Recently I wrote a post about the apparent absence of original Israeli erotic materials both off-line and on the web . I had no idea that the vacuum is such that my own posting would dominate search results so quickly.

As I wrote in my previous post my interest in the field is because I am an Israeli artist and some of the art I create I perceive as erotic art.

The vacuum I am encountering has provoked me to think why so little material is available. This is what I have come up with so far:

1.
Jewish art traditionally shuns the representation of the human body
I think that culturally we Jews as a people have always valued mental development over physical development - Historically we are a culture that values and honors thinkers, writers and philosophers over warriors, heroes and lovers. Jewish art traditionally is forbidden from displaying the human form at all and most art created by Jews over the centuries is in the form of religious and prayer items. Silver-ware and jewelry, embroidery, calligraphy - broadly speaking, these are traditionally realms that Jewish artists dealt in.

It’s mind over body in it’s purest sense. The worship of Beauty, the value of aesthetics, a culture of the physical body, all these are things that are in their infancy in the Israeli psyche at the moment.

2.
Israel is a small country.
Although there are 7,000,000 people in the country today the mentality is still that of a village where everybody knows everybody. People here are still often embarrassed by erotica and would rather not have their interest in erotic materials publicized.

Following a dialog that I recently had with a friend I made online I realized that I have no idea how to create an “Israeli Erotica” that is is different from Serbian, Chinese, or Brazilian erotica.
What would be “Israeli” about it?
How you would understand erotica as being of a specific nationality?
Is it a question of the nationality of the artist?
The nationality of the subject matter?
A correlation to the artistic traditions of a locale or culture?
All of the above?

Comments and responses are always welcome…
: )