Lesbian erotica
In pornography, depictions of lesbian sex form a popular subgenre, often directed toward male heterosexual audiences.
[5] An Attic red figure vase in the collection of the Tarquinia National Museum in Italy shows a kneeling woman touching the genitals of another woman, a rare explicit portrayal of sexual activity between women in Greek art,[6] although it has also been interpreted as depicting one prostitute shaving or otherwise grooming the other in a non-sexual fashion.
[8] Auguste Rodin's illustrations for Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du Mal included lesbian scenes.
[9] Gustave Courbet's Le Sommeil (1866) illustrates a scene from the 1835 story "Mademoiselle de Maupin" by Théophile Gautier (though Baudelaire's "Delphine et Hippolyte" from Les fleurs is also cited as an inspiration),[9] depicting two women asleep after love-making.
"[13] Nonetheless, the audience for such artwork was predominantly male (Courbet's painting was commissioned by a profligate Turkish diplomat), therefore "the term lesbian should perhaps be provided with quotation marks, insofar as we are dealing with images made by men, for men, and in which the very disposition of the women's bodies declares that they are arranged more for the eyes of the viewer than for those of one another.
Later depictions of lesbians in Western art may reflect like cultural mores, or merely borrow from formal pictorial conventions.
[16] In the second half of the 19th century, the lesbian theme was well-established, and its artists include Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec,[8] Constantin Guys,[8] Edgar Degas,[8] and Jean-Louis Forain.
[8] Later artists include Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele, Christian Schad,[17] Albert Marquet, Balthus, and Leonor Fini.
More explicit depictions were an important part of the work of erotic illustrators such as Édouard-Henri Avril, Franz von Bayros, Martin van Maële, Rojan, Gerda Wegener, and Tom Poulton.
More recently, lesbian and bisexual photographers such as Nan Goldin, Tee Corinne, and Judy Francesconi have focused on erotic themes, reclaiming a subject that has traditionally been mainly treated through the eye of male artists.
Pandora's Box is notable for its lesbian subplot with the Countess (Alice Roberts) being defined by her masculine look and because she wears a tuxedo.
Depictions of lovemaking between women first appeared in several films of the late 1960s – The Fox (1967), The Killing of Sister George (1968), and Therese and Isabelle (1968).
During the 1970s, depictions of sex between women were largely restricted to semi-pornographic softcore and sexploitation films, such as Cherry, Harry & Raquel!
[22] Several penile plethysmography studies have shown high levels of arousal in heterosexual men to pornography showing sexual activity between women.
Bernard E. Whitley Jr., et al. hypothesized, upon reaching this conclusion, that "pornography may [...] lead heterosexual men to view lesbianism as erotic by means of a generalized association of female-female sexual activity with sexual arousal", but noted that "more research is needed to clarify the relationship between exposure to pornography and the perceived erotic value of lesbianism."
