THERE IS a sign on the door of Anthony D'Offay Gallery which says ''No one under the age of 18 may enter the exhibition''. The exhibition in question is called ''Strange Developments'' and it contains many images of (as they say) a sexually explicit nature. These range from Simon Linke's large painting of a hand masturbating an ejaculating penis to Paul McCarthy's electrically automated sculpture of an elderly man attempting to copulate with a beer barrel and Jeff Koons's large and glossy photographs of himself having sex with his wife, the Italian film actress La Cicciolina.
 
Response from the over-18s is likely to be mixed. ''Strange Developments'' is plainly intended as a Controversial Event, although the nature of the controversy it seems bound to trigger may prove to be a little predictable. But it is in the nature of controversies to be predictable, and the ''Is it art? Is it pornography?'' debate is unlikely to prove an exception: the same old views can be counted on to be trotted out by people with the same old axes to grind, in a drawn-out ritual as closely prescribed as a church service. So regard the rest of this column as a time-saving device: a controversy condensed.
 
Pete Vibe, author of Letting It All Hang Out: A History of Erotic Art (1971):
 I think the whole furore that is threatening to engulf the exhibition ''Strange Developments'' could have sinister consequences for the future of the freedom of expression in this country. There's this terrible sense of deja vu about it - it all reminds me of the famous Oz magazine obscenity trial, in which I myself played a modest part as witness for the defence. Does it really need restating that serious erotic art of the kind so bravely and selflessly...

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