What's the difference between ART and PORN?

Where is the line drawn between art and porn, is there a difference? Is Erotic photography or Fetish Photography considered Porn? I have friends who are artists and I have friends who are pornographers and we have this discussion all the time. I'm just looking for a few more opinions.

it's a fine line, but the artist's (?!) intent is part of it. I don't think some of those sculptors were drooling over their work (the models, maybe, but not the finished work). If it's meant to make you react to it sexually, it's likely porn, or on the higher side, erotica (I'd like to see others' opinions on the difference between the 2--they're close, but not the same. Or so I've always been told.) Fetish implies sex & porn to my mind, but an erotic photo could just be a tastefully-posed nude model.
There's also the audience & the view of the local society.

Just as an example of the latter: back about 100 years ago, there was a debate in Chicago about what was indecent/obscene. Someone hung in their storefront window (art store, I think) downtown a replica of a painting called September Morn, which featured an unclad lady standing to her knees in a lake, half turned away from the viewer. (see discussion here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_M... It was challenged a couple more times in Chicago alone over the next decade or 2 (per Chicago Tribune archives)
This is not obscene by current US standards any more than Michaelangelo's David or the Venus de Milo are.

The audience

poo on the stick after the brown invasion

Moaning and/ or passion= Porn
Mellow feel = Art

ART:
1. the quality, production, expression, or realm, according to aesthetic principles, of what is beautiful, appealing, or of more than ordinary significance.
2. the class of objects subject to aesthetic criteria; works of art collectively, as paintings, sculptures, or drawings: a museum of art; an art collection.
3. a field, genre, or category of art: Dance is an art.
4. the fine arts collectively, often excluding architecture: art and architecture.
5. any field using the skills or techniques of art: advertising art; industrial art.
6. (in printed matter) illustrative or decorative material: Is there any art with the copy for this story?
7. the principles or methods governing any craft or branch of learning: the art of baking; the art of selling.
8. the craft or trade using these principles or methods.
9. skill in conducting any human activity: a master at the art of conversation.
10. a branch of learning or university study, esp. one of the fine arts or the humanities, as music, philosophy, or literature.

PORNOGRAPHY
鈥搉oun obscene writings, drawings, photographs, or the like, esp. those having little or no artistic merit. (from dictionary.com)
1. Sexually explicit pictures, writing, or other material whose primary purpose is to cause sexual arousal.
The presentation or production of this material.
2. Lurid or sensational material: "Recent novels about the Holocaust have kept Hitler well offstage [so as] to avoid the ... pornography of the era" (Morris Dickstein).

Like the saying goes beauty is in the eye of the beholder....Some will see art some will see porn........Nobody can predict what their production, or painting, or screen work will do to an audience...The beauty and fun in it all is HOW will they react? what will they think?

I'll borrow one from a favorite author:

He knew in his heart that spinning upside down around a pole wearing a costume you could floss with definitely was not Art, and being painted lying on a bed wearing nothing but a smile and a small bunch of grapes was good solid Art, but putting your finger on why this was the case was a bit tricky.

"No urns," he said at last.

"What urns?" said Nobby.

"Nude women are only Art if there's an urn in it," said Fred Colon. This sounded a bit weak even to him, so he added: "Or a plinth. Best is both, o'course. It's a secret sign, see, that they put in to say that it's Art and okay to look at."

"What about a potted plant?"

"That's okay if it's in an urn."

I am an art teacher and had to draw nude models in college. The difference is your frame of mind. You can look at a nude body in a lustful way and that is porn but when you concentrate on the shapes and values etc you actually do forget about the person being without clothes. It is all about your attitude.