ABSTRACT
This chapter examines 'the problem' with distinction and lack of resolve between definitions of art and pornography, and how various disciplines make sense of it. Historical, contemporary, cultural, legal and moral battles are fought over art, its legitimacy, its funding – particularly when sex becomes the subject or when sex enters into relation with other subjects such as religion, death, children, politics. A more recent debate on art and pornography has emerged in the context of philosophy, organised around the mutual exclusivity of definitions. The debates, arguments and advances in philosophy are important, but in their failure to address pornography itself, it is difficult to trust their conclusions. Recently, pornography has found itself at a crossroads in law, hence further complicating the 'edge', where it is entirely possible that Mapplethorpe's Helmut and Brooks could be caught under the legal category of 'extreme pornography'.
