As the Sexting Art Festival launches in New York, and exhibitions around the word consider self-portrayal, we consider whether a sexy snap is worthy of masterpiece status.

As likely as not, you’ve found yourself in a large metropolitan museum on a damp, drizzly Saturday afternoon, standing before a vast, intricate installation of ping-pong balls, and puzzling, “Hmmm, yes… but is it art?”

Have you yet, however, pondered that same question when your iPhone buzzes with an incoming – and highly intimate – selfie courtesy of a lover, or a titillating text from a new Tinder friend? And would you be prepared to submit your phone-based flirtations for all the world to enjoy and appreciate?

This week, in Brooklyn, New York, the Sexting Art Festival will be displaying hundreds of such sexts – in picture, video, and text form – as part of an event to celebrate modern flirtation and arousal, most of which is now conveyed via our tiny, hand-held, camera-equipped devices.

Sexting AF, for short, is the brainchild of Mr Sam Ewen, creative director at a media company and a lecturer in media and propaganda at Manhattan’s Hunter College. “I was discussing with friends how much time and effort some people spend art-directing their Tinder or Bumble profiles, the highly intimate, sexy shots they send to a partner, or potential partner, or carefully crafting that come-on text to ensure they get a reply,” he says of the festival’s inception. “It occurred to me that there should be a way to celebrate the aesthetic nature of modern attraction and sexuality.”

It’s a sign, perhaps, that society has plumbed new depths of narcissism. But it’s far from isolated. This month, at London’s Saatchi Gallery, the ubiquitous selfie is being heralded as art, and the smartphone as an emerging artistic medium in new exhibition From Selfie To Self-Expression. The exhibition, which opened on 31 March, explores the history of artist-as-subject from Spanish painter Mr Diego Velázquez (born 1599) to the present day, via Mr Van Gogh, Ms Cindy Sherman and Mr George Harrison’s famous self-portrait at the Taj Mahal. Like Sexting AF, the exhibition features selfies sent in by the general public, from which one was picked as the winner of the #SaatchiSelfie competition by a panel that included Mr Juergen Teller, Ms Tracey Emin and more.

And though the Saatchi Gallery is alone on focusing on the digital selfie in London, the exhibition coincides with two other serious investigations of self-portraiture and representation in the capital. At the National Portrait Gallery, Ms Gillian Wearing’s current show riffs upon the enigmatic 1930s self-portraits of surrealist artist Ms Claude Cahun; and at the Whitechapel Gallery, a series of self-portraits from Ms Maria and Mr Malek Sukkar’s ISelf collection, including work by Mr André Breton, Ms Louise Bourgeois and Ms Tracey Emin (again) are being exhibited at the end of April.

Meanwhile, in New York, the theme of the current Whitney Biennial, which runs at the Whitney Museum of American Art until June, featuring 63 artists and focusing on emerging talent, is “the formation of self and the individual’s place in a turbulent society.”

Against this backdrop – an almost obsessive focus on the politics and aesthetics of personal representation – is it, then, too great a leap to see a well-lit crotch-shot as a work of art too? This question is the focus of Sexting AF, which will feature the good, the bad, the uncomfortable and the awkward, both sent and received, the playful and the provocative.

“Art is also often controversial,” points out Mr Ewen. “Its purpose is to generate emotion and reaction, which might be anything from amused to appalled.” The sexts on display – of breasts, bottoms and erections, of myriad sizes and shapes – were created by members of the public. As with self-portraits by the professionals, some communicate confidence and vanity, others vulnerability, while yet others demand the receiver be a mirror for the sender’s self-discovery.

“While we will be showing some lovely photos of naked bodies, there will also be intimate images and texts that might challenge your views about the boundaries of sexuality and gender.”

Is this enough to make it art? Given the images involved are, of course, unilaterally NSFW, this is one you’re going to ponder yourselves, in person, and probably not with your mother. Details below, if you think you can stomach it.

Sexting Art Festival is at Littlefield in Brooklyn, New York on 5 April

Gillian Wearing And Claude Cahun is at the National Portrait Gallery in London until 29 May

From Selfie To Self Expression is at Saatchi Gallery in London until 30 May

The Whitney Biennial is at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City until 11 June

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