Warhol invented conceptual porn by asserting aesthetic status onto explicitly sexual material

Evidence

However, Eat, in which the artist Robert Indiana manages to make the consumption of a single mushroom last for approximately half an hour, was shown on July 16 at Washington Square Gallery, 528 West Broadway, paired with an unannounced attraction, the wittiest of Warhol’s early films, Blow Job. A thirty-three-minute close-up of a man’s face as he is sexually serviced off-screen, it may be considered the first conceptual porn film. — J. Hoberman, Everything Is Now, 533

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines ‘conceptual porn’ as a genre: sexual content that functions primarily as an art-concept rather than titillation.
• XREF: Connects to the broader thesis about cheap production and avant-garde density — the ‘conceptual’ move (Blow Job as one-shot conceptualism) is a precocious instance of what later became institutionalized as conceptual art.