Overview:
Dubbing his genre of film French X, John B. Root has produced and directed 21 hardcore films and “several hundreds of hours of porn programs”. With numerous awards and accolades to his name, it’s somewhat surprising that Root chooses to author every image on his website, Explicite Art, himself, acting as the photographer, videographer, director and producer. Just who does this guy think he is? The ultimate renaissance man?

Explicite Art’s tour page begins with a rotating image feed that immediately lets you know that the content contained within the members’ area isn’t just artistically shot adult material, it’s explicit as all get out. Fucking on mountaintops, deep lesbian fisting, double facial cumshots, hard anal sex, threesomes, furious female masturbation, double penetrations – very few arty Europorn sites go this far! Touting over 1000 exclusive videos, all of them available in multiple formats (including HD) and iPhone compatible, unlimited downloads, over 1000 photo galleries with multi-resolution images, and more than 350 of Europe’s most stunning adult models, including superstars Eufrat, Jane Darling and Carla Cox as well as hundreds of young French debutantes who make their nude debuts right here, Explicite Art certainly makes a bold first impression. Updates are said to arrive six times a week, with only Sunday held as a day of rest, even for the definitely wicked participants of Root’s debaucherous endeavors. 

As soon as you land inside the members’ area, you’re inundated with previews for video and gallery updates that, true to Root’s word, arrive Monday through Saturday every week. Today’s update is featured more prominently than the others, giving you a rundown of the scene and even a temperature gauge that ranges from “soft” to “xxx”. The sites design is clean and modern, thanks to a very recent reworking. Root makes note of these changes in a welcome message to members, asking for their feedback. A search engine allows you to find content based on who appears in it and what they do while the main menu gives you direct links to All Videos, All Photos, All Models, and All Films. It’s the simple, elegant design and navigation that really makes Explicite Art a joy to peruse. Of course, the incredibly attractive European models don’t hurt, even though their extreme fisting adventures look like they might!

Checking out the model index, you’ll find a little over 300 young women who’ve proved themselves worthy of Root’s attention. The list shows you a portrait of each model along with her name, total votes from members, and her “average rate” (an out-of-ten score). Fans of Europorn and Eurotica sites will no doubt notice a few familiar faces. Ariel, the red-headed beauty that makes an appearance on almost every classy Euro site, contributes two photosets and two videos to the archive and, along with Eufrat, Graziella, Shanis, and a dozen or so others, leads the popular vote. Each model’s profile page is filled with links to and descriptions and previews of her Explicite Art content. A temperature gauge measures how explicit the action gets, while a synopsis gives you the lowdown on what actually takes place and you can bet words like ‘cock’, ‘dildos’, ‘moist, and ‘sloppycumexplosion’ appear quite frequently!

Taking a look at one of the photo galleries – the latest, Shanis in Fist Party seems like a good point of reference – will give you a dozen thumbnails on the first of many pages, although this can be customized to show either 12, 24, 48, or all of the images. Each pic sits atop a trio of links – small, large, x-large – that open new windows showing photos at resolutions of 400x600, 1200x1800, and 4000x6000 pixels respectively. It goes without saying that the higher the resolution, the better the image quality and the x-large size provided here is of exceptional clarity. Even in some of the more DIY-styled shoots – a few of the debutantes are shot in a very casual, amateurish style – you’ll get great close-ups that give you fantastic visual access to the models. Their skin, eyes, hair – it’s all on display in crystal clear images. The downloadable zip archive only comes in one resolution (“high”), which is a bit disappointing. Considering the quality of the images contained within, it’s hard to be completely dismayed. It’s rare that you see content this hardcore at this level of photographic quality. Just how hardcore is it all? Let’s let the videos tell us.

As with the photo galleries, Explicite Art’s videos are presented in a number of different formats. HD Mov, DivX, MPEG, MP4, WMV, and M4V are all available and bring you resolutions of 1280x720, 720x576, 640x360, 720x576, 480x270, and 480x270. Obviously, going with the HD MOV as often as possible is the most attractive option and you thankfully won’t have to wait forever for these files, the largest on the site, to download as Explicite Art’s servers seem very capable at delivering above average speeds most of the time. If you’re not too keen on downloading everything blindly, videos can also be streamed straight from the site in the same formats mentioned above. All videos look very good for their respective resolutions and formats and won’t leave fans disappointed. The only real drawback to the HD content is that it’s not always available; older updates don’t reach such high resolutions and you can’t help but wish they would, especially after devouring some scenes in glorious 720p. Just what will you be seeing? Well, a cursory glance at the category listing tells us that lesbo, solo, hetero, and group sex all take place in both soft and hard styles that feature such defining characteristics as peeing, cigarettes, lingerie, anal, DP, water, food, bi-sex, casting, fist, and good old fashioned blowjobs. This is definitely the most hardcore ‘erotic art’ website I’ve come across. Whereas most Eurotica sites will limit themselves to reasonably timid female masturbation and seem reluctant to employ toys for full insertion, Explicite Art goes much, much further and shows fully penetrative and decidedly hardcore fucking in great detail. Most of the sex scenes seem quite natural, thanks largely to the good performances and simple shooting style, but every now and then you’ll find one that dips heavily into the well of fantasy. Then again, with women this hot doing things this incredibly raunchy, isn’t it all part of your deepest fantasy anyway? “Sex with a woman,” you say. “That’s all I dream about!”

Aside from the photo and video archives, which bring you 1028 and 1167 items respectively, you’ll also have access to 23 of John B. Root’s original film and TV productions. Each title brings you images and videos that unfortunately aren’t of particularly impressive quality. Still, it’s great to see what Root managed to get aired on French television and it certainly beats forcing yourself to watch Cougar Town just in case Courtney Cox (or Busy Philips for that matter) has a bra-and-panties scene. Oh, American television! You’re always miles ahead of everyone else!

At the usual monthly membership price of $29.95, Explicite Art certainly isn’t cheap and less financially stable readers might be dismayed. Thankfully, Mr. Pink has once again come through for his buddies (that’s you guys) and netted a $5 discount, bringing the price down to $24.95 a month. Sure, that’s still might be too much for some, but any of you who are actually, you know, somewhat productive members of society should be able to handle it. Before you risk a week’s worth of Top Ramen, be sure to take in these pros and cons. I don’t want to be responsible for any uncontrollable sobbing.

Pros:
- If you’re a fan of beautiful young European women – and, let’s face it, who isn’t? – then the models of Explicite Art are a real treat.

- Now that it has been redesigned, Explicite Art’s layout and navigation make for a simple, smooth browsing experience.

- You want video options? How does a selection of five different formats strike you? How about a 720p HD option?

- Updates arrive every day of the week except Sunday so there’s always something new to see.

Cons:
- Although the old and incredibly poor French-to-English translation seems to have mostly been replaced with new, more sensible English missives, there’s still the occasional hiccup that might leave you a bit confused.

- Older content fails to reach the impressive benchmarks set by the newer additions to the site.

- Every now and then a shoot will be too hardcore for the photographic style or vice versa, making things seem a little forced.

Conclusion:
With its freshly redesigned look and layout, John B. Root seems to be attempting to improve on what was already a wonderful website. Explicite Art is everything you’ve been hoping would eventuate. Eurotica sites are often frustrating for the sole reason that they present so much fantastic quality content but only show softcore material. Explicite Art long ago decided that hardcore porn deserved equally impressive photo and video quality and Root continues to deliver. As only the newest content is in HD, there’s still some evolving happening, but in a few months the daily updates will take care of that disparity and make Explicite Art one of the most exciting European hardcore sites on the Internet. It is, after all, already almost there.