I was interested to read of the loud condemnations by Morris Iemma and Kevin Rudd of the cover of the latest issue of Art Monthly Australia. The cover features detail from a print of Polixeni Papapetrou’s Olympia as Lewis Carroll’s Beatrice Hatch before White Cliffs. In this artwork, the artist’s then six year old daughter, Olympia Nelson, is portrayed naked. My first thought was to wonder whether either Iemma or Rudd had actually seen the magazine in question, and that’s still unclear to me. My second thought was to wonder whether one of the media themes of the day – embodied in this piece by Nicholas Pickard in Crikey – had any merit. Pickard argued that the magazine’s editor, Maurice O’Riordan, was a “total fool” who was playing into “Hetty Johnson’s hands”. The two subtexts appear to be that the Bill Henson controversy had faded away, leaving artists to go about their business as normal (or something), and that O’Riordan was courting more controversy in order to increase sales of his mag, heedless of the dangers of raking up the cinders of the fire the Bill Henson controversy started.
But, unlike a lot of people who might have an opinion about this new controversy/furore/”debate”, I thought I might go and buy a copy of the magazine in order to form my own view. So I did.
I actually don’t want to discuss the cover or the artwork featured on it. The child who’s the subject of her mother’s photo and her father, art critic and academic Robert Nelson have spoken for themselves.
I’m more interested in the debate over the representation of children and its social contexts, which indeed is the context for the magazine’s choice of cover artwork, as it features not just the editorial from editor O’Riordan but also three interesting and serious articles about the Henson controversy by Denise Ferris & Martyn Jolly, Adam Geczy and Donald Brook. Contra Pickard, it seems to me entirely appropriate that a magazine such as Art Monthly would seek to publish reflections on the Henson stoush, even if it doesn’t accord with the ideas about political strategy of some members of the “art community”, who might prefer that the whole issue just go away. I think it’s entirely wrong to say, as Pickard does, that O’Riordan has taken the image out of its context, for the reasons O’Riordan himself gave in his editorial which can be read online.
I was struck by the force of a number of the arguments made in the various articles, particularly in the contribution by Ferris & Jolly:
Any attempt to resist an over-regulation of photography driven by such social unease is immediately met with the ultimate foreclosing reply: child protection.
They go on to ask, and here it’s worth noting that none of Henson’s subjects have ever expressed anything but comfort with their experience, and as I said, Olympia Nelson has spoken for herself:
But how might actual children suffer as a result of Bill Henson’s photographs?
I’ll leave that question hanging there, though I agree with the authors that there has been no satisfactory answer to it.
They go on to discuss the sort of world we’d be living in if the voices of unequivocal condemnation have their way. I’m going to quote this passage at some length:
…these harmful helpers also wantonly mishandle exactly what adults are entrusted with – the social and cultural future of our young. Their self-indulgent words and uncorroborated fantasies of harmful art will have significant long-term effects on the world our children will inherit.
Their world would draw a visual veil over our children until the age of eighteen. The marvellous extended process of a child becoming an adult would take place in the dark. The transition period when children are most vulnerable to exploitation (from someone they know and trust in 85% of cases) would take place largely unseen and unspoken about. The complexities, doubts, fears, and dreams of puberty would be left to the tabloids, the television and the advertisers to articulate with their banal sexual dichotomies and overheated social scenarios. The psychologically supporting network of loving looks and mutual regard we want our children to grow up in would be ripped away. The complexity of children would become publicly invisible – except for the photographs that sell products to them.
Their world sees only two possible contracts between adult and child: either one of parental or pedagogical authority, or one of sexual exploitation. All other contracts based on mutuality, creativity, fun or play, are suspect.
That last paragraph seems to me to go to the absolute heart of the matter.
Whether or not these issues can be publicly debated in a public sphere that is deeply compromised by social exploitation itself and commercial considerations (and here I think the criticism of O’Riordan may represent projection) is of course, moot. I’m inclined to agree with Andrew Bartlett that the debate over Henson was much more seriously performed in the blogosphere than in the mass media. But, regardless of whether debating these issues is comfortable, it’s a debate we now can’t avoid, since Kevin Rudd has announced that:
Mr Rudd said he had ordered the Australia Council, which funds the magazine, to develop new protocols about using images of children, and any recipient that did not abide by them would have its funding axed.
That being the case, surely everyone who approaches these issues in good faith would agree that debating them should be characterised by a deep responsibility, and not an uninformed rush to judge.
Note: The archive for the discussion at LP over the Bill Henson controversy can be found here.
Update: More from Gary Sauer-Thompson at Junk for Code and Ken Lovell at Road to Surfdom.
Another update: Prominent American blog Crooked Timber takes note of “moral panic in Australia”. And more commentary from skepticlawyer.
Update: More from Gary Sauer-Thompson at Junk for Code and Ken Lovell at Road to Surfdom.
Kevvie’s ordered the Australia Council to do what?
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Harumph. And a fine thing too. This is art. This is revolting!
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Obviously Art Monthly have decided to have a go at Kevvie. So the debate viz whether it’s a smart play or no’s yet to be decided. But I think they deserve marks for trying. Of course they’ll probably lose. When you use reason to combat people absolutely convinced of their righteousness with any less than a crowbar you lose.
Good post Kim. It is very good to read sensible discussion on this topic. And for me this quote expresses the heart of the matter:
‘The psychologically supporting network of loving looks and mutual regard we want our children to grow up in would be ripped away. The complexity of children would become publicly invisible – except for the photographs that sell products to them.
Their world sees only two possible contracts between adult and child: either one of parental or pedagogical authority, or one of sexual exploitation. All other contracts based on mutuality, creativity, fun or play, are suspect.’
The voices of condemnation are going to create precisely the sort of world that they are most afraid of, if they manage to create the laws that they are after. God I hope they don’t.
When I first heard about this latest furore I thought I am not going to say anything about this until I’ve seen the photos and then I read that the child was photographed by her mother, five years ago and she is now 11 and very proud of the pictures. Good on the arts world for fighting about this issue, I just hope that they win.
Thanks, Rayedish!
That picture in question appears to be purely artistic. I find it incomprehensible that it could be interpreted any differently. What’s more the parents approved and the child herself approved of the photo and its publication. Talk about a storm in a teacup.
We are in the middle of another moral panic folks. In the cool light of day, it will be difficult even to comprehend the furor over an image like the one that graces the cover of Art Monthly. It is not pornographic; it is not of a naked body; it is not erotic; it is not in the slightest bit prurient. It is an image of a solemn child whose relation to sexuality, insofar as it has one, is intellectual and exists mainly because its title asks us to remember Lewis Carroll’s ambiguously eroticised photos of young girls. By virtue of that title we are, maybe, invited to see the image as if it were sexualised, but, if so, it’s an invitation the image itself cannot make good on.
So why the fuss? In the end because, in Australia, denouncing a connection between child abuse and arty intellectuals makes politicians look good whatever the context; it’s an easy populist boost. In this case I only hope that the pollies are cynical. That would be better than their being suckers for dumb moral panics.
I actually doubt that Rudd has ever interested himself in art of any kind. Being an intelligent man, if he had, I’m sure he wouldn’t be so glib. I think he’s got quite a narrow frame of reference on a lot of things. As for Iemma, well, surely he’s just a useless hack? I’ve never seen anything to indicate otherwise. And Brendan Nelson, well…
Interesting to see the only two pollies who had something a bit more nuanced to say on this latest “furore” being Julie Bishop and Jon Stanhope.
Olympia Nelson has been so articulate about her feelings in relation to this. In all honesty I just can’t understand the argument that the child might regret this photo when she’s an adult. There seems so much unspoken shame here about nakedness. And so much obsession about sex.
At least the Chief Minister of the ACT has spoken sensibly about this.
I loved Olympia Nelson’s style on the news tonight!
That’s part of it. There are cycles in cultures some large, some small, yeah? The cycles re art and literature and what is permitted and why are some of the most interesting ones. One of the modern conceits is that we modern people are more enlightened somehow then our ancestors but that is arguable. Much of it has to do with context.
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In the 19th century when the repression of sexuality and sexual talk was at its height artists needed to justify themselves via their academies or salons if they wished to depict the nude (in England). What’s funny about this is that if you look at these works the ‘noble’ pretext is totally bogus and the subject matter is most definitely pornographic. I think that the most pornographic sculpture in history was produced by English people in the late 1800s. And I’ve been to India.
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Here we have the context of a perceived libertinage amongst adolescents under the age of consent. There’s the practise of ’sexting’ which might be a media beat-up based on isolated incidents. However it might be illustrative: this practise involves taking pictures of one’s genitals and sending them to someone you like (Ah What light from yonder window breaks – Not).
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And of course there pedophilia.
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In this context it’s normal for society to undergo a conservative backlash. And Art is an easy target. But those on the ‘Art side’ shouldn’t be too self-assured simply because reason might be on our side. In almost every instance where this has been ‘debated’ the tendency has been to say that it’s wrong because it is, to infer that those who may enjoy this are perverts and to not enter into any further discussion.
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That is a very effective strategy if backed by a howling mob.
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Fun fact viz the ‘liberation of art’ in the 19th century. This happened via France (of course) and one of the milestones was this picture. (Warning: Explicit). Funnily enough Courbet’s patron for that work and for this was a Muslim courtier.
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Times do change.
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It might be interesting to consider that most here have grown up in the wake of a great liberlisation in the English-speaking world that started circa 1960. This has been progressing more or less steadily since. A backlash is inevitable.
Kim blogged: “I actually doubt that Rudd has ever interested himself in art of any kind.”
Bienvenue Mademoiselle-a-bientot! but I disagree with the above mam’selle. I think that sentence is unwarranted, unfair, and irrelevant. If there’s one thing almost certain about art, imo, it’s that people of good faith hold a multitude of views and attitudes, whatever their level of appreciation and knowledge of art history might be.
The last thing I want to see in a PM is an insincere adoption of a viewpoint on art. Let him speak freely and sincerely.
Yeah, nothing like a parent wheeling out a child in front of a whole bunch of cameras to parrot out their own personal campaign.
My favourite part?
Journo: “What do you think that the photographs are about or trying to say?”
Kiddie: “Oh, I think… ahhh… I think… [looks to dad] can you help me with this one…?”
How very articulate. Seriously, did you not cringe even a little?
Yes I agree. Criteria for censorship of art changes constantly. As do sexual norms obviously: male pedophilia for instance was regarded as one of the glories of Ancient Greek culture by its greatest moralists. And I guess a conservatism which is to be understood as 60s backlash may be part of the current return to wowserism.
But I don’t think the public attention give to pedophilia over the past twenty years or so can be explained as sixties backlasy. (I’d see it myself as a complicated effect of neo-liberalism: a retreat by mainly evacuated moral norms into the last ditch of protecting the innocence of children).
And Australia has always been more ready to censor than almost any other nation: as someone commented on this blog it was the only country on earth to ban Christina Stead’s novel Letty Fox in the fifties for its depiction of a young girl’s sexuality although no-one reading that novel today can even begin to see what might be erotic or dangerous about it. Why Australia has been so censorious I don’t know. I guess it must be related to its insecurity over its own moral decency, which is itself presumably an outcome of the relative scarcity of gentility here, for better or worse.
So the pollies leaping over themselves to denounce this innocuous image belongs to a great Aussie tradition. It’s the obsession with children that’s new.
Yeo, there’s something a little bit sick about a society that insists on sexualising all nudity.
I left a comment on the Courier-Mail article to the tune of pedophilia being a pathological condition and that it’s important we treat it as such. The idea that child nudity is going to encourage pedophilia is as ridiculous as the assertion that making matches available for sale at corner stores is going to see a rise in pyromania. The current “debate” is based on the idea that nudity is inherently shameful, particularly when it involves children. We have turned into a society that for some reason tolerates overtly sexual messages in clothes modelling yet as soon as it’s someone who’s actually human such as a school teacher from NSW or a child, any sort of baring of the flesh becomes disgusting.
The Rudd government consistently says it wants to crack down on child abuse and uses this as a justification for putting pressure on anyone who depicts a nude child or for mandatory filtering of the internet. At the heart of it, the Rudd government are either a bunch of prudes who don’t understand what the sexual revolution means for progressive politics or are attempting to win over a new constituency such as concerned, socially conservative parents.
The Rudd government have been handed a golden opportunity to reframe many political debates but it seems that good sense loses out to political playmaking once again. It is possible to defend art depicting nude children while decrying pedophilia as the anti-social pathological condition that it is. What the Rudd government have done is bring artistic reputations into disrepute all for the sake of avoiding a wedge. I wonder what our Minister for the Arts thinks of the idea of blaming the artistic community for social ills.
People like Dennis Ferguson will exist regardless of what’s on the cover of Art Monthly. People like Ferguson probably don’t give a hoot about what’s hanging in a gallery or what’s on a magazine cover when there are other, less savoury, means of accumulating genuinely pornographic material involving minors. Upstanding citizens aren’t going to be tempted to give up socially normative sexual behaviour and start diddling kids just because they saw a 6 year old’s bare thighs in an art magazine. If we have a genuine pedophilia problem let’s actually go after the problem rather than skirting around it and trying to criminalise behaviour that pedophiles have in common with regular people. Fiddling around with the internet and cutting off art funding is not going to solve anything.
For anyone who has seen the trepidation an Australian citizen can have for stepping over the threshold, from streetwalkway, to enter an art gallery, for the first time, while willing them to go in, this is yet another debilitating act.
Whose purpose does it help, if the effect is to serve art?
What is a certainty is that within those comfortable with their relationship with art, one way or any other, the slings slangs and support will go round and round again.
What is a problem for art is that it is yet again defined for a mass public – otherwise equally deserving of all it avails – by terms and phrases and another contentious specific which push that public away.
This is not to assert or apportion blame. We’re an outpost. One spoiling voice can make five headlines in two hours here. One expansive artistic attempt can have the same impact. Neither of these are necessarily deserving of the effect.
Lost to all of that is the gentle woman, hands filled, who peeked her eyes through a gallery entrance, stopping, when on the way to fulfill her normal day. She’d never once been in a gallery – what did she know of them? You can imagine. Did she care for art or galleries? Who knows, really, but on this day she cared enough to stop and poke her head through the door. “Is it ok if I have a look?” she asked, from outside.
This strikes a blow to the heart of art. Because the art is for her. For them (not solely, let’s not be swayed by that either).
Repercussions like this as provoked in the latest leave a lady like that at the door, a glimpse if lucky and walking past.
Forget the bemoaning for any sacrifice in the making of it, the purpose of fact is that art is for the viewing, and anything which turns that viewer away – especially someone stepping into that space within themselves with trepidation – is a step someone in the arts, somewhere else, has to make up for. (That’s the nature of art – it wants to speak with, even hold, every one. And someone somewhere will want to create art to do so).
By each and every means this current discussion is worthwhile. But shit it’s limiting, as well.
Quick, Kev, call this guy
“The Rudd government have been handed a golden opportunity to reframe many political debates but it seems that good sense loses out to political playmaking once again.”
Sam, the last sentence is bang on. I would suggest that the Rudd government prefers to not lose votes.
Kim,
Cultural elites have it taken as writ that original and interesting thought is necessarily “alternative”, “transgressive” or “revolutionary”. Once upon a Picasso time there was something to be said for this pov.
Pretty clearly that time has long since gone. The point of diminishing returns for shock value has been reached when the shock far exceeds the value.
There are some areas where the public does not enjoy being shocked. Children are still taboo in this area because there are so few of them nowadays. Parents want to preserve the innocence of childhood.
Ordinary people, mainly parents, think that taking pictures of nude children and publishing them for the perusal of the general public is weird, verging on creepy, verging on sick. THere is instinctive public resistance to roping children into art experiments or exposing children to the massive sexualisation of the visual arts economy. No matter how ostensibly noble the motive or pure the art.
No doubt that most cultural elites, often non-parents, dont have much empathy with this view point. But that only serves to emphasise the yawning moral gulf between cultural elites and the general populace in this area, as in so many others.
The Culture War has not petered out. It continues to rage underground, as the populace recoils from the pathologies of multicultural diversity and sub-cultural perversity.
I can’t quite see the link with “multicultural diversity” on this one, Jack!
Jack Strocchi @ 19
Hrmmm…I will remember that the next time I happen across Australia’s Next Top Model as I watch a 16 year old strut down the catwalk to sell clothing. I may wonder to myself where the “instinctive public resistance to roping children into art experiments or exposing children to the massive sexualisation of the visual arts economy” is hiding at that point.
The fact is, we don’t mind using a child’s or young person’s sexuality to SELL THINGS but as soon as we are looking on a nude child without a frame of reference we get uncomfortable.
Seems a bit backwards to me.
This is a difficult and complex issue.
There is much to be said for the view that pornography is only in the eye of the beholder – and that people looking at photos of naked kids who think it is sexual have a problem.
On the other hand, there is much to be said for the view that taking photos of naked kids, regardless of the artistic merit, is a little odd, creepy to many, and revolting to some.
I think the art magazine is ridiculous for stirring this up again – incredible arrogance after the Henson debacle. Basically thumbing its nose at the general populace – and yes, the ‘general’ view is that photos of naked kids are crossing the boundary and are creepy. The general populace doesn’t agree that photos of naked people is art in the same way that paintings or sculptures of naked people is art.
Kim – I too saw Olympia on the news and was a little disturbed with what I saw. She was clearly out of her depth dealing with the issues, her father was very creepy – clearly coaching her on what to say.
On balance, I say let kids be kids – and that means keeping them out of controversy like this. Poor Olympia is going to be troubled by this – but that probably would have happened anyway with odd parents!
er.. Louise, aren’t 16yo models on a catwalk.. well, er.. aren’t they clothed? (skimpily perhaps, but still their private parts are covered) The photo in question is of a 6 year old with her private parts exposed to the breeze (if not to the camera).
16yo isn’t perhaps the best analogy. 16yo is over the age of consent, I can root a 16yo if the 16 wishes it. Rooting a 6yo is not on under ANY circumstances.
Andrew, gotta agree with you, there was something creepy about that feller on the TV, & it wasn’t just his manner of dress or decidely non-masculine demeanour.
Bring on the next moral panic – it’s been at least 10 minutes.
steve’s on to it – them art critics and their suspiciously un-masculine bow ties.
Is there anywhere one can point out that the current hysterical pearl-clutching tends, once again, to hide the fact that it is neither the artist, the parents nor the child who is the actual offender?
That individuals who wish to “pleasure” themselves with the sexual possibilities of children are, essentially, bullies of a particularly nasty type.
That the current behaviours of those who are pearl-clutching in shock/horror are missing the target by a country mile! And are in their stridency just as bullying and intimidatory as those whom they should be targeting.
It’s either that, or Anne Geddes is a really horrible, wicked person for the type of imagery she creates. So why is she not being targeted? (Or am I just flagging another pearl to be clutched at?)
[Bring on the next moral panic - it’s been at least 10 minutes.]
Is it just me, or is the whole issue of nudity being shameful a product of being a Quincelander, ie Rudd & Hetty Johnston ? If we’re not careful then we will soon the the nuddy police charge parents for posting happy snaps like this.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/sesameellis/2510601831/
Well, Queensland was a fairly repressive society in the past, in parts, but I think it might be drawing a fairly long bow. Iemma and Miranda Devine and Brendan Nelson and Andrew Bolt and…
Speaking of which, I see the idea articulated by Andrew at 22 that Robert Nelson (Olympia’s father) is “creepy” (although he may not have meant it in the sense I’m thinking of), and steve starts to pile on the insinuation at 23, is about to get a run from Andrew Bolt – maybe – presumably the “colleague at work” he’s been consulting is a lawyer.
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/do_i_ignore_it/
By the way, Bolt in his first post, no doubt showing his deep regard for truth and journalistic standards, doesn’t seem to have realised that Nelson was on tv with his daughter. When his commenters – who along with talkback callers presumably represent “society” or “the people” in these debates – get the point, we get insinuations that Nelson is a pedophile.
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/how_far_must_we_fall_before_an_artist_throws_up/P0/
If anything’s damaging to her, surely it must be the avalanche of vilification that’s about to fall on her family? I wonder if that’s occurred to “child protection advocates” such as Bolt and his crew.
[Well, Queensland was a fairly repressive society in the past, in parts, but I think it might be drawing a fairly long bow. Iemma and Miranda Devine and Brendan Nelson and Andrew Bolt and… ]
I just say that because it is usually Hetty who starts the ball rolling, and it’s rather ironic that Queensland is the most sexually repressed state, yet has the highest number of child sex offenders(just going on what is reported).
In the case of Miranda, morris and Bolt, is it because they are a god-fearing lot ?
I also note the Cardinal Pell is in a spot of bother re another sex scandal involving one of his fellow clergy members.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/07/08/2297082.htm
I really don’t think Hetty represents all Queenslanders. She’s run for the Senate a couple of times here and got nowhere!
[I really don’t think Hetty represents all Queenslanders. She’s run for the Senate a couple of times here and got nowhere!]
Maybe so, but she is sort of like Marge Simpson or Maud Flanders in the way she is the token “Child Protection Crusader”
Our WA Equivilent is Michelle Stubbs, though she has been rather quiet of late.
In other news, prominent American blog Crooked Timber takes note of “moral panic in Australia”:
http://crookedtimber.org/2008/07/07/moral-panic-in-australia/
I very seldom take the part of the ladies and gentlemen of the press, but this looks like a fairly cynical ploy on Art Monthly’s part to move more copies of their mag. Can’t fault their sales skills, but I’m still of the view that this is a hornet’s nest they don’t want to stir up. This is only partly because they depend on the taxpayer’s largesse in order to exist.
Without defending Rudd’s views, I’m going to hop in and defend his right to be a philistine when it comes to art. This is partly personal, because I’m still a philistine when it comes to a great deal of art. I tried for years to try to appreciate much ‘high art’ (including opera and conceptual visual art), in the main because people around me thought a novelist should have ‘views on’ and ‘appreciation of’ the ‘finer things in life’.
However, when you haven’t grown up with it, it’s very difficult. I gave up on both after a time, mainly because I kept going to sleep in operas, and just didn’t ‘get’ most modern art. I find Henson’s teenage nudes somewhere in between ‘perplexing’ and ‘yucky’. I defend his right to exhibit without the filth barging through his art gallery as a civil libertarian, not because I think his art is independently valuable.
Like me, the Kevvster didn’t grow up in an ‘artistic’ or highly educated family. The man is a highly technically proficiant linguist and diplomat, but not expecially cultured. And that’s fine.
So Jack, do you drive a racist barrow in topics fully unrelated to racism very often? Who cares… Go back and hang out with your lowlife compatriots on Stormfront.org.
Only to small minds which struggle with extraordinarily simple concepts.
No, the ‘general’ view, i.e. the majority opinion in Australia, is that naked kids can and do feature in bona-fide art. It is only a few noisy nutcase wowsers, who want to flog an agenda of fear of the unknown, who proffer objections to art like Papapetrou’s and Henson’s, and refer to nudity as porn regardless of construct or context. Lots of you dorks want to scare the crap out of parents with what MIGHT excite a paedophile, but not a single one of you, unless paedos yourselves, actually KNOW what excites paedophiles. Peddling baseless fear of paedophilia is as bad as paedophilia itself.
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Also, can you kindly not parrot Brendan Nelson when he’s in political point-scoring mode? Go get your own damn opinions.
Trackback.
Art Monthly would have made their point more effectively if they’d run a collage cover of Michaelangelo’s David, Snugglepot and Cuddlepie and the Coppertone toddler, with Crime Stopper-style tabloid-y black squares over the relevant bits; or better yet – starbursts.
Most people are missing the point. Rudd is not objecting to this on the grounds that it’s pornographic. He’s objecting on the grounds that a 6 year old can’t give informed consent.
If he’s going to be consistent he’s going to be taking issue with a lot of parents about all manner of things, including the local god-botherer who pounds on my door every 6 months or so trying to wangle an invitation to come in and save my soul. He invariably has a small child with him, who I seriously doubt is in a position to make an informed decision to spend her Sundays proselytising for the lord.
Parents spend their lives inducing, cajoling or coercing their kids to do things that the kids manifestly DON’T want to do, yet Rudd takes exception to them doing something that this particular child was happy to do on the grounds she wasn’t old enough to give informed consent. It’s a ludicrous position.
What he really means is that parents can take decisions on behalf of their children as long as they conform to his narrow prudish preferences.
I meant to add: I keep citing the example of Bindi Irwin, who is certainly not in a position to give informed consent to the way she is being used. Nevertheless I’ve yet to hear a word of criticism from Rudd or the Johnstone woman about her parents, or read threats that the government is considering withdrawing funding from the Irwin empire.
Their hangups about nudity are extraordinary. Do they ever go to the beach?
“Quick, Kev, call this guy.”
LOL, as people say on the interwebs. Nice one, Leinad.
I hereby nominate Jack Strocchi for the post of Australia’s first Pedofinder-General.
He could give the pedophiles a choice: listen to an extended lecture on The Decline of The Wets, or self-immolate. Most would straight away light a fire and throw themselves in.
I can’t say I find Papapetrou’s art any where near as engaging as I find Henson’s, but as you note, SL, that’s beside the point. Ken Lovell is on the money. This is now about – according to Rudd anyway – a really nutsoid view of consent.
The question i have asked people when i discuss this is how have these girls faired at school once the pictures hit the playground? It is interesting to consider this. After all, kids could’nt give a crap about artistic merit, child protection or any such matter. All they know is that a kid at their school is nude and we have the picture. Kids are not known for their subtelty and i just wonder what has been the reaction. We discussed the Henson issue with The Eye and will post the interview on our blog. I just thought i would add this to the list.
Given that it’s unlikely that Art Monthly would be playground reading, that only becomes an issue when the media and politicians decide to highlight any of the art in question. See my previous comment about the “child protection advocates” at 28.
not that I have read all the comments but what amazes me about the cover of Art Monthly and I am sure I am not the only one thin king this, but it is a really crap piece of art, it’s really terrible, regardless of the nude kid it. It would be great if Mr Rudd said “who would buy or hang that piece of shit on their wall anyway, now about global warming and our health system….”
It’s part of a series of responses to Lewis Carroll’s pictures. The picture on Art Monthly is responding to this picture in particular.
The series is here.
Bring back Colonel Tennessee Fainting Goat!
Bring back FDB!
“but I’m still of the view that this is a hornet’s nest they don’t want to stir up.”
Fairly subservient comment coming from someone who is apparently a lawyer and civil libertarian. Rather than allowing them (Kev, Hetty, Morris etc) on to the moral high ground, this kind of boofheaded posturing will eventually expose their impotence if they keep it up. I think that everything should be done to rub Hetty’s and Kev’s noses in it. Let them wear the wrath of the outraged commoners who so enjoy BB, Ramsay and Kyle Blandilands (did we all get a kick out of Daisy the Prize Pig).
i worked with my share of adolescent sex offenders while working for Juvenile Justice and can to some extent back Frank C up and state that at least 2/3rds of those sex offenders came from very repressive, god fearing homes. all of the offenders whose victims were children came from that set. this is obviously anecdotal and therefore not a terriably useful data set, if you wanted more info then you ought to contact MAPPS http://www.office-for-children.vic.gov.au/youth-justice/library/publications/mapps but i don’t think that they would tell you.
re the photos, i am inclined to think that it was needlessly provocotive, but professionally i’ve conditioned myself to avoid and diffuse and sidestep what i consider to be needless conflict as it distracts from necessary conflict. But i do understand why some are adopting a ‘more power to you Art Monthly’ attitude. the necessary conflict here is that this curffuffle adds to the stranger danger and nude = sex memes.
It is no secret that the vast majority of sexual crimes against children are committed by family members and others in positions of trust so enough said there.
in the 80′ and early 90’s there was a rash of individuals being busted with their “holiday videos” . some of these were shown on the news, including the ABC. what struck me about these portions of video was the normality of the scenes shown. everything that was normal is reframed by these offenders to suit their pathology. nudity does not matter to the offenders that i have worked with or the subjects of the case studies that i have read, they live far to completly in their own imaginations. i believe that in many cases nudity actually confronts their personal, internal constructions and breaks down their capacity to effectivelly construct the fantacies that are essential to their pathology.
we cannot shy away from the fact that so much of what is commonly seen as innocent can be reframed within a pathological mindset into something sinister. if we allow fear of that pathology to change our behavior, to reframe that innocence ourselves into something sinister, well we are just destroying another village in an attempt to save it.
We had an interesting family discussion about this at my place last night. My mother (artist) had done a painting last year of my children. The subject was from an old photograph of when they were little, climbing on some rocks, no clothes on . My daughter is now early teens. We realised after the painting had been done, that my daughter wasn’t completely comfortable with it being made into a painting to be hung on the wall. Her grandmother had never intended it to be for public view or for sale. But all the same, it got me thinking. Is it possible that, if we had taken umbrage about freedom of expression and been in the midst of a public stoush over it, would my daughter have felt any pressure to modify her feelings?
Those of you with kids – have you noticed that after the pre-school years kids do seem to get a bit more body concious? My partner and I used to get about the house sans the gear but when the kids reached a certain age, I found it embarrassed them, so changed our behaviour so they wouldn’t feel uncomfortable. I see this as ‘courtesy’. Maybe there is something very basic about taboos on nudity that people are overlooking here. It would be interesting to get an anthropological view on this. I mean, my kids know I go to sessions with a life model and they’ve seen the resulting work, but they don’t seem more inclined to go without clothes because of it.
Here’s food for thought – I was once at a life class and the model (nude) objected to people who were not part of the art class walking through the room to get to a tap – she actually interrupted the session to speak and gave this guy a dressing down – she said it was rude to walk through as if she was a lump of wood. I tell you, it felt like a shift in power relations for the model to assert herself in that moment!
Interestingly my mother, the artist of the picture described above, had reservations about public exhibition & sale of photography such as Henson’s. For the record, I’m not really comfortable with it either. The photo on the cover of Art Monthly while itself quite discreet, raises issues that still need to be worked out and not in a hackneyed ‘arts vs wowsers’ discourse that becomes predictable. Elsewhere, someone said Rudd should have used his diplomatic skills better in this debate, and I think that’s true, he got a bit emotional, but I don’t think he’s wrong to say that issues of children’s capacity to give informed consent are a legitimate concern.
One thing I’ll say about kids is, they are often at pains to prove how mature they are. That’s not the same as real maturity.
I have been doing life drawing in different places on and off for twenty years and I don’t think I’ve ever been in a session where some non-participant wanders through the room. That seems to me like a major breach of the protocols usually observed around life drawing.
Kim said:
Unlike Henson, the Art Monthly people knew that what they did would cause the photo to get national attention. As for distribution on the internet – putting something up on a website these days is the equivalent to putting it up on the noticeboard at the local supermarket. Its going to get seen, its going to get indexed. Your friends and enemies are going to google you at some point – if your parents put up nudie photos of you on the web, you’re going to go to school one day and find printouts of them waiting for you.
The opinion of an eleven year old, no matter how erudite she may sound, holds no weight in this argument. I can’t believe she is even being interviewed in this debate.
Seems like this was a provocative stunt to increase Art Monthly’s circulation.
Anyway, we all know that the internet is pedophile heaven.
Yeah. Why bother listening to what children have to say, their opinions are utterly irrelevant.
WON’T SOMEBODY THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!!
What has this got to do with the internet, precisely?
Or are you saying, ‘the internet is like pedophile heaven’ because that’s where good pedophiles go when they die?
My child is at the girl in question’s school. His only reaction something along the lines of why does someone become famous and get in the newspaper just because of a photo like that. In other words he’s mildly jealous and doesn’t even register that it’s the nudity which is the issue. (I resisted twisting him by the ear and yelling – Are you blind kid? She’s naked!!)
I am floored by Rudd’s comments. Would have bet my house on him being more sophisticated than that. I was wrong.
I noted that too Chris.
I initially found myself siding with Henson (and then, in a random coincidence, standing cheek by jowl with him on a train heading through the north melbourne suburbs we both live in) and viewing it all as an overreaction. I still do. Overall.
But as a provocation or deliberate stir of the pot, the issue is not just murky because of arguments about not offending the usual suspects. It is also murky because there is no clear way to extract the argument that’s about free expression, artistic independence, etc from the argument that’s about questioning the value of the age of consent.
Hetty isn’t the only person on the child advocate side expressing concerns. Her bogan wowser voice gets hyped by the media over more nuanced and better educated voices in the child protection world that have also expessed concern.
Had the wowsers not raised their favoured ‘Is it art?’ topic then perhaps there would be more recognition that the real relevant expertise here is not in the art world, nor the pollies, nor the lawyers, but in the mostly unthanked and underpaid people who research and work in the incredibly complex field of child protection.
Those I know see this as a very grey and difficult issue. And no Weez they are not simple people, with respect.
Well said Armagny. Liz Ann McGregor from MOCA is also quoted in the Telegraph as saying that Art Monthly has been unhelpful in stirring up the issue just when it had cooled and NAVA was moving to produce guidelines for artists.
Weez “Only to small minds which struggle with extraordinarily simple concepts.”.
No need to get insulting Weez. This is not an ‘extraordinarily simple concept’ – if it was, why is there such debate about it? I guess if you only see things in black or white then its simple. This is not a black and white issue.
And I seriously challenge your view that the general view thinks that ‘kids can and do fetaure in bona-fide art’. Why do you think Rudd said what he did – surely he’s tapping the populist sentiment? Why do you think that Art Monthly did what they did – surely they were deliberately stirring the pot?
[link]
What happens when in twenty years that octopus wants to run for President or become a school teacher? Won’t somebody think of the cephalopods!
Jack Strocchi -
It is interesting that the first thing to go or the last thing to come with Cultural Warriors is taste and knowledge. Your little schpiel viz Picasso is all very well but children were depicted nude hundreds of fucking years ago. Do you wish to ban Caravaggio?
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I’m sorry if you and your circle are unhappy with sub-cultural perversity Jack and I understand your reasoning. But the fact of the matter is that we inner-city perverts require body art and copius piercings before admitting you to our scrumptious orgies and bacchanal delirium. And we don’t like those k-mart velcro loafers and nylon poo-brown cardigans either. So sorry. No beautiful freaks for you my friend.
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I do suggest a little empirical research. Let’s measure the mental health and social intelligence of kids raised in these bohemian pits of iniquity with those raised by the Pious whose groins resemble Barbie dolls. I’ll lay bulk green money on the weirdos.
This might be true – legally. However it’s interesting that you rule it completely irrellavent in the discussion. I suspect that behind many who push to protect children from sexual abuse lie a wish to protect them from adulthood as long as possible.
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I have yet to see one single skerik of evidence that links the depiction of nudity with child abuse. I have however seen boatloads that links execessive sexual repression, a cultural of bodily shame and very pious people with it. It literally bursts out.
Has anyone claiming that Art Monthly is “stirring the pot” actually read the editorial? It’s been linked to in the post. Or are people doing what Rudd did and making off the cuff judgements or just buying into the prevailing media narrative?
Just wondering…
The picture in question was one of the winners of a Citigroup photography prize several years ago and appeared in promotional material and was exhibited publicly. The artist’s work – and as pointed out here – this image is part of a series – has been on public display for years. Without attracting any “controversy”.
It seems to me that Art Monthly’s detractors are united – whatever their position on the call for legislation or whether or not they purport to represent consensus within “the arts community” – by actively wanting to avoid further debate, because it’s either inconvenient or painful. What sort of index is that of our maturity as a society? Are we all happy to let “experts” sit back and formulate guidelines now?
#47 Patrick B – it’s called ‘don’t feed the trolls’ or ‘pick your battles’. Art Monthly don’t seem to have figured this out yet. Next thing there’ll be a nasty piece of reverse onus legislation on the books and they’ll be minus their funding.
I also recommend Armagnac’d on the age of consent issue – which probably needs to be kept separate.
Read it, Mark. Seemed a pretty obvious pot-stir to me, albeit dressed up in pretty language. It is possible to do confected outrage with attractive prose and presentation…
That’s going too far. I’m sure there are people who sincerely believe that such representations are linked with child abuse. I believe they’re wrong. What is needed is to require them to consider the lack of actual facts on their side. But in the media and in the political circles this requirement is apparently not necessary. Kevvie’s gone along with it. No debate necessary.
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So Skeptic’s right if they stir this nest the artists might lose.
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It’s an unfortunate fact of life that most humans live by the Stupid, the whole Stupid and nothing but the Stupid.
Neither do I. I think that we are aware of pedophilia because of the open-ness the 60s created. Pedophiles operated before then unfettered because their victims were ashamed. Shame silences. There’s a certain tendency amongst social conservatives to blame permissiveness for pedophilia.
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The most ridiculous expression I’ve yet heard of this notion is Mel Gibson’s attribution of clerical pedophilia to Vatican II.
The editorial makes it clear that their cover is in aid of the Henson debate. If they’re not stirring the pot they’re pushing the barrow at least.
Yeah, but doesn’t it need to be pushed? Given the quality of the so-called “debate” over Henson. If you read the rest of the mag, octopi aside, the quality of the analysis, particularly in the piece Kim quoted from is really good and much much better than most of the total crud that’s been written in the press on all this.
And I’m not sure that the “wanting to increase sales” thing doesn’t apply equally – if not more so – to all the newspapers who happily run all this stuff with an incredible lack of any restraint, and as tigtog pointed out wrt the Henson pictures, a gross lack of responsibility…
If we’re actually going to have a serious discussion about these issues, we need to get beyond the instant rush to condemn or praise for that matter that seems to go along with the speed of the media cycle.
I also very much doubt that the editor sent Barry Cassidy a copy so he could ask Rudd a question on Insiders on Sunday! Aren’t the media also responsible for enabling the stirring of the pot, if indeed that’s what’s going on?
Yes, because the alternative is to blame the cherished traditional family and societal structures that disempower children, reward them for compliance (thereby making them vulnerable to adult manipulation) and create a veil of secrecy over what is deemed ‘private,’ and conservatives want to avoid that at all costs. I know it is slightly OT now but I thought the Kylie Valentine article was absolutely spot on about allowing the voices of children to speak. The difficulty will be in deciding where their voices are acceded to and where we override their views to impose our adult perspective of what is ‘good’ or ‘appropriate’. If ultimately we only accede to their self-representations and self-determinations where it suits our own pre-existing agenda then I think that is a problem.
Tim wrote: “What happens when in twenty years that octopus wants to run for President or become a school teacher? Won’t somebody think of the cephalopods!”
Hear bloody hear, Tim. And don’t forget the squid. The MSM privileges the octopi, and it looks as if “Art Monthly” has sold out on the octopi/squid question. Bastards. And the jelly fish, don’t forget the jelly fish. When did you last hear of a jelly fish that had been interviewed in “The Australian”, getting a job as a teacher? Eh? No, that’s right: the bloody “Australian” employed it as a columnist.
Adrien inscribed: “but children were depicted nude hundreds of fucking years ago” Ummm is that a new unit of time, the fyear? It sounds like a *fantastic* year, BTW.
The photo inside the magazine of Olympia lolling around on her back would be a nice enough family pic – but it’s yukky surrounded by, variously, a photo titled ‘Bondage’ featuring a schoolgirl hanging from some ropes, and another image of a schoolgirl with panties showing, juxtaposed with a studio wall of sexuallly charged and explicit photos of grown women.
Did the artist mother presage this by naming her daughter Olympia? The subject of Manet’s painting was exposed to some public ridicule … I hope the child (whose father was quite creepy on the news) still feels the same way when she is beyond coaching for the cameras.
To Laura who responded: “I have been doing life drawing in different places on and off for twenty years and I don’t think I’ve ever been in a session where some non-participant wanders through the room. That seems to me like a major breach of the protocols usually observed around life drawing.”
I’m sure you’re right Laura (it was partly a problem with an old building, numerous art classes and someone getting a bit lost) – that was the only time it had happened in any class I’d attended, but it sort of emphasised that respect for the model is required. Just, sometimes, I think it is interesting how the model, the subject, can be overlooked as passive, as subjugated by their situation. This might be exacerbated by the majority historically being female – certainly in our last class, people were asking for a male model, but the teacher said there were not that many so she couldn’t promise. (We did get one). Might be that fewer males than females would put themselves in the situation of being observed, of being the object of others’ view. The traditional relationship was always male artist, female model. This is no longer so, obviously, but I think we are not fully rid of that way of seeing it. Sorry if I’m not expressing this well – I’m thinking about the emphasis on the right of the artist to use a particular model as opposed to the interests of the person who is the subject of the work. I’m still thinking about this so again, sorry if I haven’t articulated it well.
I am not sure about this art vs. pornography debate. I don’t find the images ‘pornographic’, but neither do I find them necessarily artistic. But then, the appreciation of what is art is as subjective as discerning which music is more pleasing to an ear. I do find both sets of images slightly gritty and tawdry, not so much because the children are naked, but because of the composition of the scene. For all I know, it may have been the intention of the artists to provoke those feelings.
I am the mother of a six year old child who has been raised in a house where nudity has never been an issue, or frowned upon in any way. Body parts have also always been practically spoken about with honesty and openness, and never labelled with ‘kiddie’ words. My daughter has used all the anatomically correct terms for both male and female body parts from as soon as she could pronounce them, and this is also the accepted teaching practice in early childhood settings.
But now, at this age, she is becoming very aware of her body, and her desire to not have parts of it exposed to others. Where previously she was not embarrassed to change clothes in front of others, she now is, and even if it is in the company of family members or peer age children, she requests privacy. We are not wowsers, and as far as I am aware, there are no wowsers that she is exposed to. So where has this concern come from? I see this as a normal maturation, and support her choice for privacy.
It is not, at this point, socially acceptable to walk naked down the main street of town, or to attend school or a workplace naked. So I can understand the opinions of those who feel these artworks are exploitative and potentially damaging to children, even if the children depicted are verbally supportive of their involvement. Will they always be so? If you could fast forward to the girls when they are sixteen, will their answers be the same?
I do wonder if it is the ‘medium’ of photography that is also a factor in the debate? Is the immediacy, the absolute depiction of the ‘actual’, and the idea that it is possible for anyone to capture the same kind of image with the click of a button (not to detract from the skills of professional artistic photographers) inflaming the issue? If the artworks were paintings, or lino-cuts, or collages, or sculptures would the furore be as loud and as long?
I doubt it.
After everything our world has gone through the past 8 years, this magazine cover is one of the primary issues that Australians focus on…???
Add to that, the images of QLD Neanderthals, that Howard helped construct, drooling & mimicking like angry chimps outside of an old Peds place.
The media moguls must be laughing all the way to the bank.
Let’s put it all into perspective:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKzb78-OpCQ&feature=related
(the REAL suffering children)
A couple of posters have described Robert Nelson as “creepy”.
I’ve heard him speak (in person) a couple of times. Robert seems a tad eccentric, flamboyant, and can speak very quickly. He seems highly intelligent, and can certainly hold an audience. He is nimble, entertaining and provocative. My guess is he would have a class of art students captivated for a Semester.
The context of the “door stop” on the footpath outside the family house with Olympia next to him was artificial and may have been difficult for her and her father. Robert is never short of a word or two. Yet he had to hold back and let her speak for herself.
In Tuesday’s “Age” he set out his argument in a calmer manner http://www.theage.com.au/national/critics-opt-for-slogans-not-evidence-20080707-34er.html
He’s their art critic, as well as lecturing at Monash Uni.
Here’s another bloke in “The Age”, Gordon Farrer http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/the-art-world-should-not-sneer-at-societys-genuine-concerns-20080708-3bsh.html
I find it very suspicious indeed that much of the mainstream press has utterly refused to address the textual content inside the magazine and especially this very important observation in favour of sordid sensationalism.
None of the issues about what the consequences of Hetty et al. having all their demands met have been addressed in the mainstream press apart from a thin scattering of op-ed pieces.
We seriously have to ask why.
Yes Ambigulous – I think Nelson is a little creepy. An apparantly he also thinks Henson is creepy. This was from his review of Henson’s work in 2005.
http://www.theage.com.au/news/Reviews/Bill-Henson/2005/04/26/1114462034805.html
“Henson’s interest in juvenile erotica is not redeemed by the bombast of gloomy sites and leaden skies”
“With all its sublime operatic temper, Henson’s content nestles uncomfortably between the sinister and the trivial. He likes to photograph young people either in open erotic transport or as a passive target for the viewer’s lust. He does this with a long lens, where the focal length lets you ogle at the several smooch-kittens from 40 paces. It is an aesthetic of spying, granting you an illicit glimpse, as in all pornographic genres, a teasing sexual spectacle with ocular impunity.”
“Henson’s grope in the gloaming has unpleasant moral overtones, as when the participants are too young for sex”
“On their own, the landscapes are beautiful, majestic and haunting. But the arbitrary interspersing of figures strikes me as pretentious, if not cynical. Instead of adding meaning, the combination devalues the artistic intention of the landscapes. What do suburban hills have to do with a naked girl touching herself in bed?”
He seems to have changed his tune.
And yes Mark – it is clearly a deliberate ‘pot stir’.
“Their world sees only two possible contracts between adult and child: either one of parental or pedagogical authority, or one of sexual exploitation. All other contracts based on mutuality, creativity, fun or play, are suspect.”
How did I miss this gold-plated gold? Kim and dan008 – you’re right, this is the crucial point.
I think it comes from a genuine and heartfelt abhorrence of any ambiguity in adult-child relationships. It must be a structured thing, and the power must always be in the adult’s hands – or how else can we judge paedophiles? To argue that a child could possibly possess agency in an interaction with an adult is a slippery slope to blaming the victims of abuse, or at least going soft on the abuser. But is it really?
Well no, because everyone knows that the vast majority of genuine adult-child interactions are fun, playful, innocent and crucial to socialisation. Only by occasionally breaking up the one-way power dynamic can the interactions of children and adults be healthy. Because otherwise we simply reinforce the idea that what an adult says has automatic authority, and this is FAR more dangerous for children than the imagined, possible consequences of having a photo taken in the nuddy.
Word, FDB.
There was an article in yesterday’s Financial Review which stated that the image on the cover of Art Monthly, which is now subject to much hand-wringing and claims of kiddie pr0n, was:
So five years ago, the image was apparently shown publicly in the Art Gallery, and considered genteel enough to wave around the big end of town. And nowt a complaint, it seems.
Brenden Nelson wants the feds to investigate whether the magazine publishers had broken any laws in publishing this image. Wonder if he’ll ask the plods to add AGNSW and Citigroup to the list?
Those who don’t believe the girl in question should have been allowed to speak to the media; or who discount her ability to communicate who own true feelings are missing the point. She spoke to the media because she clearly wanted to. It’s a credit to her parents that they didn’t silence her.
She has as much right as anybody to speak about this. Attempts to negate her views by claiming that she doesn’t have a true voice or her own opinions are unfair. Nobody has to agree with her but they need to argue with the content of her opinions not deny her right to speak.
A couple of people above have classified her father as ‘creepy’. For the simple reason that he wore a bow-tie. No doubt. It’s a creepy state of mind that reacts with venom to such trivial non-conformism.
“Wonder if he’ll ask the plods to add AGNSW and Citigroup to the list?”
Doesn’t Citigroup come up alot. More scrutiny of that lot required methinks. Good you noticed that Mark…& others.
Mark –
Indeed. The blogosphere has proved superior – again.
Su –
It’s one of them. The ‘management’ of human sexuality is a complicated issue. Much of it boils down to nature as well I suspect. I do criticize the Abrahamic code of sexual conduct and its attitude toward sexuality. And for reason. But I don’t think its entirely worthless either. I posted a comment on the existence of ‘free will’ here at Catallaxy that expands on my attitudes to this.
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Feel free to visit if you’re able to remain untainted.
Birdy’s not there any more, yeah?
Yar, I find it really difficult to understand how anyone can honestly say that Olympia Nelson has been damaged or denigrated or in any way harmed by posing for her mother’s pictures. Pretty clear she hasn’t been.
She might be damaged and she’s certainly been denigrated by all the abuse heaped on her father by Andrew Bolt, though.
Louise
Newsflash Luvvie. The piccie of the rudey-nudey 6 year old IS being used for profit; to shovel copies of Art Monthly. And who are the pimps here? Why her parents. Lovely.
JG,
You’re back?
Don’t agree with your argument about profit motive. It was a political porotest, but as I said before, a silly one, as it just set the digs barking again after the controversy had died down.
And the kid’s got guts. So what if she wasn’t the epitome of fluency in front of the media. She obviously wanted to have her say, and, considering her age I reckon she did pretty well.
If I was her age I wouldn’t be wanting to front the media on this issue without a parent by my side, in case the bastards descended into their usual visciousness.
No-one is going to get rich off the back of Art Monthly. In fact, short of criminal malpractice no-one can get rich off Art Monthly. It is incorporated as a not-for-profit organisation.
Them dogs are well and truly on the attack:
In the blog post, Bolt doesn’t come right out and accuse Nelson of pedophilia – he just reckons Nelson argues like a pedophile.
So now we have The Hun churning Bolt’s bilious blog posts into ‘news’.
Nelson’s essay on the pictures is here.
Andrew Bolt: would you buy a used opinion from this guy?
Bolt is vile. A lot of the time he’s probably water off a duck’s back, but in this particular instance he’s , well, bloody dangerous. Clearly his stance is an egregious lie.
But, I guess in a democracy, we have to put up with him.
This Bolt has a good point. The earlier writings of the father of the child model are seemingly inconsistent with his current position.
Of course, this is no real surprise, the publication was about pot-stirring rather than about art as such.
There’s a difference between ‘making a point’ and ‘pot-stirring’, steve.
Wbb @ 82.
The girl was far from giving her “true voice”. It is very easy to believe she was coached by the parents. She delivered in a perfect tone of outrage her lines against Kevin Rudd, until in a most unfortunate gaffe, she forgot the crucial line (what Kevin Rudd had actually done to get her outraged) and reverted to a more believable and natural self, innocently asking dad to prompt her.
The dad is indisputaly creepy. He can blame the TV journos & cameramen for a lot of this. He walked right into it. The pooncy facial expression as he greeted passers-by, the obvious coaching of the daughters lines, were both neatly slipped in to make him look like a twit.
Dad ain’t the sharpest tack in the box re public image. The wearing of a shirt in psychadelic vomit colours is of no assistance if one is appearing on TV to promote a personal belief as being of no controversy. The bow tie? What bow tie? Talk about hiding trees in the forest, that tie stood out less than a rose would in a bunch of geraniums.
Never mind that a father appearing on TV to defend the publication of a magazine cover which shows his 6-yo daughter naked is going to be seen as creepy (nay – loopy) by a significant majority of the population.
Depends on whether you can tell the difference between sensual and sexual, which Bolt and his brave back up team of ’staff writers’ clearly can’t – or won’t.
As for your comment at 96, steve, make up your mind – is Robert Nelson indisputably creepy or is it just that a lot of people – including you – will see him as creepy because he’s on telly defending his daughter’s right – and his family’s right – to conduct their family life without Prime Ministerial and punditarian posturing?
Disclosure – I once met Robert Nelson in real life. Personal impressions weren’t entirely favourable but that’s beside the point. Bolt has gone the smear again, and once again, with no evidence.
Publishing nude pix of a 6 years old, and using public funds to do this, is “conducting family life”?
Riiiiiiiiiight.
How is it any worse than taking videos of your kids in the nuddy and sending them off to Australia’s Funniest Home Videos for your chance at winning ten thousand bucks Steve?
Red Herring time eh?
I’ll take that as you concede the point.
Hardly a red herring Steve. Those toddlers on AFHV are every bit as nekked as as the girl on the cover of Art Monthly. For their parents, conducting family life their way includes taking the videos of junior in the nuddy. Then they hit comedy gold and the footage turns up on Saturday night TV with a ‘funny’ voice over. The last time I looked in on the show – last Saturday – comedy gold in one case was nekked toddler falling over and hitting his/her head on the brick paving.
There are all kinds of inferences you could make about the parents who send that footage in the AFHV – like maybe they’re all ute-men, with the camcorder in one hand a can of Cougar and Coke in the other. Oddly enough, no-one does, maybe because it’s just a crap TV show made, by idiots, for idiots who think it’s hilarious to watch kids hurting themselves.
For some reason I doubt that anyone who’s been confecting outrage over the Art Monthly cover is going to be calling for an investigation into the content of AFVH any time soon. Might involve poking their noses into the affairs of too many working families/mainstream Aussies. Instead we’ll stick to making unjustified inferences about artists, their models, and the parents of those models. Nothing mainstream about any of those people.
It’s just another one of those double standards that are in play in this debate.
Rush Limbaugh (off-topic)
[For some reason I doubt that anyone who’s been confecting outrage over the Art Monthly cover is going to be calling for an investigation into the content of AFVH any time soon. Might involve poking their noses into the affairs of too many working families/mainstream Aussies. Instead we’ll stick to making unjustified inferences about artists, their models, and the parents of those models. Nothing mainstream about any of those people.]
Precisely, and these same families are posting it on Youtube and Facebook etc. And has Bolt complained about Play School, Hi-5 etc showing nappy changing and bathing of babies ?
Yep, the Hypocrisy is breathtaking on this.
Yep breath-taking Frank. Read my post above on Nelsons views from 2005 to compare to his views today…. breath-taking hypocrisy.
and btw… I can’t believe you’d seriously compare play-school with photos on art monthly which are deliberately placed to ‘pot-stir’. Ridiculous
On matters related to the topic and modern mores I give you this.
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Is society scapegoating artists because they can’t control their kids?
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PANIC
It fascinates and angers me that all the articles, blogs and commentaries I’ve perused over this affair never look at the sexism angle.
After all, the media coverage of the Henson affair lingered excessively and at length on the photos of the naked pubescent girl. It didn’t give a stuff about the photos of the boy. Now the Art Monthly journal cover – supposedly making an indignant statement about dignity – shows a 6-year-old girl doing a midget Demi Moore.
Yet we keep on talking about CHILD nudity and the sexualisation of CHILDREN. Fine. But tell me … If this is all about children (ie girls AND boys) where are all the naked little boys to get outraged about?
Also, some commenters here have brought up the subject of life drawing classes. I’ve attended many of these over recent decades and well over 90 per cent of the naked models I’ve had plonked in front of me have been female. Which brings to mind a famous piece of feminist graffiti from the 70s that said: ‘Less than 5 per cent of artists represented at the Metropolitan Museum of Art are women. Yet 85 per cent of the nudes are female.’
For all its bohemian pretensions, the art world is one of our most conservatively patriarchal of institutions. And as with all institutions, it’s advisable to start recruiting your members while they are still young.
I was wondering when the ‘art oppresses women’ argument was going to come up.
An interesting and pertinent point which raises some interesting questions about why the media (and Hetty Johnstone) chose to make those Henson pictures of a naked girl the focus of their outrage. Most likely it was because the idea of Henson photographing a naked 13 year old girl pushed buttons that weren’t pushed by the idea of him photographing a naked boy. ‘Youg boy stripped of his innocence’ doesn’t have anywhere near the emotive force of ‘young girl stripped of her innocence’.
Sorry, you just blew it. And by the time you get to your ending, you’re right off the planet:
What’s your point here – that Polixeni Papapetrou, knowingly or unknowingly, is recruiting her daughter Olympia into the seedy world of life-modelling on behalf of the global patriarchal art-world conspiracy? That Olympia needs to be saved from a tragic future on the fringes of society, a seedy career of reclining naked on a throw-rug covered Clark Rubber foam mattress for CAE life drawing students?
Forget the ‘angles’ – serious discussion begins with discussion of the issues.
Re Pangur Ban @ 106
To clarify, the ‘graffiti’ was a billboard produced by the feminist art group Guerilla Girls – though according to their website it ended up only being exhibited on buses.
Pangur Ban, first somebody has to give a sheet about the “art world”. Who does?
“first somebody has to give a sheet about the “art world”. Who does?”
Me! It’s what separates us from the other beasts.
If you’re not interested, you could always maintain silence, steve. And let Piers Akerman and Andrew Bolt know that the world won’t come to an end because of what’s on the cover of a magazine whose market is people interested in art.
Mark, it is fair dinkum that the world is unlikely to come to an end over such magazine covers.
And if every person who read said magazine were to come to an end, out society would not be one bit worse off tomorrow.
Marlon, speak for yourself when stating that giving a hoot about the “art world” is all that separates you from “other” beasts.
There are one or two other differences (for the rest of us, that is
)
“first somebody has to give a sheet about the “art world”. Who does?”
Well you and all the other Boltistas and blairities do seem to be getting all worked up about the “art world” now – once you’ve been cattle-prodding into a self-righteous frenzy by cynical pundits only interested in rounding up the angry aging male demographic for their advertisers.
“And if every person who read said magazine were to come to an end, out society would not be one bit worse off tomorrow.”
Shorter STAP. Everyone who doesn’t think like me is an oxygen bandit.
While Titian was mixing rose madder
His model reclined on a ladder.
Her position
To Titian
Suggested coition
So he climbed up the ladder
and ‘ad ‘er.
(sorry: she was aged 23 BTW)
Ooh, great one, Ambi.
Damn, now I’ve caught the bug. Here’s a go…
A fair lass put Vermeer in a fervor,
But to peep, feared Vermeer, would just perv her.
He devised, as a lure, a
Camera obscura,
Which he used as Vermeer-to-peer server.
“first somebody has to give a sheet about the “art world”. Who does?”
Yeah, Steve. Obviously the only people interested in art are pedophiles and poofters, right?
Yeah, see, this is why the wimmins don’t come here no’ mo’.
‘t’weren’t my own work, jpz
PC – say it ain’t so!
They be taykin’ mah wimminz!!!
Pangur Ban
Darl, “art” is not a feminist issue. Best stick to your knitting
Okay, who left the screen door open?
It’s not a matter of ‘feminist issues’, it’s a matter of feminist interpretations. Best stick to your undergraduate essays on classical Greece. Darl.
Did somebody here call me?
Gummo Trotsky
‘Youg boy stripped of his innocence’ doesn’t have anywhere near the emotive force of ‘young girl stripped of her innocence’.
Actually, I think it’s the other way round. Because the public gaze is so conditioned to voyeurism of female nakedness, but not male nakedness, the portrayal of a young boy’s nudity is far more discomforting than the portrayal of a young girl’s nudity. It is society’s ‘male gaze’ that caused the media to linger almost exclusively on Henson’s female nudes and why the Art Monthly used a female rather than a male child to make its statement. Had the Art Monthly used a picture of a naked 6-year-old boy, the effect on the public gaze would have been far too discomforting, and the whole point about ‘dignity’ would have fallen flat.
Nick
Thanks for the clarification. I have also seen the wording used as graffiti. Either way, the Met Museum survey makes a very powerful statement.
Cracking, JPZ and Ambi. This one’s for you JG:
…
Andy liked the fame he was tastin’,
But his sketches were far too time wastin’.
He tried long, boring flicks
With buildings and chicks
But his best art was cuttin’ and pastin’.
Everything is a feminist issue, and don’t use part of my name to be a smart toosh.
As for this issue, the Art Monthly thing seemed like a bit of cheap stunt, which did nothing to assist the cause of artistic freedom. Issues such as whether the father wears a bow tie or not are utterly irrelevant. True creepiness can sometimes come in packages that look very very “normal”.
Sweeet… Friday rhyme-off!
“I need a new subject” said Goya,
So the lass said “I might have two for ya”
The left one behaves
As per gravity’s waves
But the one on my right needs a lawyer
Apologies to physicists and subeditors everywhere. Please continue to question the true nature of gravity propagation, and please imagine the quotation marks extend to the last line respectively.
Ambigulous
While Titian was mixing rose madder
His model reclined on a ladder.
She was fixing the plumbing
While he was just bumming
And farting his arty crap ‘ad ‘er.
Heh heh, Liam, good ‘un. Well, one good turn deserves another…
People gazing at huge Jackson Pollocks
Are oft tempted to think, “That’s just bollocks!”
But the main thing that matters
Is that Jack’s spills and spatters
Are the mess left from old Pollock’s frolics.
Our PM reviews artists, suspicious.
Are they obscene, blasphemous or seditious?
Does Art Monthly serve
Or give licence to perve?
At least they give newsfodder to the ambitious.
FDB
“I need a new subject” said Goya,
So the lass said: “I just seen me lawyer.
If you don’t take your stares
Off me ‘apples and pears’
Nobody’ll ever employ ya.”
Goya received lots of email
About his dog, sinking down, by the tail.
They all gave reactions
and suggested LOL captions:
HALP! OMG WTF FAIL
….look, it’s not my fault OK? I was just quoting a verse taught me by an art historian, OK? I don’t wear bow ties, I’ve never been in a life class; it’s just the School of Hard Knocks for me…. don’t start!
Thanks to all in the Friday Limerick-Off. Limerick Liam, that doggy picture is one of my favourites from Sr Goya. It beats looking at guys getting shot, against a wall. That sheila’s not bad, neither. Thank heavens nice Sr Goya chose a pose for her that is entirely without sexual connotations. Good on him!
Nom nom nom nom nom nom nom nom,
Nom nom nom nom nom nom nom nom,
Nom nom nom nom nom,
Nom nom nom nom nom,
Nom nom nom nom nom nom nom nom!
Modern Art’s got its ducklings and swans,
Has its pros, and its artists-of-cons;
It’s got nude maids and matrons,
And pure panders to patrons:
It’s got Jaspers, and plenty of Johns.
When Pablo made ladies look cubic
And mixed up their bits a la Rubik
His wily old eyes
Would stare in surprise
If the lady concealed items p*bic
the old perve!
Yes, Darlene everything is a feminist issue, which is why I’m getting mightily irritated at the limerick competition, a la Dr Cat @ 117.
WTF?
A little light-hearted rhyming about art and nude models is worth getting your feminist hackles up?
Whatever.
Yeah, it’s all good clean fun until someone gets a jab in the eye with a sharp stick.
Cruelty joke Fine? Meh.
I wonder why the word ‘feminist’ is being used in such a negative way in this context?
A commenter known here as Fine
Was offended by things asinine
Then made she a joke
My eye out to poke
So: “Tend to the log that’s in thine!”
Well now, Fine, if you must vote a Nay,
We’ll respect that you’ve something to say;
But it’s measure for measure –
Just express your displeasure
In the form of “a-a-b-b-a”.
Yeah Fine, why can’t you be more like Pangur Ban – the thinking man’s feminist!
[You'll note I'm now baiting you deliberately. To join in the spirit of vaguely threatening homilies, playing with matches etc etc]
No you don’t, Fine. You don’t really wonder that. And I’m sorry you’re taking the heat for my original objection, just because I was playing too nice for it to register how pissed off I actually was.
FDB, have another look and #114 and #115. Can you really not see why that might get ‘feminist hackles up’, or that the light-heartedness is precisely part of the problem? Most women in 2008 don’t actually think Benny Hill type sniggering about sexist stereotypes is funny.
Re the nom nom nom nom link to Saturn devouring his children, for God’s sake don’t anyone show that to the Prime Minister.
The Vatican expunged all the dicks
From its murals, statues and pix.
Instead a fig leaf
Was blessèd relief
For those ever-so prudish Micks.
“sniggering about sexist stereotypes” [emphasis mine]
Well yeah, that’s all I thought was really happening. If anyone was actually suggesting that only men should be artists and women models, or that it’s okay to think you can have sex with someone because they model for you, or any number of other things that I don’t think anyone was saying, then hackle away!
In any case, no doubt I was being a bit of a turd in my last few comments – apologies to Fine.
But I do maintain that fighting limericks with limericks is the way to go.
When it came to the female nude
Warhol wasn’t that rude
Instead he’d do print
After print after print
After print of ‘em all multi-hued
Apologies accepted FDB. And I don’t really want to poke anyone in the eye with a sharp stick. But before I get too nice, can I just say the limerick thread is really irritating for the kind of reasons PC outlined and phrases like ‘feminist hackles’ even more so.
PC, no worries about taking heat. That was my choice.
After Katz:
They’ve vexed all the Vatican’s powers.
Having set aside hours and hours,
Rome never could win
‘gainst botanical sin:
Mapplethorpe’s photographs of those flowers.
There once sat man from Nantucket
painting a still life of a bucket
his sense of proportion
caused all sorts of distortion
so he just gave up and said ‘fuck it!’
What’d I say that was so bad?? What?!
[cleans ears in an utterly revolting fashion]
“phrases like ‘feminist hackles’ even more so”
Hackles aren’t gendered though are they? I associate them with wolves, who are surely all male. Anyway, another example of how something completely innocent can be taken the wrong way.
Dogs and bitches both have hackles. They’re not a gendered thing.
Well it’s been an interesting day.
One last comment ‘fore I go away:
It’d be nice for this thread
If everyone read
These two papers, in ARPA.
Ya think?
Note absence of hackles. I’m guessing all her energies are being directed elsewhere.
For reasons remaining a mystery
The limerick form has a history
of nudge-nudge-wink-winkses
and naughty young minxes –
its essence is just very mister-y.
(Cheating — mystery and mister-y are homophones, not rhymes. Oh well.)
When I view pictures that are too
Suggestive, or erotic, or blue
As Censor I must
Suppress all my lust
To prove I’m much purer than you.
Pavlov’s Cat
In the embattled gender trenches
Where the wenches clean all the benches
Then it’s no great mystery
That the limerick’s history
Has been writ by dirty old mensches.
(That’s definitely my last limerick, as I’ve got too much ironing to do. But methinks there could be a book in this.)
PC – as long as it’s not the same word, and it’s lines 1 and 5 not 3 and 5, I’m prepared to accept that.
“I’m guessing all her energies are being directed elsewhere.”
Into the ungrateful gullets of MEN! no less. For shame.
“Dogs and bitches both have hackles. They’re not a gendered thing.”
I see what you did there.
Dr. Cat — naah, rhyming a(1) with a(1)/modified isn’t cheating necessarily, esp. since you were so clever about it. Good punchlines trump formal rules. (Uh-oh, is that a rule?) Besides, Edward “King” Lear did it all the time, and with far less elegance.
The limerick’s bounds are elastic,
And its mood can be less than monastic.
What the hell can I say?
In a roundabout way,
It’s just phun to be so periphrastic.
Well, then you can explain to me FDB. ‘Cos I don’t know what I did there.
Hey Pavlov’s Cat, just posting to mention how much that grey persian or tabby, the one with the white sox, recently featured at your site, resembles my feline pal, who is also white underneath, from throat to belly.
As for the rest of you, Rudd is just hopping in first with a pre emptive strike to cover his arse, so that the conservatives can’t lable him as the Great Father of Permissiveness.
On this issue he shows himself the true pupil and heir to Howard’s politics.
Pavlov’s Cat: a deep bow and hats off to your
“…very mister-y”
An art critic with a daughter named Ólympia’. Seems similar to the Olympia from 1865.
http://www.staroilpainting.com/p_9649.htm
Well now the tone here has turned jolly and conciliatory, so this one’s utterly irrelevant. Still, it came to me in a flash over my morning coffee, and I liked the rhymes, so I couldn’t resist. Sorry if it’s a pointless afterthought. L’esprit de l’escalier and all that.
Fine and PC both want to give heck to me.
But their attitude don’t seem correct to me.
It’s just how the game’s played:
Artists like to get laid.
What you want? A whole Vasari-ectomy?
Just to prove openness to both sides, I also tried to do something with “I’m so very Vasari” but it didn’t work as good. As Elton John once put it (actually I guess it was B. Taupin, but fame has its privileges) “Vasari seems to be the hardest word.”
Notes Towards a Compendium of Smut
smut can be fun
smut is not always condescending, boorish, or domineering
some smut is clever
some smut can be amusing
sex seems to be fascinating, can’t imagine why
comedy rules, OK?
the most serious persons occasionally move into frivolity
some clowns never rise above frivolity
some smut is revolting
some artists get lucky, or claim they do
if women like that like men like that, why don’t women like me?
humour as a royal route to happiness, if not sex
a light touch can be as deft as a stern touch
Signor Innuendo, forgotten giant of Italian literature
smut is fun
good point about Titian’s lady probably doing all the work around the joint, Pangur Ban
lists are boring
notes are deficient
stop now.
“Well, then you can explain to me FDB. ‘Cos I don’t know what I did there.”
Fine, that’s freakin hilarious. I thought you were going for another subtle dig, in using the term ‘bitches’ in the context of speaking about shades of gendered meaning.
Oh, now I see it. It is funny. No, I was just using it in the literal sense that female dogs are called ‘bitches’ and all dogs have hackles. It’s to make them look bigger and scarier when threatened.
Okay, I’m going to stop calmly banging my head on the desk for a minute to make a little point here.
It is not about “smut” qua “smut”, it is about the depersonalised, subordinate and inferior roles of women, as represented/assumed/reinforced in/by most “smut”.
*Returns to head-banging*
Howdy – lucky you for getting a copy of Arts Monthly!! As you know it is withdrawn – how about scanning the relevent articles and posting them here or offering donwload links to slow folk like me?
ab
Sorry, alan, would like to help but that would be a breach of copyright!
Thanks for the response to my article Kim…
No less, I’ve taken the Art Monthly debate to an even newer high;
http://artsjournalist.blogspot.com/2008/07/whats-media-playing-at.html
Pangur Ban -
…
Here.
And this is due to some patriarchal conspiracy is it? There’s a certain general agreement at this time that the female form is more aesthetically pleasing than the male. Of course this does change from time to time.
Indeed. Undourbetdly a result of patriarchal society, no birth control and the like. But given that there are no longer such restrictions to the careers of female artists I’d suggest that way to rectify this imbalance is to paint some male nudes. Many actually have been painted and for that reason I call bullshit on this ’statistic’.
Nonsense.
Limericks are few
That possess the beauty’s wit
Best to choose haiku
Good to know the arts in this country still has political fire in its belly! Sudan, Middle East, poverty – but at least we can defend aesthetic taste. Who will have the last word? Of course M. Devine was right, Olympia was politically abused by her dad, and for what ends? And the issue is not the original painting of her, or Henson’s photographs even, or public nudity – the issue is the big ‘I’ word, the Internet and its mass and often unintended distribution of images. By the way, part of me cannot forgive how readily much of the arts community turned on Rudd and helped the Right gain traction.
Oh for crying out loud, Geoff it’s not either/or, and furthermore if you’d been following the discussions of this subject at this site you’d know that ‘aesthetic taste’ isn’t what’s been mainly at issue in any case. Most of the people who are exercised about this issue have also expressed themselves very eloquently on the subjects of ‘Sudan, Middle East, poverty’. And the idea that we mustn’t say anything critical about Rudd because it ‘helps the right’ is simplistic and inaccurate.
Adrien:
Ya think? Some ‘restrictions’ are more measurable than others, especially when still mired in a culture in which profit is all and scopophilia is well and truly gendered. There’s more of a market for naked women, no matter how well painted, photographed or sculpted out of the recycling-bin contents.
Besides, this ‘feminism is all over because we don’t need it any more’ rhetoric goes down particularly badly on a day when we’ve all just heard how two pre-pubescent female children can be raped by an old priest, one of them can commit suicide and her father can be dismissed six months later as ‘crankily dwelling on old wounds’ by some twinkly-eyed halfwit in a frock. That little TV moment told me exactly how far there still is for feminism to go, and anyone who thinks women now have parity in any field isn’t paying attention or factoring in the weight of prevalent sociocultural values at all.
PC
That Bishop deserves all the cold disdain the public can muster. He should (at the very least) do penance in front of the same TV cameras. After all, it was said publicly in front of cameras.
Altar boys, orphans, young girls,… it’s a shocking record. Rape is rape is rape. Rape is rape whether committed by a priest, a soldier, the victim’s husband, or the victim’s client.
A few years back an Australian judge pronounced in sentencing a particular rapist, that the rape of a prostitute was somehow less heinous than the rape of a nun. The best response I saw was published in “The Age”: a nun wrote to say that she disagreed entirely with the judge. Now there’s compassion, there’s solidarity, there’s feminism, and just plain humanity. I dips me lid to that nun.
Well said PC.
You write so well, you really should take it up professionally.
“There’s a certain general agreement at this time that the female form is more aesthetically pleasing than the male.”
Sez who? I call bullshit on this. Could it be because the majority of buyers are men?
As for the idea that there’s no structural impediments to women artists and that the patriarchy is dead; you just need to get out more, Adrien. Start thinking about the links between maternity and impediments to work for a start. And that’s just one issue.
[Link]
(WARNING: Amateur art- may offend aesthetic sensibilities. Nice Arse, but.)
Hullo Pavlolcat
I repeat, I cannot remeber such feigned furore or indignation from the arts community, as on this issue – it seemed so singular and exaggerated in the public domain, as if there was only one issue on which to mobilise – what about the desparate lack of income and facilities for creative work in this country, to start with. Let Henson fight his own battles, he is a big man and should know exactly what he is doing.
And yes, the fullsome confrontation with Rudd was not necessary – of course it helped the Right.
Look, we lived in a continuing censored and self censoring society, there is no high or pure perspective, it is artists who have made a complex field black and white, as if art and censorship were alway opposed (they always coexist – dont make me give example or prove the matter) – it is a matter of degree/context/ judgment, and the Henson and now young Olivia matter (for different reasons) are complicated enough for discernment not grandstanding
PC -
PC please. I have not said that. I have never said that and I probably won’t be fortunate enough to see the day when that can be said by someone who is pro-feminist. Which I am. I’ll bet you three million dollars everyone who knows me back me up there.
.
What that nasty priest’s ugly deeds have to do with what I’ve said is beyond me. If it’s a guilt trip I assure you my mother is the world heavyweight champion of Irish Catholic guilt trips artists and you’ll have to do a lot better n’ that.
It’s so tiresome that when one points out the fact that restrictions on women pursuing a career in the visual arts that once prevented their entry to same are now gone that the ‘world is still unfair’?
.
What god is s’posed to come down and makes things right then?
.
Scopophilia in this sense will always be ‘gendered’ because sex is ‘gendered’. I use gender as a word that indicates a spectrum of personae, biological characteristics and postures. Don’t believe me? Check out some spreads in Diva sometime. On Our Backs?
.
Yes women as icons are still more marketable. We should remind ourselves here that this has a great deal to do with fashion and style magazines which are largely patronized by female consumers and produced by female dominated staff. We should also look over the history of art and realize that at times the male form was more the ‘object of desire’. And we should acknowledge that this is happening again. Increasingly.
.
Yes there’s movement to put a dollar sign on everything this planet’s got. I think this is the nefarious creep of universal idiocy. And greed. However I also know it to be a fact that the market economy has given more people the means and the time to express themselves creatively. It has enlarged greatly the scope for persons who wish to make a living doing so.
.
Whether or no the unbalance of warmth for the female form is inate; whether Elaine is right when she tells Seinfeld that a woman’s body is a work of art yet a man’s is ‘like a jeep’ is a debatable question. However women are increasingly getting a larger slice of the material cake. There is still a very long way to go yet I tend to optimism. Thus far however the desires of heterosexual women are being catered to in a way that is apparent at least in the modernized sphere.
.
I think women are capable of being great artists; that we have had too few of such. This can and should change. However it won’t be changed by throwing up hands and bemoaning life’s unfairness. It will be changed by artists, who happen to be women, being good at what they do.
Who “feigned”?
How do you know?
What confrontation? I don’t remember any confrontation. Criticism, yes. But you can’t just say ‘Of course it helped the right’ without explaining how, unless you believe with Bush that one’s enemy’s enemy is one’s friend and so forth, and as I say, that is a very black-and-white view and one I do not share. ‘Helped the Right’ in what way, for goodness’ sake? By your logic, nobody on the Left must criticise Rudd about anything, ever, in case it ‘helps the Right’. Who knows, perhaps that is what you believe. Besides, how is this a clearcut left/right issue in any case? As far as I could see (for example), Malcolm Turnbull had an infinitely more enlightened view on the matter than Rudd.
I explained in the original comment what I think the connection is.
Yes but it has nothing to do with opportunities for female artists or anything else I’ve said.
.
It’s based on the assumption that I’m anti-feminist or I think ‘enough feminism already’. I’m not and don’t. That’s just part of the usual strategy to put me in a box where I don’t belong. On the subject of Catholicism and sexuality and on the Abrahamic sexual codes generally you will often find me at my most hostile.
.
Pointing out that women have opportunities they once did not. Pointing out, in effect, the successes of feminism does not make me anti-feminist.
“unless you believe with Bush that one’s enemy’s enemy is one’s friend and so forth, and as I say, that is a very black-and-white view and one I do not share.”
Whatever else that view may be (correct, incorrect, strawberry, Cubist) it is at any rate the very opposite of a “black-and-white view”. It is fifty-odd shades of grey, which you then have to squint really hard to make appear slightly darker or lighter, according to one’s preferences.
Now, Franz Kline. There was a man who knew all about black-and-white views. Motherwell, too…
Look, isn’t the Olivia image an appropriation of a classic sexual painterly pose, and a representation of the same as a real life gesture? (someone can help me on this). Isn’t this its strongest connotation? In what sense is that image not sexually connotative, and hence not abusive of its young infant subject. It’s the emporer’s of art who once again seem to lack clothing.
geoff, it’s a recreation of a Lewis Caroll image from the 19th century, I think.
Mark, it seems more iconic than that. Manet, and his sources?
Yes, maybe so, geoff. I’m going by the title of the work.
But my point is that many of them are not gone at all, and your assumption that they are is what I am taking issue with. Many of the more obvious material/circumstantial ones may be gone, yes, but even some of them are still there — did you, for example, read Fine’s comment at #182, particularly the punch line? Have you read Stravinsky’s Lunch, or The Obstacle Race? Because many of the attitudes and structures of belief, as well as some of the material conditions, described in those books do still pertain.
Nobody here that I can see is throwing up her hands and bemoaning life’s unfairness. Quite the contrary, Fine and I are both actively taking issue with something you said that we both think is incorrect.
Geoff, perhaps more ironic than iconic. The girl’s name is Olympia (not Olivia) which is also the title of a very famous Manet painting. But I think you’d struggle to find any significant points of comparison between them. Papapetrou’s work is, as Mark points out, titled Olympia as Lewis Carroll’s Beatrice Hatch before White Cliffs, which is a reference to this image of Carroll’s.
There’s certainly a ripe vein to be teased out from the connections between Papapetrou and Carroll and their representation of children etc. (Vladimir Nabokov called Carroll ‘the first Humbert Humbert’, or something similar), and this paper by Zara Stanhope’s probably not a bad place to start. I’d be interested to see an argument that did make a strong connection to the Manet as well if anyone’s feeling suitably abstruse.
Geoff – if you view the foto in context you’ll understand it’s actual intent.
polixenipapapetrou.net/works.php?cat=Dreamchild_2003
Or Nick perhaps Papapetrou’s thesis would be a place to look. http://library.monash.edu.au/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?v1=4&ti=1,4&SC=Author&SA=Papapetrou%2C%20Polixeni%2C%201960-&PID=9g-TnaaQXd0nTb8GJS10Qf7k0NTG&SEQ=20080718091715&SID=2 I can’t imagine she and Olympia haven’t well and truly worked through all the angles on what they are doing.
I agree Laura, I’m sure that they’re well aware of the complications of working with Carroll’s images. I’d be really interested to read Papapetrou on it. That link doesn’t seem to lead to a reference for me though.
No – the Monash library catalogue doesn’t appear to generate permanent links. The catalogue entry says:
Author: Papapetrou, Polixeni, 1960-
Title: A studio investigation into the theatricality and performative aspects of the child subject in photography / by Polixeni Papapetrou.
Other title(s): Child subject in photography
Publisher: 2006.
Description: [10], 163 leaves : ill. (chiefly col.) ; 30 cm.
Additional format: Also available in microfiche format (4 microfiches : negative) ; MOUN 11015.
Subject(s): Papapetrou, Polixeni, 1960- –Criticism and interpretation.
Carroll, Lewis, 1832-1898.
Photography of children.
Children in art.
Art and photography.
Performance.
Subject keyword(s): Tableaux vivant.
Photography as performance.
Photography as theatre.
Victorian photography.
Author(s): Monash University. Dept. of Fine Arts.
Publication notes: Thesis (Ph.D.)–Monash University, 2007.
Other details: Summary: [unpaged] at front of text.
Includes bibliographical references (leaves 161-163)
Location: Caulfield Library Theses
Call Number: 779.092 P213S 2006
Number of Items: 1
Status: available
Hmmm, looks really interesting, and amazingly relevant to the whole debate. Amazing that nobody seems to have even discussed it up before! Or not, really. After all, we wouldn’t want to do to much readin’ and thinkin’ and hurtin’ our precious brainz and the like.
Thanks for little discussion. I am not au fait with all but am also under impression that Lewis Carroll was a little off field when it came to photography and children. Put it this way, his prolific if not obsessive interest would be regarded as strange enough, perhaps moreso today. O am i wrong?
Lewis Carroll was the pedophile’s pedophile, the dirtiest of old men, but a fine mathematician and story-teller.
“I am not au fait with all but am also under impression that Lewis Carroll was a little off field when it came to photography and children”
Geoff, I think that’s part of the point in this response to his work. Papapetrou’s photographs aren’t ‘copies’: they are supposed to be in dialogue with Carroll’s images, not replicating them (or his intentions, or his desires etc) but speaking back to them.
I’m happy to be corrected, I haven’t spent a lot of time with Papapterou’s work.
There are a couple of pieces on the Art Monthly saga at On Line Opinion today.
Melinda Tankard Reist:
http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=7645
Binoy Kampmark:
http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=7646
Alice,
about the Rev Charles Dodgson [Lewis Carroll]
He wrote about you, the book was for you as a gift. He photographed you and your friends, dressed up. He liked the child-female form.
But I think he was in all likelihood virgo intacto at death. In other words, that crucial aspect of paedophilia (sexual intercourse with a child) was probably repugnant to him. He was a clergyman as well as a mathematics lecturer.
An eccentric, creative man; but not, I think, a “dirty old man” in the modern sense. Perhaps asexual??
There’s a lot of disagreement in 19thC scholarship about Carroll and his proclivities. Most of the suspicion over the years has been raised by the famous ‘beggar girl’ portrait of Alice Liddell, which we (but possibly not the mid-late-Victorians) read as provocative, and by the sudden estrangement of Carroll from the Liddell family. Some argue that the reason for the estrangement was Liddell’s attraction not to the children but to their governess, or possibly even to Mrs Liddell (a long shot).
He was a reluctant cleric and only took orders at all so that he could keep his job.
I try to avoid citing Wikipedia as a rule but this one is pretty good.
Thanks Pavlov’s
Certainly art works and photographs are re-seen in a new light in each era. He was certainly a complex fellow. I wasn’t suggesting that being a reverend made him immune to sexual impulses [how might one make such a case, this week?
]. Cheers
One of the 19th century symbolist poets I’m rather fond of, Ernest Dowson, wrote a lot of verse in the 1890s about his “chaste” love for a couple of twelve year old girls. As far as I can tell from the very limited secondary literature on him, no one thought that was at all problematic. It’s often rather difficult to uncover what the Victorians (or others at other times) really meant in terms of their expressions of desire and sexuality – for instance, what were all the “intense” friendships between men and men and women and women – which very often entailed sleeping in the same bed, writing love letters to each other, etc – about? Claiming them as “gay” and “lesbian” doesn’t get us very far, because what was being performed and enacted existed within a completely different set of cultural categories and possibilities. Same for Rev. Carroll.
PC and Fine -
Buyers of what? I would bet green money now that the majority of consumers buying objects depicting the female form as aesthetically pleasing are women. Certain dynamics in human sexuality underpin the proliferation of, say, strip clubs; these dyanmics also underpin the phenomena of contemporary sexual culture where women may enjoy aspects of strip-tease by women.
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The tangle of facts and myths that might explain this is too vast to deal with here but I would wager that they’d have a lot less to do with patriarchal power structures than you might imagine. In fact in the 17th century when there was a patriarchy – that is a political system that systematically discriminated against women – you will find that it is the male body upon which viewers are invited to gaze. Women are covered up.
I respectfully suggest that it is you who need to do so. Please be so kind as to name a structural impediment to women artists. Please also indicate where society structurally subjects women to penalties that men will not incur. I understand if by patriarchy people also mean ‘male dominated’. In that sense we do live in a patriarchy. I just don’t think that that is accurate.
Please note (again) that I am not saying feminism is irrellevant or that it’s for the best in the best of all possible worlds as far as women or are concerned. Most women, worldwide, for example do live in a patriarchal society. I merely note that progress has been made. Why is it so difficult for some feminsists to admit this? Don’t you realize it means you’ve won stuff?
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Maternity is an impediment to careers – absolutely true. But maternity is not something created by social structures. Yes – dealing with a society in which women take equal part in public life means that the management of maternity will have to change. Actually it has been.
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I am not arguing that everything’s hunky dory so much as saying that the problems women face can’t all be laid at the patriarchy’s door. And that politics may open doors but it’s up to us to go thru them.
And I thought I’d be getting some info re structural impediments. Sigh. Being such a sexist male chauvanist pig I was vaguely hoping we did still live in a patriarchy. I guess it’s not true.
Maternity is an impediment to careers – absolutely true. But maternity is not something created by social structures. Yes – dealing with a society in which women take equal part in public life means that the management of maternity will have to change. Actually it has been.
Maternity as a physical state isn’t created by social structures. But the way it’s dealt with on a day to day, pragmatic level is very much governed by social structures.
It’s still women who who perform the bulk of work in looking after children. Of course there’s child care available but that availability is patchy. It can be expensive and difficult to access. We as a culture can choose to make it more easily available, but we’ve chosen not to, to a large extent.
Artists need time time and space to work. It’s much more difficult to find that time and space if you have kids. We’re talking about societal expectations here and work is still very gendered. Women earn less money, have patchier careers, and generally keep the kids if the relationship breaks up. I’m sure you relaise all this Adrien and I’m sure you can see how these structures make it more difficult for women to keep slogging away to develop their practice.
One really interesting expample of this is Jane Campion. She gave up her career for a few years because she felt she couldn’t so justice to being a mother and an artist at the same time. She’s someone who’s in a very privileged position, so imagine what it’s like if you’re not as rich and successful as she is. I’ve never heard a male director say he was giving up to look after the kids for a while.
There are other examples such as this. It’s also a question of who’s in a position to make or break an artist’s career. I’d contend that the majority of those descison makers are still men. Power structures have changed, but there are still issues there.
No-one is claiming that that you’re you’e being some sort of a pig over this and there’s no point in getting all sulky about it. Neither is anyone claiming that progess hasn’t been made, but to claim that that it’s all over red rover, simply isn’t so.
Well that was a joke Fine. But I think there’s a subtle distinction between what I say viz Australia is not a patriarchy and feminism is irrelevant. I tend to define patriarchy as a society where women are structurally repressed and excluded from the franchise, the owning of property and so forth. In my view Australia is still a society that sexually discriminates but it is not a patriarchy. Rather than fight over semantics it’s probably better to agree that progress has been made and more is needed.
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On women artists we agree generally about maternity. Having seen women who are feminists essentially ‘revert’ to a traditional role on becoming mothers it’s hard for me to know what the alternatives are. I’ve actually worked with female artists who are new mothers and I know what is meant by the phrase: a cradle in the hallway is the enemy of Art.
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As we proceed we may find new ways of doing things to solve the tension between career and parenting. But there are certain a priori realities we’ll have to face in doing so. This is a process and the subject of much discourse presently.
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It does remain so however that what is termed the codes of representation will be altered, in so far as they can be altered, by women artists simply doing the job. There’s a limit to what can be done politically or socially. The State and society are not responsible for the fact that human babies need a lot of attention. They’re also not entirely responsible for the apparent reality that, altho’ women believe (and so do I) that men bear an equal responsibility in childrearing, mothers tend to take the prime role in early childcare and they do so whether or no there’s a guy around who’s willing to help. They simply don’t trust anyone else that far. At least that’s my perception.
Adrien, I never used the word ‘patriarchy’ and I’m not fussed whether that word is used or not.
But I would argue that the figure of the ‘great artist’ is still gendered as male in majy ways. It’s usually along the lines of the ‘maverick’, the drinkin’, fuckin’ rule-breakin’ scourge of polite society, the apotheosis of whom is probably Pollock. Women tend not to fit so comfortably into this tradition as we have had far less wriggle room when it came to this sort of behaviour. Virginia Woolf’s essay about Shakespeare’s sister is still apt here. Many male artists don’t feel comforatble within this tradition either, but it’s one that they can use if they choose.
I’m sorry, I’m not trying to be snarky in the middle of a sincere conversation, but in all seriousness, I can’t let this pass…
“It’s usually along the lines of the ‘maverick’, the drinkin’, fuckin’ rule-breakin’ scourge of polite society, the apotheosis of whom is probably Pollock.”
All I can say right now is (with respect), if you were to take the time to develop a careful consideration of Pollock, you’d discover that this remark won’t hold up against the complexity of the subject, both in the art and the biography. Many people have a hard time really “seeing” what is going on in Pollock; in fairness that’s not at all surprising, because the cobwebs of mythos are so thick. But it’s a subject that rewards study, because afterwards, if you can get to where you really “see” the paintings clearly, you’ll, well… be glad you did. (Also worth a look is Frank O’Hara’s great poem written at Pollock’s grave, “Ode on Causality”, which touches on some of this business, albeit opaquely.) Also, if you think this ‘maverick’ business is a masculine touchstone, then I have two words for you: Joan Mitchell.
As an irrelevant aside, it’s the wee hours here, and I’m up to my ears in work, trying to solve a very tricky technical problem; there’s a sculpture in my living room, done by a Vietnamese woman artist, (no, not the monument lady), that’s really been helping me think. Hmm, maybe the sculpture will get the answer before I do.
Just sayin’.
Um … JPZ, by ‘Joan Mitchell’ do you mean Roberta Joan Anderson, born 7/11/43, better known to the world as Joni Mitchell? Unless there is some other maverickish female artist momentarily called Joan Mitchell …?
Can I also just point out (if it is indeed she you mean, or even if it isn’t) that she has paid in spades for her maverickishness over the years, including being lampooned by Rolling Stone in the early 1970s as ‘Old Lady of the Year’ because she’d actually had the appalling gall to go to bed with *gasp* more than one bloke? A lesser woman would have given up right there. And countless thousands did, and do.
This is one example among many of the kind of non-material obstructions faced by women not just in art but in any field of endeavour apart from motherhood itself: persistent humiliation and sneering, particularly over their/our sex lives, love lives, reproductive lives, and fuckability levels as judged by Teh Boyz. And being good-looking often makes it worse, so you can’t win. Anyone who happened to watch Hannibal on the teeve last night will have been reminded of how this works.
Dr. Cat — much as I admire Joni Mitchell, oh, no nono nono no, I meant Joan Mitchell the painter. Check out her cache at Google Images, for starters. You’d love her, she was a great talent but also sort of a character. You can get a good book with reproductions from the UC Press and the colors are vivid, but prints don’t tell the whole story. Thing is, it’s much better to see her stuff for real in person, because her great paintings are HUGE. And they have a sort of unusual painterly surface, which you can’t see in reproduction. Good grief, I caught her retrospective at the Whitney some years ago, and it was just stunning. Being on a whole floor full of room after room of these things, it was sort of like the Stendahl Syndrome, but regrettably without Asia Argento.
Wonder if any of her stuff is held in collections in Australia, I’m sure there must be some. Worth the hunt if there is.
Well, tea-break’s over, back on me ‘ead.
I did wonder, but it gave me an excuse to use Joni as an example of the kind of thing some of the discussion has been about, esp Fine’s comment at #214. I’d not heard of the painter and will check her out at once.
j-p-z, it’s exactly the myth I’m referring to in Pollock’s case, in that men can be read approvingly as sexy mavericks and use that to market their careers, whereas women, no. Anyways, I’m off to bed.
Fine — yeah, I get what you’re saying, but I just wasn’t being very clear in my earlier comment, sorry. I was referencing background without explaining it. (not trying to “score a point” here, just broadening the terms of the discussion.) A reader could come away from your “sexy maverick markets career” trope with the idea that Pollock cleverly threw on a black T-shirt, posed with a pouty scowl, and broke some furniture down at the Cedar Tavern and voila, his legend was made: the public then poured buckets of money over his head, and everybody lived happily ever after. It isn’t what happened. Pollock only had modest, mild financial success late in his lifetime, some of his major shows didn’t sell out even after he was well-known. He lived a lot of the time on grants and stipends. His fame in his lifetime was only partly respectful, a lot of the press treated him like a circus curiosity. The whole ‘maverick’ posture seems to have set off a traumatic chain-reaction in his head (circa the time of the Namuth film) which cost him his precarious mental balance and his hard-won sobriety, and probably contributed to his early death. In sum, it’s not clear that it was a great advantage or a brilliantly successful strategy. Madonna, for instance, has done far better for herself by working a somewhat different angle. On the other hand, Arshile Gorky seems to have made himself perfectly miserable without the help of a selective narrative as sellable as Pollock’s, so who knows what this all goes to show.
Art, as Eliot said of poetry, is a mug’s game. There’s all sorts of ways to play your hand. J.M. Whistler was a fop who signed his letters with a swirly butterfly drawing instead of his name; no ’sexy primitive’ there. On the other hand, the dude also had talent. Women certainly have tropes of their own that they employ; if they aren’t the same tropes that men use, it might be because women and men aren’t the same. The world is full of middling art and ‘pretty good’ artists; great ones of either gender are pretty hard to find, and apparently, even harder to produce. Nobody’s chapter in Janson comes pre-reserved.
What is this process of ‘gendering’? How does it relate to how artists proceed? The figure of the Great Artist is gendered ’cause, um, most of ‘em were boys. Camille Paglia denies that there’ve been any great female artists (I disagree here’s one and here’s another. I think Paglia’s remark is provocation: inspiring young aspiring women to say: fuck you! And prove her wrong.
Well I myself have very little affection for American Abstract Expressionism. This Romantic notion of the Artist is not compulsory and again I don’t see how it affects artists doing their thing, except insofar as they’re too busy getting wasted to do there thing. In my opinion if you want a Bad Boy Artist Caravaggio is how its done. Or Courbet. Was Warhol a Bad Boy? Church on Sunday with Mum etc? I reckon he just took footage of bad boys myself.
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In the Arts there are many female rulebreakers: Tallulah Bankhead, Mary Wollostencraft, her daughter, Vanessa Redgrave, Dorothy Porter, Anais Nin I could take up metres of space here. The names roll out…
And you say I need to get out more. Sister, my personal experience of Australian Bohemia at the Turn of the Third Millenium says it’s the reverse that’s true. Most definitely. I put it to you that a hundred years hence this idea that women are marginalized in the Arts will be for historical interest only. And as for Bad Behaviour as they say in the Tom Tom Club: the girls can do it too y’all.
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I wouldn’t call this ‘maverick’ attitude (ie get pissed a lot) – tradition, more like standard bad behaviour. It’s just as an artist you tend to get away with it. If you’re successful.