What's the Difference Between Art and Porn?

In 1878, the Irish novelist Margaret Wolfe Hungerford wrote, “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.”  This phrase is always brought to mind whenever I view art. And, I’m conscious that my responses are, without a doubt, subjective. This bias is also to be expected in any attempt to make a distinction between porn and art.  

The wonderful thing about art is that it is able to elicit a range of emotions.  The key characteristic that differentiates fine art and the erotic from porn  is that it is not the goal of the artist to make you feel exactly how they felt when they were creating a piece. Nor is it the goal of the artist to extract the same emotion throughout all viewers.

Differentiating porn from art might seem simple to most people: it’s as simple as illuminating the work’s perspective or the artist’s purpose. If a work is created with the intent of getting people off - well, it must be pornography.

I wanted to examine why some sexual depictions work for me an artistic level. It is a subject that I am still examining and may never quite have a definite answer or complete, distinctive boundary. However, it seems as if a factor is that artistic pieces seem free from sexual desire; being enticed by the quality of the artist’s craft and creativity in the use of his medium to tell a story.

What do you think differentiates porn and art? Why do you think nude art has such a negative connotation?