Kneeling a little awkwardly, the girl leans forward on her elbows. She is almost naked, wearing only black stockings, a corset and a skirt which is hitched up to reveal her bare, raised bottom. This is not (although it certainly could be) a description of Egon Schiele's 1917 drawing Girl Kneeling, Resting on Both Elbows, currently on display at the Royal Academy. It is a description of ''Donna'', as she appears on page 92 of the November (''Huge Dynamic Taut Thrusting Wobblesome Winter Warmerama Packed with Big Friendly Girls for Dark Steamy Nights'') issue of Men Only.
Context has a lot to do with the way in which we receive images. We know that ''Donna'' is Pornography because she is on the top shelf at the newsagent. And because she is in the Royal Academy, we know - or at least we think we do - that Schiele's naked woman is Art. But not everyone sees it that way.
Much has been made of the fact, widely reported, that the Royal Academy had great difficulty finding sponsors for ''Egon Schiele and His Contemporaries''. You can imagine the tone of boardroom apology. Schiele's not quite right for our image. He's a bit, er, well, too explicit for us. But while AmEx, ICI, Barclays et al have been widely condemned for their faintheartedness, it can also be argued that their reluctance to be associated with this exhibition represents an honest and appropriate response to its contents. Schiele's art is indeed, er, well, explicit. The foot-dragging sponsors, like the nineteenth-century critics who reviled Manet's Olympia, at least acknowledged the potency of the art in question.
More interesting, perhaps, is the need Schiele's work seems to arouse in the modern liberal critic to make a distinction between art and pornography - and, having done...
