fact an inverted image of Albert Scott's 'EROS' (originally an Angel of Charity)

statue at Piccadilly Circus; and the fact that the God of love is inverted is surely a
point of symbolism worth noting. Accuracy in description, after all, is a fundamental

pre-requisite for the correct interpretation of the meanings of images.

One must credit Webb's industry, the years of research spent in reserve collec-

tions, sex shops and film clubs underpinning this monument to sexual imagery. And

yet, despite the author's fact fetishism, the information in the book is not totally

reliable. For instance, the American performance artist Acconci is wrongly assumed

to have been a member of the Wiener Aktionismus Group. Webb's pedestrian prose

style makes the book an excellent antidote for insomnia and writing such as this:

‘Boucher was the archetypal eighteenth century French painter. embodying and

expressing the

tastes and preoccupations of his age’ (p. 140) rivals that shallow level of art-

historical understanding one associates with school textbooks.

EROTIC ART OR PORNOGRAPHY?

Had Webb been content to call his book 'IMAGES OF SEX' he would not have

had to bother with the troublesome concepts of 'art' and 'the erotic'. However, he

had to address these concepts because otherwise there would be nothing to

distinguish his object of study from pornography. Chapter one attempts to establish

a clear distinction between art and pornography. (Are they really mutually exclusive

categories? Is it not possible for art to be pornographic and pornography artistic?)

The culturally relative nature of the two concepts causes Webb considerable

problems and his resort to such imprecise notions as ‘commonly accepted standards

of decency’, ‘the average person's conception’ (p. I) (Whose? When? Where?) reveals

a lamentable theoretical inadequacy .

 Both works of art and pornographic images represent sexual acts but art,

according to Webb, represents such acts aesthetically. Erotic art differs from

pornography in ‘intention and treatment’. The word 'erotic' is preferred to 'sex'

because it connotes love rather than simply physical lust. A pornographic image of

sexual intercourse produces sexual arousal and, possibly, masturbation while an

artistic depiction produces aesthetic pleasure. In the first case the focus of the

viewer's attention is the content, in the second it is the form. Webb reiterates

orthodox views here, namely those of the formalist critics Bell and Fry, even though

in practice he is much more interested in content than form. Webb fails to discuss at

this crucial point Freud's theories of voyeurism and scopophilia, theories which

reveal a displacement of sexual desire from the genitals to the sense of sight. The

pure gaze of the aesthetic disposition is not so innocent after all. And this is borne

out by the voyeurism Webb himself acknowledges is explicit in the child abuse

paintings of Balthus (p. 226). (It is surprising that Webb did not benefit from the

'Images of women' section of John Berger's WAYS OF SEEING [1973] ).

Western society, it seems to me, is riddled with hypocrisy and double standards. If

this society considers it wrong and illegal for pornographers to depict sexual acts

between adults and children then how can the same imagery be justified in the case

of Balthus? Is there to be one moral standard for pornography and another for art?

Is art considered to be above morality? The argument of artistic skill and aesthetic

pleasure does not convince: the content of Balthus' paintings is as crucial as their

form or style. In fact, is not the attempt to justify such imagery by reference to

aesthetic form the means by which the middle and professional classes erect one
standard for themselves and another for 'the lower orders'? (The distinction between

erotic art and pornography has therefore a political dimension the liberal critic fails

to register.) Since art embodies the highest values of the dominant social strata,

there is great reluctance to acknowledge that art too is complicit in the violence,

exploitation and oppression manifest in our society and in visual culture generally.

Paradoxically, the distinction between erotic art and pornography so pains-

takingly elaborated at the beginning of the book is undermined by the amount of

space devoted to pornography towards the end. It is also undermined by the sheer

variety of illustrations in the book which brings together works by Michelangelo

and the cover of ZIPPER magazine. The piquant conjunction of high and low

culture is in fact one of the principal virtues of the book (a virtue because it gives an

impression of the totality of images available in the age of mass media and

mechanical reproduction; a virtue because it implies that erotic art and

pornography have more in common than lovers of art would care to admit).

As already indicated, Webb's primary interest is in the content of images and the

content which fascinates him most is that concerned with sex. This leads him to

include images with a sexual theme but almost no erotic quality. For example,

Toulouse Lautrec's paintings of whores waiting for customers in Parisian brothels.

Some of Lautrec's paintings are so harshly realist that they can be characterised as

anti-erotic. What the illustrations in THE EROTIC ARTS demonstrate is that not all

images of naked bodies and sexual intercourse are erotic. But Webb is a literally-

minded academic and the subtleties of erotic pleasure and sensuousness in art

escape him. For instance, no mention is made of the famous lascivious eating scene
in the film TOM JONES. Astonishingly, the name of Matisse does not appear in the

index (and this is not because of its unreliability). A text explaining the erotic

qualities of Matisse's colour schemes would indeed be an original contribution to art

criticism.

WEBB'S EROTIC ARTS COURSE

In recent years Webb's book and his course on erotic art at Middlesex Polytechnic

has aroused the antagonism of various groiups of feminists. In 1983 he was

subjected to an abusive campaign involving the vandalism of his property and

attempts to discredit him by means of letters to the press. Popular newspapers

carried headlines such as 'Fury at "Porn .. Teacher” '. I do not wish to condone

these tactics but one has to consider the reasons for such strong emotional reactions.

On page 456 Webb remarks: ‘many women feel threatened by men’. This is a

typical understatement. Women not only feel threatened by men, they are

threatened by men: they are subjected to sexual harassment at work and in the

street; some are beaten up, some are raped and some are murdered. The fear that

women experience has a material basis. It is not a hysterical fantasy. Any text

discussing images representing women ought, therefore, to be especially sensitive to

the issues of sexism and patriarchy. In his appendix to the new edition Webb makes

some reference to these issues but they are siinply token gestures towards the

debate. Webb is the master of recuperation and diffusion of criticism.

RAPE
 At the beginning of his book Webb argued that eroticism involved love rather

than mere lust. The question arises: can the sexual violation of women by men by

force ever be an act of love and affection? Most women - and especially the victims

of rape - would say not. The further question then arises: what relationship do

images of rape have to the crime of rape? If rape is romanticised and aestheticised,

as it is in certain works of art, does not this tend to legitimise the act? Let us

consider how Webb deals with an image of rape. On page 101 there is a Japanese

print depicting the rape of a woman: her arms are tied, her mouth is gagged and

her legs are bound to a pole to keep them apart. Webb's chillingly dispassionate

comment reveals an astonishing lack of sensitivity to the horrific content: ‘During

the nineteenth century the figure print declined as Japan suffered the long term

effects of isolation, as can be seen from the violent erotic prints of Kunisada’ (p. 102).

It is evident from the phrase 'violent erotic' that violence and eroticism are not

mutually exclusive categories as far as Webb is concerned. Aesthetic and scholarly

detachment - what Raymond Williams has called 'the culture of distance' - results in

a failure to respond as a human being to the content of the image.

On another occasion Webb lists, as mechanically as a library cataloguer, various

tortures visited upon women: ‘Nuvolone 's painting of St Ursula shows the saint in

an ecstatic fit with an arrow penetrating her body between the breasts. St Agatha

underwent various unmentionable tortures; a portrayal of her by Sebastiano del

Piombo of 1520 shows two men attacking her breasts with tongs, and in paintings by

Guido Reni, Zurbaran and Lorenzo Lippi she holds her severed breasts on a plate.

Veronese painted her for King Phillip II in 1593 clutching her dress in an
unsuccessful attempt to conceal her mutilated body. And like Saints Barbara,

Christine, Catherine, and Margaret, she was often painted in the nude being whipped

by excited torturers’ (p. 126). In view of the above is it any wonder that THE

EROTIC ARTS has aroused the anger of militant feminists? It is surely significant

that Webb's book does not mention or illustrate Margaret Harrison's factographic

painting/collage 'RAPE' (1978). This is a work of art dealing with a sexual subject,

yet it cannot qualify in Webb's terms as 'erotic art' because it refuses to celebrate or

aestheticise the act of rape, on the contrary the work is critical in content and

function. To have included it would have been to undermine the whole theoretical

framework - such as it is - of THE EROTIC ARTS.

FEMINIST CRITICISMS

For the second edition of THE EROTIC ARTS Webb decided to write a new

appendix rather than undertake a revision of the whole text. In this new section

there is a half-hearted attempt to respond to criticisms levelled against the first

edition by feminists. Works by women painters are illustrated and a potted account

of some of the issues raised within the feminist art movement is given. However,

there is little evidence that Webb has read and internalised the arguments of his

critics or of other scholars. For example, Michel Foucault's HISTORY OF

SEXUALITY now merits a citation but there is no sign in the text that Webb has

paid any serious attention to Foucault's work. The tactic here is significant:

oppositional views or alternative accounts are neutralised and at the same time

mobilised for Webb's purposes by being added to the stockpile of examples. By such
cursory means the authority of THE EROTIC ARTS is enhanced.

Some feminist critics of THE EROTIC ARTS are reluctant to engage in public

debate because they then find themselves ranged alongside Mary Whitehouse and

Lord Longford. In his new appendix Webb cunningly lumps together Mrs

Whitehouse and the group Women Against Violence Against Women - ‘repressive

forces from the extreme right and left’ - in order to embarrass them both.

Furthermore, criticisms from a left-wing, feminist perspective can be easily

discredited by ascribing them to enemies of sexual pleasure, enemies of academic

freedom. Liberalism calls for an open debate, but only on condition that the

exchange of views will leave everything as it was.

Although the campaign waged against Webb in 1983 was no doubt personally

stressful, it did bring him much publicity - something Webb has cultivated

assiduously from the day in 1971 he called a press conference to 'allay fears'

concerning his course on erotic art at Hornsey College of Art - and it rallied his

supporters. As the mantle of martyrdom descended upon him, the real issues which

had provoked the campaign in the first place were forgotten.

Certain rueful remarks in Webb's appendix to the new edition indicate that he

has learnt something since 1975: ‘Seven years ago, the issue seemed clear-cut. Sexual

freedom meant freedom from sexual repression for both men and women, and that

meant among other things ending censorship of sexual material ... Today sexual

politics tells us that the new freedom has merely provided men with power to do as they

wish to women’ (p. 456). He has learnt that reality is much more complex than he

had previously imagined. Webb also regrets the increasing violence of pornography
and the fact that women feel threatened by men. He adds: ‘No liberal minded person

can feel happy that this is so’. But his conclusion reveals that in spite of everything

his basic position is unchanged: ‘the new freedom and the slow erosion of censorship

has benefited all the arts ... has brought hope and encouragement to homosexuals,

lesbians and other sexual minorities, and has enriched the lives of countless numbers

of people’. Webb is still the 1960s sexual crusader; his banner still reads: 'Liberate

the genitals and all will be well'.

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This book review was first published in the magazine AND no 5, 1985, pp. 9-11.

Update:

Peter Webb was a colleague of mine at Hornsey College of Art/Middlesex

Polytechnic/University in the art and design history department. One enthusiasm we

shared was the art of Vincent van Gogh. Webb was a homosexual who lived with a

partner in Muswell Hill. Favourite students were welcome at his home. Among the

graphic design students he influenced was Stuart Goddard, that is, the pop music

performer Adam Ant of Adam and the Ants.

The modular system at Middlesex meant that in the beginning courses (modules)

which were selected by students were ‘owned’ by the lecturer who devised and

taught them. However, if staff were ill or on sabbatical or who departed for another

job, then the module had to be dropped or taught by another member of staff. Over

time this resulted in modules being taught by small teams. In the case of the Erotic

Arts module, it was eventually taught by Peter Webb and Lisa Tickner (a leading

feminist art historian) partly in order to meet the criticisms that had been made by
feminist students. However, given the ideological and political differences between

the two tutors, the module’s content and theory could not be fully integrated and

was criticised by an external examiner for consisting of two disparate parts.

Personally, during the 1970s, I received complaints about the content of Webb’s

lectures and other behaviour by him at Christmas parties from female students that

I felt duty bound to report via memos to management. However, it seemed that

management supported him because no action that I am aware of was taken and

indeed he was promoted until, that is 1996, when a sex scandal involving Webb

occurred. Then the management hurriedly arranged for him to take early

retirement before the scandal embarrassed the University. In August 1996, Webb

was charged by the police in Highgate north London for indecent assault on

underage boys and possession of indecent photographs. Incidents took place at his

lavish home in Muswell Hill. He was later tried, found guilty and sentenced to a

prison term. I believe that he currently lives in France.

John A. Walker is a painter and art historian. He has written and had published

a number of books. Walker is also an editorial advisor for the website:

"http://www.artdesigncafe.com">www.artdesigncafe.com</a>