Melbourne row over art 'porn'

The UK's Guardian says that:

Police in Australia have investigated pornography claims against an art gallery which exhibited a painting drawn from a 19th-century woodcut by the Japanese artist Hokusai.The painting, The Dream of the Fisherman's Wife, is by an Australian, David Laity, and is valued at £5,400. It is being shown in a Melbourne gallery.

Like the 1814 original, it depicts a woman copulating with an octopus.

Mr Laity said: "It's a really lovely wild image. It's meant to be a dream image."

The gallery's director, Brian Kino, said: "Haven't people progressed in 200 years that they're still shocked by this sort of thing?" After taking legal advice, the police agreed that the painting could be shown.

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/australia/story/0,12070,1068005,00.html


Well, what else do Japanese fishermen's wives have to dream about on long winter nights when their husbands are out in the tuna boats or chasing whales??....

I wonder if it was one of those mythical Pacific giant octopuses with the 80 foot tentacles and the propotional reproductive anatomy...

"The relatively long terminal organ (penis) of a mature male is almost the length of its mantle, from which it projects freely, through the funnel, for a considerable portion of the organ's length. Species with such long organs presumably use them directly to implant spermatophores hydraulically into the female, and as a rule lack modification of either ventral arm (hectocotylus) for spermatophore transfer. Architeuthis lacks a hectocotylus.

His metre+-long penis presumably injects numerous spermatophores directly into the female's arms (Fig. 4). The two animals then separate, the male swimming away, probably a bit beat up (possibly having lost parts of his arms and tentacles in the violent struggle; see cannibalism thread), but none the wiser likely repeats this affair with another female (should the opportunity arise). His spermatophores remain embedded in each female's arms - possibly burrowing even deeper into their flesh."

http://www.tonmo.com/science/public/architeuthisreproduction.php

Not exactly plain vanilla ...

On edit: A squid is not an octopus!

Squid and octopus are surely first cousins? Who knows what those diminutive Japanese ladies - married to equally diminutive Japanese gentlemen - might be seeing in their dreams???