Sometimes, I think the Pope just doesn't get art. A German sculptor created a work consisting of a crucified frog, holding a beer and an egg. Pope Benedict, unfortunately, sees it as blasphemy, and wants it removed. Not only is the Pope up in arms, local government leader Franz Pahl went on a freakin' hunger strike (and unsuccessful, at that) to get it removed. The most significant result of the protesting seems to be widespread international attention for the otherwise unremarkable sculpture. Art wins!

Those guys at the AV Club have all the fun. One of their writers bought a book of paperbacks at a used bookstore, and ended up with some poor-quality sci-fi erotica. The Man From Planet X #1: The She-Beast has a super sexy alien guy with a prehensile penis and the ability to make love to many, many women in the most un-literary ways. The best we've done is found a copy of La Blue Girl at a thrift shop.

I've been known to play chess in the past, but sometimes artists get out of hand designing chess boards. Now, this place is producing chess pieces of people fucking. As if it weren't hard enough to concentrate on chess, now I need distracting pieces? And how do you tell a knight from a bishop? My guess it's more fun to "fondle the bishop", so to speak, than "take a queen".

I know I do a lot of classical and 'frilly' art, but this has to be the manliest form of art known to man. Artists cut a large linoleum carving in negative, and the pressure to make the print is applied by a fucking steamroller. I don't know what could make it better -- bratwurst and guns, maybe? It boggles the mind.

A topless painting proved to risque for a public art show, whose organizers asked the artist to remove the painting from view. The Town Mill (I believe this is it) is not exactly a children-friendly fare to begin with, but the organizers felt it "was not quite right for the exhibition...", quickly turning the show from 'open to the public' to 'pre-approved art only'. Still, it's a private event: they can do whatever they want, so move on, boobie artist, find someone who appreciates your work. Everyone knows that only classical breasts are allowed in art shows; anything newer is downright pornographic.

A wall containing graffiti attributed to Banksy has been painted over, as a community would do with most spraypaint vandalism anyway. However, numbers-out-of-ass-pullers say the art "could have been worth millions of pounds if genuine." That is to say, if the spraypaint really was by Banksy -- they don't all agree. Were I Banksy, I'd say this is an excellent response to his art. He obviously, from the start, expected his work to be removed like any tagger's handiwork. Now, if the value of his art means people are going to be reluctant to remove any Banksy-style art, I think Banksy is one step closer to winning. When all spraypainted walls b! ecome "street murals," vandals rejoice.

Aside from "Kafka's Porn" being an excellent prog-rock band name, Franz Kafka liked himself some porn, and not just ordinary, everyday porn: "Some of it is quite dark, with animals committing fellatio and girl-on-girl action..." Now I'm certain that the stuff's fake -- over-the-top, non-heterosexual porn didn't exist before the seventies and is the root cause of society's collapse, right? To discover dog-on-boy porn from the gilded, honorable Victorian times, let alone in the hands of a venerated author, would make us rethink the value of porn in our society! You go, Kafka -- show 'em what a naughty, naughty porn lover can do.

Silvio Berlusconi has pulled an Ashcroft: the Italian prime minister has opted to cover up a bare-breasted piece of classical art (seen here), to conform to popular opinion that naked women are ugly, disgusting things and should never be seen. As with Ashcroft, the background boob seems to be photographed with intent to give subtle commentary; Ashcroft, to reference his censoring nature -- but for Berlisconi, as a reference to misogynistic comments he's made about women to the media.

The State of Iowa has ruled that stripping is protected speech, thus moving nude dancers from the 'obscene' column into the 'art' column. The story has a twist, though: the reason the strip club was in court in the first place wasn't a run-of-the-mill obscenity trial...a seventeen-year-old in the audience started taking it off, and -- oops -- she was related to the local sheriff. The difference between a nude seventeen-year-old being art versus being obscene had a huge degree of weight in the matter. The court's decision was that a strip club reasonably constituted a theatre, and as such the dancing is an artistic performance, thus excepting it fro! m the obscenity rules.

An art gallery got a complaint about a nude image in their window. Finding no other convenient place to move it to, they improvised: Giolitti's plan was to invite the public to stop by and decorate the Styrofoam-plate "pasties," she said, and to supply the glitter and pens. "I think it's a ridiculous concern and should be treated as such," she said on Wednesday, stressing that she was irritated with the complainer, not the management. "This nude is so tame."

Emma Hack has a knack for hiding some lovely things in plain sight -- namely, melting gals and their friendly breasts into the wallpaper background. It's like "Where's Waldo", but with areolas:

Clue: a game of strategy for people who like finding out they're really the murderer, after spending an hour eliminating everyone else as a suspect. However, when it comes to architecture, Clue is the best game around -- especially this premiere, three-dimensional version:

Heidi Klum isn't one to shy away from showing off her fine body, and what we've got here is the opportunity to worship her soft skin, while enjoying the talented hand of a fine body artist:

You can actually own one of your own, via the eBay auction that the photo was found in. 11" tall, cast in metal, an intriguing statue of Death, holding and caressing a topless woman. Lucky stiff. via

Mr de Pins has a talent: he combines adorably cute with deeply sexy, without getting all creepy about it. The art has an anime-like, cut-paper feel, Powerpuff-Girl-ish roundess and exaggeration, but it all works well together.

You might argue that linux geeks aren't hot, but you'd be wrong -- sure, like a cross-section of society, some of us are a little funny-looking, but you have to check out the high end of the bell curve: we've got some hotness hiding in our ranks:

I think we've all seen a matroishka dolls -- they start out big, and as you open them you find smaller and smaller ladies inside, until there's one tiny weeble left inside. These matrioshkas do it one step better: as you peel away layers, the women pained on the dolls peels away her own layers:

A group of doctors and psychiatrists have dubbed the phenomenon as the "David Syndrome": people get destructive urges when looking at great works of art. The name was inspired by a person who smashed the foot of Michaelangeno's David at an exhibition. It pops up in the news from time to time: a person slashes a Picasso, someone splashes paint on another painting...it happens to regular art, too: statues in town are often targets of graffiti. Not just names or symbols painted on, like on a wall, but in a way meant to disfigure or alter the art.

Reading about the Syndrome makes me draw a connection to book burnings and the hostility towards pornography. If the deep emotion caused by art can overcome a person (called the Stendhal syndrome), possibly pushing them to a violent reaction -- the David syndrome -- consider the effect of artistically offensive material. The David syndrome may be rooted in humanity's instinctive understanding of creation and destruction, life and death -- procreation and extinction. Most people own pornography of some sort, have read a banned book or two...but many of those same people are the ones advocation destruction of erotic & offensive materials.

Is it possible that the opposition to pornography and censorship of books is rooted in the David syndrome? The book connection might be a bit more specious, but when you consider the passionate, emotional nature of most of the banned books, you can see how this emotional explosion could induce the David effect. In Farenheit 451, the result of a world devoid of books, passionless and passive. Bradbury could see that the art of a well-crafted book resulted in passion. If this passion triggers violent anger, it is no wonder the book burners are so ready to grasp at straws to validate their hatred for inanimate books.

Pornography has an even deeper instinctual response -- in fact, it doesn't work right unless there's a deep, carnal outpouring of emotion. The orgasmic release caused by viewing a porn, reading erotica, or flipping through Penthouse, could easily be the trigger needed to cause the violent feelings that are symptoms of the David syndrome.

I know there is a flaw in this association: the David syndrome does not seem to be premeditated, nor an ongoing hatred of art. It manifests itself instantly, at the time of the event -- not something that a person harbors their whole life. However, if up to 20% of society would react violently towards the statue of David, without warning, it is not impossible to believe that there is a less spontaneous driving instinct that is behind the hatred of obscene art, despite the minimal impact on most opponents' lives. An unconscious desire for violence against art, much like a person's unconscious desire for sex, could be an emotion that most humans are unable to cognitively understand, yet drives their motives without their knowing why exactly it is happening.

Can't read Russian? Well, it's not necessary. You should be able to figure your way through these free, ad-minimal Russian galleries of naughty activities.

Yeah, I admit it, I find cartoons sexy. The Japanese have gotten it right, found a nice balance between ultrasexy and realistic.

Although, there's a threshhold -- a lot of current comic book women are downright unnatural, and not in a Barbie sort of way, either. Here, Sequential Tart postulates the future of comic book women.