DE: It’s partly the understanding of bodies that allows one to draw bodies doing things that look like they’re actually doing them. Since very few Western artists actually watch people having sex, they often, my friend Betty Dodson being one of the exceptions, get it wrong if they’re just imagining.

Now, the Japanese art is incredible at the British Museum. I knew this art some because The Erotic Art Museum had a room full of Shunga that was just incredible. Seeing erotic art done by major artists — Hokusai, Hiroshige — you know all these amazing Utamaro, these really stunning fine artists, is like a revelation. And that art has humor! There are jokes, there is tremendous passion, there is tenderness. The symbolism in the patterns, the cranes on the kimonos, and on the futons, it’s an incredibly rich tradition of erotic art. We don’t have that anywhere in Western art. Written erotica may come close.

AK: Right.

DE: I think 50 Shades of Grey is a little tedious, though I do commend the author for one thing — it’s hard work to find language to express the joy of sex, and especially orgasm, and here’s a woman who is doing it over and over and over again.

I do wish they did a little more foreplay. Anyway. I’ve impatience with how bad a great deal of porn is, so in other erotic mediums I love the really rare quality that comes up.

AK: Well there’s so much of it now, just porn in general, it’s so easy to make one’s own … the challenge isn’t taken as seriously. It’s easy to make low quality pornography with a camera phone, etc.