Lewd Louvre, porno Prado – Pornhub makes a foray into fine art

Introducing Rakewell, Apollo’s wandering eye on the art world. Look out for regular posts taking a rakish perspective on art and museum stories.

The Prado has gone porno and the Orsay’s got saucy. On Pornhub, that is. The adult video streaming site has launched an advertising campaign and ‘Classic Nudes’ microsite to celebrate the depictions of nude bodies that flesh out some of the world’s greatest collections. ‘Some of the world’s best pornography doesn’t exist on Pornhub,’ it claims, but ‘in famous museums around the world.’

What would Kenneth Clark have said? Perhaps it’s best that the former National Gallery director and author of The Nude isn’t around to find out, since stiff upper lips don’t seem to be what Pornhub is after. Its microsite offers maps of the most titillating tableaux and carnal canvases in museums such as the Louvre and the Met. But not only that. Six paintings are roused to life through videos featuring ‘Kim and Paolo of MySweetApple’, a pair of lusty thespians who screw their way through restagings of Courbet’s L’Origine du Monde, Gossaert’s Adam and Eve and Boucher’s Brunette Odalisque (‘we brought in amateur couple […] MySweetApple to imagine how this sexy scene might have evolved if the artist wasn’t there to ruin the mood’).

Then there’s a promotional video starring ‘artist and porn legend’ Cicciolina. Back in the early ’90s, she was Mrs Jeff Koons, having previously worked with him on the Made in Heaven series (in which, you guessed it, they got creative). ‘There’s a treasure trove of priceless porn out there just waiting to be discovered,’ Cicciolina intones in the new video before donning a body suit and posing as Botticelli’s Venus. At least she’s finally worked out who the decent artists are.

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