Met Art aka Met-Art! Is porn art? Most people, I think, would instinctively say “absolutely not,” that there is a definitive line between what is and is not art when it comes to the showcasing of nude women. But the thing is, when you ask these people where the line is, they seem to not have such an easy job explaining themselves. Some might claim that the difference between artistic nudity and pornographic nudity lies in the intent. Art, they might say, has different aims and reasons for photographing naked women than porn does.And that may be true enough. Porn, after all, is meant to get you off, whereas art is meant to make you think or appreciate beauty. But is it really so simple? Why couldn’t art also aim to get you off? Why do the two have to be so diametrically opposed in our definitions? Is it not possible, then, for there to be artistically rendered nude photographs and videos that aim to both get us off and celebrate the beauty of the female form? Is the difference, then, in the quality of the work? My point is that the line between porn and art may not always be so easy to discern.After all, that which gets us off and our definitions of art are, at their base, both very subjective things. Who’s to say that the Mona Lisa can’t get us off, or that Backdoor Sluts 29 can’t be a commentary on 21st-century feminism? It’s all a matter of perspective, how you look at it, at the end of the day. The fact of the matter is, though, that the two are not necessarily oppositional in nature. Porn can be art, and art can be porn.The thing is, most pornographers do not aim to make art, and most artists do not aim to make porn. Andy Warhol is probably the most notable exception to this rule. Although he was definitely not the typical artist. This rather arbitrary line between the artistic and the obscene is precisely what he wished to explore and call into question in his ‘artistic’ pornos shot in the 60s and 70s. These are the only pornos you are ever likely to find in the MoMA.Even though you are probably not going to find their work in any sort of art museum, Met Art also seeks to blur the lines between porn and art. And they have been doing so since 1998, when Met Art started out as Most Erotic Teens (hence the acronym). Their goal has always been to explore nudity and explicit sex through artistically shot photographs and videos with an eye for adding a sense of high-brow eroticism and sensuality to the porn industry.Therefore, Met Art videos and photos are often high-budget affairs, featuring highly stylized videos of beautiful women in exotic settings with elaborate storylines. The result is a hybrid blend of multimodal porn, visual art, and literary erotica. Met Art leaves critics asking themselves exactly where that arbitrary line is, and whether what they just watched was, in fact, a piece of art, or just some more run of the mill smut. The fact that it is so hard to label Met Art as either porn or art, in my opinion, renders it art because it challenges its viewer in some way.But I am not here to come to some hoity-toity conclusion about what art is and what its purposes are. I am here to tell you which porn sites are worth checking out and, moreover, which premium pay porn sites are worth paying the membership fees for. So, fuck art, today we will be looking at Met Art in terms of how it functions as a porn site. And, with that in mind, let’s log into the members' area of Met Art and take a look, shall we?Classy and Customizable Site DesignFrom the moment you arrive at the members' area of Met Art, you will notice that it doesn’t exactly look like most other premium pay porn sites that you’ve been to in the past. The site design is elegant and understated, and there won’t be a single cock in sight. That alone is, as far as I’m concerned, a beautiful thing. All you will see are beautiful naked or semi-naked girls posing for exquisite portraiture.At the top of the page, you’ll find a slender site menu bar, with the Met Art logo resting at the far right (a stylized “M” with a wreath around it); this functions as a means of accessing all Met Art sites. Click on the logo and choose from a dropdown menu: Sex Art, Met Art X, The Life Erotic, Viv Thomas, Love Hairy, Errotica Archives, Domai, Goddess Nudes, Erotic Beauty, ALS Scan, Rylsky Art, Eternal Desire, Stunning 18, Live.tv, or Met Art Shop.To the right of this portal, you’ll be able to choose between a Home button, Updates, Films, Photos, Blog, Live Girls (with a dropdown menu of some of the girls currently available on the Met Art cam site), More Girls, Activity (a breakdown of what people are doing on the site), a search bar, Options (allows you to fully customize the site—choose how many thumbnails appear on a page, how windows open, the list view, show or hide comments / tags, thumbnail size, among other choices), and an Account manager.I think it’s really fucking cool that Met Art allows so many customizable options. I have never been on a porn site (free or premium) that allows you to tweak your experience so thoroughly, down to the thumbnail size, resolution, and how many appear per page. I think all sites could take some notes on this; why shouldn’t we be able to choose how our members page looks and functions?Below the site menu bar, you’ll find an updates feed. This is where the site starts to resemble other porn sites you’ve seen before. In the middle of the page, you have thumbnails of the newest videos (size depends on your choice). You can view them based on this month’s updates, the normal feed, upcoming scenes, or staff selections. To the right of these thumbnails, you will also find a few smaller thumbnails for girls who are currently live over in Met Art's cam site (which you will have to sign up for separately, unfortunately).Shorter Video Lengths, but an Engaged CommunitySo, let’s click into a video and check out the media player, as well as whether or not this artistic business translates well into something that you will be able to successfully fap to, whether or not the fap factor has been sacrificed at all in the name of “art.” It looks like most of their videos are around 10 minutes long. This is something that I automatically take issue with, because I tend to like my porn a little longer than that.But, to each his own, maybe you don’t mind as much about length. Personally, though, I think lengthier videos means an increased likelihood that there will be a moment that makes me cum. But most of the videos on Met Art are solo vids of girls dancing or seductively touching themselves, anyway. In other words, these aren’t your typical pornos, so maybe the typical rules don’t apply for them.There are a few customizable features on the video page as well. You can select a “Lower lights” button to create a kind of cinema mode, blacking out the rest of the page, making for a more immersive video viewing experience. So, that’s kind of cool. You can also rate videos (out of 10 stars), download them, and comment on them. So, if you value community features in your porn sites, you won’t be disappointed.The great thing about this, too, is that the Met Art community actually appears to be a rather engaged one. Oftentimes sites will offer a commenting feature, but nobody takes advantage of it. This is good news for anyone who likes to discuss videos with other users. And if you don’t like that, you can always turn comments off, again thanks to Met Arts super customizable options feature.Not Convinced I Could Bust a Nut Here…As far as the porn itself is concerned … well, like art itself, the beauty will be in the eye of the beholder. The girls are, first of all, without a doubt, next-level gorgeous. There is no questioning that the girls are fucking beautiful. My only gripe is that I’m not a big fan of solo porn, personally.And if I am going to watch porn of just one girl, I am going to want to see her fucking herself more than I am going to want to see her slowly get undressed and frolic around a weird location. But I don’t doubt that there are guys out there who could probably fap themselves to fruition with this kind of stuff, and that’s cool. It just isn’t what I’m going to turn to if I want to cum, you know what I mean?All in all, Met Art is an awesome site that produces artistic porn. It does, however, seem a little more artistic than pornographic. Any fan of softcore will love this, though, without a doubt. If you want a site that truly celebrates the beauty of the female form, Met Art is the one.
208
