I'm glad you brought this up. If we consider Tolstoy's history we see that he followed the word of Christ literally. From this we can gather that when he spoke of lust he wasn't referring to a general self gratification, but specifically carnal lust.
So for the sake of argument we will stick with carnal lust. I believe that it is possible for something to be both beautiful and carnally desirable. The distinction between pornography and art comes from intention. If something has the primary purpose of awakening lust then it is pornography.
However, it is possible for something to find beauty in human sexuality. This is what we can term Erotica. Art depicting human sexuality in a beautiful manner. While it may not be the intent of the artist to cause arousal it is possible for arousal to occur when viewing even a beautiful representation of human sexuality. Here we see La maja desnuda (The nude maja) by 18th century painter Francisco de Goya. This painting is an example of erotica, we see the female form in a sexualized yet beautiful position.
Yes this picture contains what might be seen as explicit nudity.
La Maja Desnuda
So my question is do you think that it is possible for something to be both pornographic and erotic(erotic meaning beauty from human sexuality)?
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