EVERY SO OFTEN an idea comes along of such limpid obviousness that you wonder how it is possible no one thought of it before: I refer, of course, to the newly launched Lady Chatterley range of exotic lingerie.

The range is being sold by the Ann Summers sex shop under the slogan “not to be banned”, and includes a variety of erotic underwear in tasteful purple and pink, with bows, ribbons and plenty of whalebone stays; there is also a matching blindfold.

None of these items appears in the original 1928 novel, and we can safely assume that D. H. Lawrence would have been appalled to see his book used to sell something so mauve and frilly. Lawrence believed sex was Very Important, and not to be confused with lunch. In Lady Chatterley’s Lover he wrote: “Some things can’t be ravished. You can’t ravish a tin of sardines.” (On the other hand, if you are planning to ravish a tin of sardines, a nice purple satin blindfold is probably quite useful.)

Lawrence’s literary executors are not going to take it lying down; they are writing a letter of bitter complaint to Ann Summers, arguing that the name of Lawrence’s novel has been traduced. This will, of course, have no effect whatever, except to sell a few more blindfolds, since Lawrence is dead and Lady Chatterley is not a trademark.

The Lady Chatterley range is only the latest and most lurid evidence of art being hijacked for commercial purposes. Last month saw the launch of Frida Kahlo Tequila, with the sales pitch: “Being original is no sin.” The artist’s niece insists that this “product would characterise my Aunt Frida”. In a grim way, this is true: at the most acutely miserable moments in her life, Kahlo was sucking down a bottle of the wretched stuff every day.

The descendants of the artist Pierre-Auguste Renoir have reportedly licensed his name to a brand of Canadian mineral water. Then there is the Virginia Woolf Burger bar at the Hotel Russell in Bloomsbury, and the Ernest Hemingway Furniture Collection in the US: this includes the Corrida Sofa and the Pilar Bookshelf (“with distinctive signature H and marlin symbol”), but not, oddly, the Hemingway drinks cabinet, gun rack or the beginner’s guide for elderly sea anglers.

Jane Austen is an entire kitsch industry to herself: T-shirts, cookbooks, postcards, writing paper, tea towels, music, books, replica toys, cross-stitch kits, and amber crosses ($10 a pop; chains not included), “like Fanny Price’s gift from her dear brother William”.

For some, the attaching of a great name to a tea towel or a sofa is a desecration, revealing a debased and thoughtless culture. In September an officer of the EU’s highest court berated the heirs of Pablo Picasso for using his name as a marketing tool. “It is sad to note that the most outstanding, mythic figure of the 20th century, a piece of the common heritage of humanity, has been reduced to a piece of merchandise,” thundered Dámaso Ruiz-Jarabo Colomer, advocate general at the European Court of Justice.

He is right, of course; yet in a way the tawdry transformation of the artist into a brand name is the back-handed tribute that low commerce pays to high art. The person, for example, who drives a Citroën Xsara Picasso is unlikely to have chosen the medium-sized people carrier because its shape evokes the artist in his Cubist period; most Picasso-drivers, I suspect, simply know that the concept of Picasso is cool, sophisticated and an object of general admiration. In a way, this is the highest compliment to Picasso: a figure of automatic veneration, unsullied by thought. Similarly, the wearers of Lady Chatterley knickers may never read the novel, yet the mere fact that such things exist is proof of how radically a pioneering book changed popular perceptions of sex forever.

Writers and artists still have a cachet, however manipulated and misused, that puts them above any other sort of celebrity brand. Fifty years from now, I doubt anyone will be driving a Renault Beckham, let alone drinking George Best Scotch Whisky.

What greater tribute could there be to the transforming power of art than the technology companies who seek to humanise their wares by adopting literary or artistic names? The “Matisse” is a tunable ring laser incorporating wavelength scanning by a long-travel stabilised piezo, fast cavity-length stabilisation by an intra-cavity electro-optical modulator and high-performance digital signal processing. (I have read that sentence four times and I still don’t have a clue what it means, but then, it’s the impression that matters.) Dante, on the other hand, is a circuit-level firewall/proxy that can be used to provide convenient and secure network connectivity to a wide range of hosts. Yup, it’s that seventh circuit of firewall hell.

Having a laser named after him does not necessarily undermine or cheapen Matisse’s art, because it has nothing to do with his art. The name merely adds a spurious patina of interest to an unlovely product. Most great writers and artists know that their success, by its nature, is likely to appropriated for non-artistic purposes after they are gone. The far-sighted Picasso warned his family that they would face turmoil trying to controlling his name and his fame after his death: “It will be worse than your worst nightmare,” he said.

Most artists and writers (Lawrence perhaps excepted) would probably be more flattered than offended to see their names or their works taken in vain by commerce. The arrival of the Lady Chatterley Thong certainly opens up new vistas of marketing possibilities. Damien Hirst’s homemade pickles has a certain ring to it. How about the Anna Karenina guide to train-spotting, the Bertie Wooster cocktail shaker or Albert Einstein’s patented hair conditioner?

Since sex and literature apparently go together like Lady Chatterley and Oliver Mellors, here is an idea that I shall be suggesting to Ann Summers the minute I finish this column: John Updike’s Rampant Rabbit Series.

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