Is it art? Well .... yes and no. I was walking in Times Square on a Saturday evening and the usual street hawkers were out - all the cartoon characters, faux Elvises, Spidermen, naked cowboys and cowgirls, and women with nothing but a g-string and some body paint - hustling for a buck per photo op. This was most definitely commerce, it's what a buck will get you these days.
That same day there was an artist with a contingent of willing models for his body painting efforts.
The beat cops were not happy about it. They told the artist to wrap it up in five minutes. When his audience protested in the name of our constitutional rights to free artistic expression, the police said the crowd was impeding pedestrian traffic. So I pushed my way through the crowd (putting myself in jeopardy of bodily harm from others in the dense crowd of art lovers .... oh, what lengths I go to for my readers!) to get as many shots as I could. I knew it wasn't a crowd of people just interested in lewd prurient exposure because of the interest shown in the more 'rotund' objects d'art (ahem....).
Men were well represented also.
As were a few more attractive morsels.
