putting a sock on the henson case
What year are we in?
NSW police have seized 20 of 41 photographs from Bill Henson’s Sydney exhibition of adolescent girls with the intention of launching criminal proceedings under the Child Protection Act.
Police say charges will be laid under both the NSW and Commonwealth Crimes acts for publishing an indecent article.
The alleged Commonwealth offence relates to publishing some of the photographs on the internet.
The decision to launch a prosecution was made public by Rose Bay police commander, Superintendent Allan Sicard outside the Roslyn Oxley9 gallery in Paddington while detectives carried out a search.
Superintendent Sicard said police had taken possession of the Henson photographs that were due to go on public exhibition on Thursday night.
“Police at 3.30pm yesterday received a report from a concerned member of the public that an exhibition was occuring at this gallery,” said Superintendent Sicard.
While Mrs Grundy charges about, trying to drag us back to 1955, we should remember one fundamental fact: Bill Henson never took a photograph with pornographic intent, or exploited a child. If he has provided an object which is misused to satisfy paedophiliac desire, that is not his intent. The issue is between the community and the user, and does not involve him.
Those mean-minded sanctimonious shitwits who are pushing this have a thousand other targets they could attack, and none of them have the courage. Let me refer you to just one instance. In the current Senate “Inquiry into the sexualisation of children in the contemporary media environment” promoted by the Democrats, Holeproof makes this submission –
” The “Love Kylie Princess” range was marketed for 8-11 year olds.
We strongly dispute the suggestion made in the submission that the product was “…very skimpy and highly sexualised.” The “Love Kylie Princess” garments were a cute, fun range. At no point was our intention to create a “highly sexualised” product and we would dispute very strongly the allegation that this was the outcome.The range has since been discontinued, which is not uncommon in our industry.
The Love Kylie Princess range was developed by mothers of young girls who have our customers interests at heart.”
I think the sexualisation of children, and their commodification in general, is a serious and difficult issue, which requires thought and may need regulation. But the issue lies here, and not with Bill Henson – and I would certain not be marching down to the Holeproof boardroom with a posse of cops from the Rose Bay lockup.
We have had fun with obscenity trials down the years, as the grey cardy brigade make nitwits of themselves, but the pressure on the accused is pretty tough. Bill Henson has not volunteered for any of this. A lot of damage has already been done, as his reputation in the wider society is traduced; it could get spooky just leaving his front door.
He is a national treasure, who should be defended vigorously and en masse.
________________
The international press is noticing, of course.
May 25th, 2008 at 9:03 am
and in the same week a leak from on high, that a female singer allegedly had sex with a soldier. Outrageous!
May 25th, 2008 at 10:50 am
I think you’re attempting to blur the reality here, especially by using the Kylie range as a parallel to the Henson images. Whilst I acknowledge these images were done under adult supervision, the fact underage nudity is being displayed is disgusting. Even worse, I assume the children or their parents (probably the reason why permission was given) were paid. Prostitution maybe?
I have a 11yo and 2yo daughters and the thought of nude images being displayed of them in a public place sickens me. Maybe that’s where the ‘wowsers’ you are implying come from. Being parents.
May 25th, 2008 at 11:24 am
Scott, I can understand your feelings about your daughters. But obviously the parents of Henson’s models feel differently, and I don’t see that diversity is a bad thing here – not all parents and children are the same, and there isn’t one right way to raise children.
There seems to be a tendency for parents to criticise any parenting choices different to their own, perhaps defensively – issues like breastfeeding invariably raise hackles.
May 25th, 2008 at 12:01 pm
To be surprised at the controversy would be as naive as the allegations themselves. This isn’t a case of wrong place at the wrong time, if Henson wants to defend art on such a front then let him. Yes he sits on the opposite side of the fence from Larry Flint but Henson must realise that he chose this familiar battle, it didn’t choose him.
May 25th, 2008 at 12:46 pm
Interesting video on Henson’s work:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XaEi9ESRB8o
May 25th, 2008 at 12:47 pm
Danny – my wife still breast feeds our 20 month old. I am extremely aware of parenting choices and always attempt to refrain from making opinions as such. However these images represent a line crossed. I’m not questioning the parenting skills as you have implied, I am questioning the morality. As Aaron has implied, I think Henson KNEW he was crossing the line and as such should be prepared for whatever comes.
May 25th, 2008 at 1:39 pm
Henson must know his work risks controversy, but he obviously *doesn’t* think he’s crossing “a line”, or he wouldn’t produce it! My point is that there is no one line in this situation, that people draw it in different places. Would it be different if the exhibition involved paintings instead of photographs? (I wonder what the Victorians would have made of Henson.)
However much it may upset some people, Henson’s work is not child abuse, and I’d much rather the police spent their time trying to prevent actual child abuse than censoring art galleries.
May 25th, 2008 at 1:41 pm
65,000 people crossed the line.
According to this story
http://www.smh.com.au/news/arts/henson-a-whipping-boy/2008/05/23/1211183060448.html
65,000 people saw Henson’s work when it was shown in Sydney and not one of them complained. Are they all perverts (or accessories to crime)?
May 25th, 2008 at 2:02 pm
Danny, are you saying the person who made the complaint to police didn’t view the exhibition? I think that’s where the initial complaint was made.
And what about this?
http://www.theage.com.au/news/fashion/furore-over-afws-underage-model/2008/04/11/1207856791581.html
If the fashion industry can regulate themselves why can’t the ‘Art Industry’?
Is this image art?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phan_Thị_Kim_Phúc
May 25th, 2008 at 3:13 pm
Please don’t think that I am being cheap about this.. 9and Scott has used shorthand phrases to add some important levels to the discussion) but the argument about Henson’s work has an exact parallel with the public breastfeeeding debate. Many people think this process is disgusting, and say it should occur in private.
That is a mysterious response. We would agree that people should not shit in public, and that we as a community have a right to censor someone who does. But why would we say that breastfeeding should be treated in the same class as shitting?
I say that because I myself am uncomfortable about public breastfeeding. (1950 child, formula fed.. ah well)
I suggest that the reaction to childhood nudity has some of this visceral quality, is as phobic and unconscious and aggressive as that. If we accede to this demand, we are left to say that all children should always appear in public fully dressed, and should only be posed for photographs in ways that clearly do not engage sexuality.
As soon as I go that way, we are clearly in child fashion territory. And the gumnut babies are stuffed.
There are many ways to respond to this. They include the fact that sex, sensuality, nudity, communication, role-playing and attention seeking are not hard and fast categories, but infuse everything and are part of play.
They also include the fact that art is in the business of investigating just these points of chaos – which is precisely why censoring it is a bad idea in terms of cultural discussion.
Now, to go back to our breastfeeding example. Beyond questions of what it means to be offended by this natural activity, there is the question of what to do about the offence.
Do we force people to feed their babies in private? Do we punish people who breastfeed in public? Do I have the right to cause this?
Absolutely not, as a question of civil liberties in a modern, complex society. If I ran a restaurant, I would be allowed to specify that breastfeeding will not occur at the table, because some clients may not want to see this. It is actually a courtesy by breastfeeding mothers not to display the process too widely in the public domain.
But that is a courtesy, and not a law or a taboo. And the courtesy that most breastfeeding mothers use on this should be answered by similar respect, which contains the idea that nobody should be arguing that they should be controlled and persecuted.
Henson is working in a confusing space. He asks questions about the viewer – what does this indefinite and mysterious image invoke in you? How do you respond to that invocation?
Clearly, at least one person is saying that the images invoke disturbing sensations of copulatory desire, and that Henson should be punished for this.
There is a sort of crazed and reified level of sadism in this proposition.
I am reading Peter Robb’s book on Caravaggio. He and his work would not stand a chance in this context. Indeed, Robb argues that he led a dangerous and terrifying life of social defiance and provocation for just these reasons.
Scott takes up a fascinating question by referring to the “art industry”, which would be worth a post in itself. There are contexts in which I would censor art – I get very dark about the idea of a film that promotes Holocaust denial, for instance. But I think it would be a bad idea if we set up some central committee in the documentary world to decide if films contain “wrong thought”.
That idea is fun to think about. And of course some people have argued vociferously that we have had just such an arrangement inside our public funding for many years, which is used to persecute and suppress true-thinking conservatives.
Who are undoubtedly going to stomp on Henson whenever they get the chance…
Scott’s reference to the Vietnam photo is interesting too. I think it is art, I do not believe it is should be censored, I think it should stay on the internet and be widely circulated. It does contain a naked child in pain, and I can imagine that some damaged person could experience it as sexually gratifying.
But that is not our responsibility.
May 25th, 2008 at 6:36 pm
Scott, I don’t know what happened in this case, but in many other cases people *have* complained about material without viewing it first, so it wouldn’t be at all surprising if that had happened here, too.
In any event, why does one person get to take away something that hundreds of thousands have chosen to view? If they find it offensive, why don’t they just stay away?
May 25th, 2008 at 6:40 pm
The fashion industry choosing not to use young models (presumably in response to bad PR) is in no way comparable to prosecuting artists and shutting down their exhibitions. Just how many years in prison do you all think he deserves for his crimes, anyway – the full 14, or would one or two be enough?
May 25th, 2008 at 7:18 pm
If Bill Henson aspires to pornography he’ll have to improve his lighting, all that arty dimness just gets in the way
May 25th, 2008 at 7:28 pm
“Kids deserve to have the innocence of their childhood protected,” he said. “Whatever the artistic view of the merits of that sort of stuff – frankly I don’t think there are any – just allow kids to be kids.”
Then somewhere in there suddenly spring on them the fact of their sexual maturity. At an arbitrary uniform age, that keeps getting older all the time, while girls are hitting menarche younger and younger.
Shazaam! You’re 18, we can’t protect you anymore. You may be a childishly trusting and relatively simple thirty-year old – too bad for you.
Disgust is a learned response, with its nausea and its reactive outrage.
It is not the same as what drives the moral championing and defense of the innocent.
Similar pathologies are in play with those who salivate at the the death penalty. Most of them having been physically punished as children they know strict punishment is the best response to moral failure.
It’s not that children shouldn’t be protected from sexualization or exploitation, or any other harm.
Children should be protected, full stop.
But it’s not enough to simply protect them. They need to be taught, shown by example, selflessly encouraged to love life.
This lesson is far more important than current guardians of morality will admit or practice.
These people who have been appointed defenders of the besieged innocent – who’ve mostly appointed themselves out of a self-protective need to project their own internal conflicts and repressed sexual interest and experience – are insane, and are doing the job of protecting children exactly as you’d expect an insane person, or a loosely organized collection of insane people, to do it.
May 25th, 2008 at 8:28 pm
The complaint was laid before the exhibition opened. So there is a possibility that the complainant had not seen the images.
However, the gallery has a web page and I viewed 41 images there, which I presume were those in the exhibition. So the complainant may have seen those versions of the images. I would argue that if this were the case the complainant had in fact not seen the exhibition; they appear to be bloody big prints and the web versions can only provide a poor measure of their impact.
May 25th, 2008 at 8:42 pm
this is a commodity issue – art gallery owners want Bill Henson to keep producing work for sale, and such controversies as these only push up the price by making them more desirable. The history of artists producing pornographic images for patrons is hand in hand with the production of art ’suitable’ for the public. just because the artist, dealer, audience and market consider themselves educated and cultured, does not mean any of these people are innocent of perverted tastes. same with the fashion and advertising industries, who know that the cliched “boundaries are being pushed” via the mass porn distribution via the net. They know that the audience will comprise of some people who get off on seeing young sexualised images. It’s all about making money by tapping into primal urges.
How do you know Henson, or the parents of his models, or the purchases of these images, dont jerk off over them? When paedophilia becomes sanctioned under the guise of ‘art’ it’s just another contribution to the beginning of the end.
This issue does not need to be compared with breastfeeding, or other unrelated things, it is about the art world going into decline.
Henson has become his own cliche. His work lacks any true historical depth, or universal application. sure, his moody palette is dramatic, but oh, so repetitive. Chiaroscuro, the beloved term learned in first year art school, is produced in a cheesy way. There is no respect for the model, he/she is merely a vehicle for his vanity, and he and his art dealers’ greed for money. How do I know this? How, indeed.
May 25th, 2008 at 9:04 pm
I remember the Andres Serrano case at the NGV, where his flamboyance had something to do with provocative works. So some artists do have that strand to their pictures and public personas.
But I don’t believe that Henson and the gallery thought that a good censorship scandal would rescue a declining reputation. It’s not the right branding fit; the risk of mouthbreathing attack is too high; I don’t think they are cunning in that way.
Zoot has confirmed what people have said to me – that the images were on the internet. I don’t want to divert the issue into this point, but I think that was pretty dumb. If you have images which could be misconstrued, putting them up on the net, where they can be actively used by the misconstruers, is not smart. I am not arguing for censoring the net here (though that is an interesting question).
The existence of those particular pics on the net was completely unnecessary to the attraction of the expensive punters to the exhibition which was required. The point about this work is that it is available in small quantities for heaps of money – the scarcity creates the investment value.
Why would you assume that the function of these works are masturbatory? And why you forbid anything that you can imagine would be used for masturbatory purposes?
Do we never, ever take a picture of a young person playing sport, or being happy about something?
May 25th, 2008 at 9:06 pm
I used to work with an adult, developmentally disabled guy who was very excited by the women’s underwear pages of a Kmart or Target catalogue. Can’t say if he jerked off over them but I don’t think his arousal was a reason to label the pages pornographic.
May 25th, 2008 at 9:16 pm
Ruby S asks: “How do you know Henson, or the parents of his models, or the purchases of these images, dont jerk off over them?”
Given the number of people in the world, I think we can be pretty sure that for pretty much anything, there are some people who find it sexually arousing. But are we going to ban stuff just because people with strange fetishes or perversions might use it? If we’re going to start doing that we need to ban all images of children, without any exceptions – after all, real perverts probably find clothing as arousing as nakedness!
We can’t start banning art (good or bad) just because someone, somewhere might jerk off over it. That’s ridiculously vague and unoperationalisable.
Art as commodity, sure – but that’s true of pretty much all art, at least potentially, so it’s hardly a justification for censorship. (Censorship inevitably affects speech by the poor and relatively powerless more than it affects speech by the powerful, if only because lawyers are expensive. To me, that’s a argument for *less* censorship, not more.)
May 25th, 2008 at 9:25 pm
i still think that there is a need to differentiate between deliberately sexualised images ie. Henson + nude children in specific poses, and more generalised sexualised images.
Sure, zoot’s friend has been masturbating over underwear catalogues, as do many people who have limited access to more explicit pornography, but that is beside the point. you could also argue that plushy fetishists get off on Toys are Us catalogues. People who have sex with cars probably look forward to the latest volvo commercial.
In this discussion we need to focus on the issue, that these are children modelling for the benefit of a predominantly adult audience. Money is the centrepiece. The parents get a Henson print, which is a good investment you know, and a Fitzroy dinner party brag-piece, and the artist and the gallery make money. it’s all about money, exploitation, and disrespect to children who are not fully aware of the repercussions of their ‘harmless’ posing. Sure, they are not being physically molested. If the audience of the works were only 13-17 year olds does this make it any more excusable because it is only for an audience of peers?
Pervy MacPervertson will always find ways to get off on images of children, whether fully clothed or playing sport or purchased covertly from some backwater country steeped in poverty. But to allow these images, produced locally and with no real integrity, to fall into the excuse of artistic production, just keeps widening the assholism that is the artworld.
May 25th, 2008 at 9:49 pm
It seems a bit harsh to insist that artists have to starve to qualify as real artists! I also think it’s best to keep our personal opinions as to whether art is good or not, or has integrity or not, out of decisions about whether it should be censored. You seem to think the National Galleries of NSW and Victoria aren’t reasonable judges of quality here, which is fair enough, but who then is a court going to turn to? If we want any kind of “artistic” defence to censorship, then I think we have to defend Henson, however much his work sells for, since if he loses then the artists in the garrets will have no hope whatsoever. (I haven’t seen any of Henson’s works, except the small web versions that have survived censorship, so I don’t have any opinion on his artistic merits.)
I don’t think it’s ever a reasonable position on censorship to draw the line at “things I don’t like”, or “things I don’t think have artistic merit”, or “things I think are socially dangerous” – there has to be some kind of relatively objective criteria which can actually be used by a court.
May 25th, 2008 at 10:27 pm
artistic starvation is irrelevant, and never mentioned by me. although i would get a kick out of starving, coke-deprived gallery owners.
judgement on these works is everyone’s entitlement, and i am not going to bother listing my CV here.
i’m curious, why are the predominantly male commentors defending Henson? Censorship starts with the individual. it’s up to you to not look at those ‘barely legal’ sites, or seek out more and more naughty thrills. It’s also up to you to speak out when you see something that is morally dubious rather than turning a blind eye or making up excuses. I just think that once people say it’s ok for teenagers to be sexualised in an ‘artistic’ context, the boundary pushers will need to find more subversive thrills. what next? odalisque poses for the preteens? intent is the key here.
so, why dont you – who think this is about censoring a genius – tell me what his intent is in presentation of a girl’s naked body featuring her budding breasts and flowering nipples? does it speak to you of the pain of puberty and adolescence? of the growning awareness of the girl’s burgeoning sexuality, its delicate fragility? does she feel uncomfortable in her own skin, or are these just growing pains? is she discovering the power her naked image has over her audience, and how she can cash in on this if she is really savvy? can you come up with any more vomit inducing cliches?
May 25th, 2008 at 10:45 pm
I think Ruby, for me, summed this debate up nicely.
Quote:
But to allow these images, produced locally and with no real integrity, to fall into the excuse of artistic production, just keeps widening the assholism that is the artworld.
That’s the crux of this argument, to use images of children and then hide behind the term ‘art’ to defend their existence is completely disingenuous. If I photographed a 14yo girl and glued the image to the local shop, I’d be banished from my community and charged accordingly. Hanson is hiding behind the word ‘art’.
May 25th, 2008 at 11:41 pm
By what process of investigation do you decide that these images were produced with “no real integrity”? What evidence do you have that “artistic production” is just an excuse?
If you think it is an excuse, what does it cover? Do you advocate punishing Henson for this – and remember that the cops want to prosecute?
The fact that they are pictures of a naked or semi-naked child beneath the age of consent surely does not mean, by itself, that this is not art, and without integrity.
A large amount of Caravaggio’s work was highly homoerotic, and involved men who were very young. He has naked pictures of the Christ child. If these works had been burned, and he himself persecuted, as many in Rome wanted, it would have been an utter tragedy.
He is not absolved because he was a genius. He was absolved because he was doing art. He could have been terrible and he still deserved the protection that a cabal of wise Cardinals provided.
I love the implication that, as a participant in a group discussing this matter who are mostly male, that I am automatically a consumer of pornography. And that any defence i could produce of these works based on my reading of them is a “vomit-inducing cliche”.
I am defending Bill Henson against censorship, as I would defend any artist, whose reputation is such that he is not a pornographer hiding behind the label of art.
I haven’t seen the works in question and they may disturb me. But to interfere with the activities of artistic production and communication, you need a clear and provable reason, based on demonstrable harm .
You cannot just say that certain things can’t be photographed because you don’t like them. You agree not to take that position because other people may not like stuff you do, and you need a defence against their power to censor you.
For century on century, we punished people for their religion. Eventually we decided it was better to give over with the setting fire to people, because everyone was safer as a result.
You want the right to free expression and protection from censorship. So you have to extend it to other people.
Attacking artists for their work is very bad.
May 26th, 2008 at 3:11 am
I may be desensitised by all that advertising from Myer and David Jones, but I can’t for the life of me see anything sexual in the Henson images which were on the web. It’s the first time I’ve seen his work and on the basis of this small sample of his output I believe he is an excellent photographer, undoubtedly working with artistic intent.
May 26th, 2008 at 8:47 am
A false complaint of child pornography closed down the Bill Henson exhibition. A separate false complaint about child pornography on my blog shut down my domain (and Suki Has An Opinion) over the weekend.
If you want to see some REAL abuse of a naked girl child caught on film, there can be nothing more archetypal than this image.
May 26th, 2008 at 9:33 am
Ruby and Scott, I’m curious as to what penalty you think Henson deserves for his offenses – should he get the full 14 years in prison, or would one or two be enough to satisfy you? And should the gallery operator do time too, or just be hit with a fine big enough to put them out of business? Because that’s what this comes down to: people in prison and art galleries operating under a regime of fear where anything that might offend people won’t be shown.
There’s a big gap between our emotional or aesthetic responses, however strongly felt, and the invocation of the law. There are many things I see, in film, on the Internet, and in everyday life, that I find disgusting or appalling, or which I consider “harmful to society” in one way or another. But I don’t think I, or even I plus millions of others who think the same, have a right to impose our feelings on others.
May 26th, 2008 at 1:31 pm
[...] Rosie Ryan at ABC blog Articulate has a round-up of other blog opinions. Barista worries about the consequences for the gumnut babies, amongst other [...]
May 26th, 2008 at 1:38 pm
On the point of whether it is men per se who are defending Henson’s supposed crimes in this site, I suggest you take a look at the discussion at Sarsaparilla, where you will find many incredibly intelligent women critisising the censorship and debating the issue – http://sarsaparillablog.net/?p=672
May 26th, 2008 at 1:41 pm
Ruby S, I’m a woman who finds the seemingly automatic equation of nudity with sexualisation troubling, and who certainly doesn’t find what I’ve seen of Henson’s work to be pornographic at all, although it certainly is disturbing because it effectively captures aspects of teenage angst over the changes of puberty.
No doubt my lack of outrage is partly to do with my own personal experiences growing up in the social nudist movement, where we were socialised to view nudity and sexuality as separate aspects of life. The difference between us lies in that I find that separation of nudity and sexuality to be not just possible but laudable and indeed an ideal to which our society should aspire. I am much more concerned with clothed children posed provocatively for advertisements than I am by images of naked children posed to evoke an emotional connection to the memories of our own adolescent uncertainties.
May 26th, 2008 at 1:42 pm
I also recommend Catherine Lumby’s article from The Sunday Age critisising the censorship http://www.theage.com.au/news/opinion/art-not-porn/2008/05/24/1211183187056.html
Lumby has done quite a lot of work on the issues of child sexual assault, but for me, her most cogent argument comes at the end, where instead of adults always speaking on behalf of children and young people, she suggests “involving them in the debate rather than always speaking on their behalf.”
May 26th, 2008 at 2:32 pm
If the photographs in question are found to be child pornography, then anyone who has viewed them on the web site has committed a crime – possession of child pornography. Since Scott and Ruby obviously feel that these photographs are child pornography and warrant legal action, they should consider turning themselves in to the nearest police station.
After all, if those images are so dangerous that they can turn people into child abusers, it can’t help to be on the safe side…
I never saw the problematic images, since they had been removed from the web site before I looked at it. So I can’t comment on Ruby’s cliches, and I have no opinion on whether Henson is a genius or not.
May 26th, 2008 at 2:55 pm
Here’s a novel idea… Maybe everybody who has publicly persecuted Bill Henson should be charged with distribution of child pornography. Not your every day distribution but distribution of biblical proportions, like water to wine Henson’s art has been transformed into child pornography as it will now be understood by the greater community. I can almost certainly guarantee that there’s been a hellava lot more jerking off to these images now that they’ve drifted from the relatively small art world and into the vast public sea of filth where they can be viewed as kiddy-porn by far more people than before.
May 26th, 2008 at 3:51 pm
So Danny, how can you be so vehement in your argument when you haven’t really seen Henson’s previous work, and haven’t seen the work in question? I have seen both, and as an art historian, feel equipped to weigh in here. I haven’t read all other blog comments yet, but i have a right, as both woman and human being, to comment on what is pretty disturbing, that people think this is purely about censorship or freedom of expression, but i think it extends further than making blanket arguments covering all aspects of underage exploitation.
I find it really interesting that Schwartz’s own daughter did not pose nude – see SMH article: ‘Ms Elenberg did not pose nude – she and her mother had decided that “under no circumstances” would she take her clothes off, even though they said Henson did not directly ask her.’
why not, if all is about innocence and rites of passage?
images dont ‘turn’ people into criminals or accomplices, but they reduce moral essence through desensitization.
so, if you are unfamiliar with his work, do some research. thanks.
May 26th, 2008 at 4:00 pm
Ruby, my defence of Henson is based on general principles of freedom of speech.
And you can’t complain about my not having seen the photographs because YOU WANT TO DENY ME THE RIGHT TO SEE THEM.
May 26th, 2008 at 4:02 pm
oh, and as far as the integrity of specific artists, it’s all subjective, and more about market value, than actual proven genius. It’s all commercialisation, about product, branding, promotion and income. This is why many artists go unrecognised – because they do not have the big names – gallery owners – promoting them. The art world is as political and unscrupulous as any business. very little has to do with ‘oh, that’s such a great image.’
why do very few business people donate huge amounts without some kind of recognition plastered all over the place, and tax benefits? and that’s why very few art collectors would buy something hugely expensive if it was ‘risky’ or not a good ‘investment’.
i really hope this puts a bit of ‘risky’ into Henson’s ‘frisky’
May 26th, 2008 at 4:15 pm
Ruby, I’m amused that you claim special knowledge “as an art historian” while at the same time denying any status to the curators at the National Gallery or the NSW or Victorian State Galleries, or anyone else who has exhibited Henson’s work.
I’ve done a bit of research into Henson, but I can’t see the specific photos in question as thanks to the wowsers they’ve been removed from the web site. I’m going to try to see the remnants of the exhibition, however (which I’d never have even known about if it weren’t for Hetty Johnston!) But I don’t see how my opinion of his work can change my views on censorship – I’ve see a lot of art I don’t like, or consider tasteless, but I don’t want any of it censored.
From my reading, there is no way a prosecution under the NSW Crimes Act can be successful. You can rant all you like about Henson’s work not being art, but given his biography you’re clearly in a minority and there’s no way a court is going to accept that.
“It is a defence to any charge for an offence under subsection (2) or (3): … (c) that, having regard to the circumstances in which the material concerned was produced, used or intended to be used, the defendant was acting for a genuine child protection, scientific, medical, legal, artistic or other public benefit purpose and the defendant’s conduct was reasonable for that purpose”
(Scott, do you just want “artistic”removed from this defence, or do you think we should abolish the “scientific” and “medical” defences as well?)
May 26th, 2008 at 4:30 pm
danny, if you specialised in this specific field, then you would be continually exposed – pun pun – to the entire history of art, and its philosophy, as well as other historical contexts, and can input a knowledgable discussion based on the work being scrutinised rather than comparing it with Kmart catalogues. Im not saying anyone who does not have this information has no right to criticise, but like many incidents of sensationalism, there are a lot of people who get hot under the collar with their views, and havent even seen the images being discussed.
ps the curators at any public institutions are not infallible, nor unbiased, and, as in a recent case at the NGV proved, not untainted by witch-hunts. there is also pressure from donors and directors.
my interest in this debate is that i dont believe young children, male or female, should be exploited, whether in the era of the ‘Vagg, or now. you hold your right to view whatever you like as a banner of freedom, and I say that this is no freedom at all. it is a delusion of freedom. pnography is commodity, exploiting children to meet market demands is too.
May 26th, 2008 at 5:01 pm
Ruby, I think you’re on better grounds here – sticking to the child protection argument, and avoiding the silly lines of argument like “but pedophiles may use it to jerk off” and “Henson’s work is all commercial” and “all the commentators are men” and suchlike.
Given that we have a real problem with actual child abuse, however, I’d like to see some kind of evidence for _actual harm_ being done to Henson’s models before the police get involved. Not vague possibilities that “the models may regret it in twenty years” or generalised “it creates a culture of desensitization” assertions and so forth. There are children suffering real abuse – physical and emotional – who are NOT going to have their cases investigated because the NSW Child protection unit is busy investigating and prosecuting Henson.
May 26th, 2008 at 5:27 pm
I stumbled upon some of Bill Henson’s works (not the exact ones in question) a couple of years ago. They’re enormously powerful stuff, printed in huge format, and slightly disquieting, but they burned themselves onto the back of my brain to the extent that I can still see them now. Maybe anyone who equated powerful emotions with sex would call them pornography, I don’t know. But I wouldn’t hang one on my bedroom wall unless I wanted bad dreams.
I really doubt that seeing a tiny copy on the internet would give you the full impact. But they do raise lots of issues and feelings that I remember dealing with as a teenager, so if anyone would like to be snide about those issues they’re welcome to tell me how wonderful they found their adolescent years. I’m a man, if it matters.
May 26th, 2008 at 5:31 pm
Ruby, I’m female, I have followed Henson’s work (along with many other Australian artists’) for a long time, and I am a very strong critic of the crreping sexualisation of children in our world.
The pictures don’t fit the legal definition of pornography so that is that.
I am very angry about what is happening to Henson, whose past work is not pornographic either, and I’m even more angry about the interventions of the wowsers and of Rudd, from whom I had expected much better.
Henson’s photographs are beautiful and they do invite strong responses from the viewer. The pictures are ambiguous and they don’t clearly tell the viewer what to do with the feelings we have when we look at them. In fact, they turn those feelings back upon us, they underline that those feelings are OUR responsibilities, since we brought them to the picture. In a mature culture we would be able to face this, to tolerate a degree of ambiguity and reflectiveness. Instead we run shrieking for the witchfinder-general to save us from ourselves by sorting out the stuff we think is too hard. That is delusional as well as unacepptably authoritarian. We can’t control how people think.
As an art historian, you should understand this. I find it a bit weird that you don’t, to be honest.
May 26th, 2008 at 6:18 pm
Ruby, as an art historian you should be able to help me. I have memories of paintings which included nude pubescent children, possibly as angels. As my knowledge of art history is abysmal at best, I’ve been searching painters such as Leonardo, Michelangelo and Giotto without much success. Would you be so kind as to advise me which painter(s) I may have in mind?
May 26th, 2008 at 8:13 pm
Try Raphael, Watteau, Rubens (with bonus naked adult women, with fat arses to boot) or to make yourself feel like you just ate a whole box of turkish delight in one sitting, Bougereau.
May 26th, 2008 at 10:07 pm
As Lauredhel says, she and other feminists have been trying to make people see sense on the creeping sexualisation of little girls in everyday life – the marketing, the “bralettes” for under 10s, the Bratz dolls, the age-inappropriate toys and clothes. Then, this happens – and suddenly everyone’s interested in it. As she said, no wonder she feels invisible.
My take on it is that the feverish sexualisation of little girls by the commercial marketers has created this mess. In other words, like Laura, I don’t think Henson’s art is child p*rn*graphy at all; but modern marketing has poisoned the environment for it.
May 27th, 2008 at 12:09 am
Would a documentary writer write the same documentary every year or so for three decades?
This comment is not to question censorship, but the art in the artist, and the art in the artist’s representation – the business of art.
Who can remember Henson first coming to prominence? Was it thirty years ago? Loose fitting clothing over young girls (primarily?), before a window? Did it go earlier than that?
I’m going to raise here the word ‘context’, because context is a major factor in how art is perceived. This has been brought to attention in some ways above.
But if we are to speak of art, we also are speaking of context. Place a toilet seat, or a telephone, or an oxen heart, on the walls of an art gallery – do you have art? Do you have art as content, or do you have art as context? Is the art in the content, or is it in the context?
Pushing towards fifty comments on a credible blog of high artistic merit and background, I wonder at the visual artists and the film-makers reading this, and here’s a couple of bobs for the difference.
Film-making, and documentary making, is all about the visuals. Let the pictures tell the story.
But film-makers have a distinct disadvantage over the visual artist in telling stories – in making art, in causing reflection and discussion. Visual artists can put their images out there, and leave it all up to you. Film-makers cannot do this – they have to go that one step further, lest their films and documentaries be but a series of silent images. What worlds they must tread in, in taking that single, necessary step.
Instead, visual artists can inject an image into ‘the’ or any system, and hide.
This is not to say that’s all they do, only that they can, and that is a bloody big difference between two visual media.
Further to the point of context, a visual artist -in painting or in print – can give over the image and let other highly creative forces make their own ‘art’ of it. In doing so, the visual artist can stand to reap vast rewards of fame and fortune. This also, is different from the film-maker, who must stand by the effect they alone create, in taking that necessary extra step.
All of a sudden we’ve heard now of Henson as a “great Australian artist”; a “national treasure” an “artist of high international regard”; “internationally acclaimed”, and so on.
But let’s be clear. We’ve only heard about (him) his work this way, in these passionate, emotive terms, in and of the current context. People didn’t write into the papers, with articles of passion and support, before.
Like Michell Grattan said, only a handful of people would have known about (him) his work, otherwise.
Readers here may have a disproportionate knowledge of the work, but out there in the suburbs – it’s all very different these last few days.
I want to contend to this sharing of ideas: that in artistic terms Bill Henson has done his dash. I want to believe that the public do have an understanding, inherently, of artistic merit and whether they get there first, at the finishing line, or the media do so on their behalf, that artistic qualities when not explored or developed further find reason to be done and dusted.
(And let’s be clear here. The greatest art affects the least ‘artistically’ inclined. In other words, ‘art’ can be lauded in heady circles, buoyed by financial imperatives, hussled majestically by artists of marketing employ, and so it has done, especially in the last few decades, where the market meets the artist in the powerful force of here-and-now (hello, Vincent), like never before. But all of that is rendered for the circle of creation it is, when the gentle man or lady or other from the suburbs looks upon a work – and speaks of its truth. For them. For in that moment, the greatest of art has reached into that person’s being and that is the final test. Forget the lauding of accolades, forget the money, forget the hype, if you can touch the least ‘artistically’ inclined, you’ve found the measure of art.)
So I think Bill Henson’s art has caught up with itself.
From my knowledge, nearly thirty years of it, until today – and here it is, and it has gone nowhere else. And it is not speaking, communicating, of going anywhere else.
To me, that is what is going on here.
The subject or the topic is not the point. Monet painted water-lillies for thirty years, and would be still going today, yes? Unfolding, revealing, ever-more of the depths and the beauty and the mystery of his subject (topic to film-makers).
Turner! Be that he would have lived.
(And on JMW – not having lived, did he not spawn a world – yes, worlds – of artists for a century and a half ever-seeking, ever-searching, ever-divulging, ever-wonderfully opening up the majesty, mystery and beauty in his choice of subjects/topics). No question mark required.
Specifically, on Henson. Thirty years ago (more, less?) a subject was explored. It did so very well. It was also a powerful means for an artist to gain recognition, fame and fortune – be careful to compare this in today’s world to earlier artists (a grave mistake in msm commentary). From what I can see, that exploration has gone nowhere further. Maybe even the earlier works presented Henson’s artistic goals with greater power. Artistically, different from Monet and Turner, who also explored a subject over decades, Henson’s work has an overlay to it.
Artistically, here a visual artist suffers the fate the film-maker is faced with continually, in failing – even if that definition of failing is to bore people witless, and force them by that to rise up elsewise in abhorrence. Henson has overlayed his work with all sorts of needs and desires – whether they’re sexual or not is not my point. That overlay, artistically, I’d contend, crucifies the very subject it seeks to uncover – artistically. And it’s time has come and gone.
Monet, Turner, uncovered, revealed, in their powerful exploration. The Henson work overlay with then amounts to pretence of exploration speaks of something else entirely, and to that, I’d contend, we are confronted not with problems of censorship as commonly argued, but a moment of artistic merit having found its limits, beautifully, on account of the valid process of an artistic vision meeting its public.
Or for all of that, in other words, how god-awful it would be if our film and documentary makers did the same topic over and over again, trying to say the same thing.
May 27th, 2008 at 12:59 pm
Robert, that’s an interesting comment. But I don’t think I want the police given responsibility for making local artists be more adventurous or innovative! (I have a mental picture of a policeman going: “I am arresting you for the production of repetitive and unoriginal art, under the Novelty Art Act 2009″.)
May 27th, 2008 at 1:17 pm
lol at Danny
May 28th, 2008 at 1:45 am
Further to the gender discussion: this open letter in support of Henson from (some of) the 2020 Creative Australia participants was written by poet, novelist and critic Alison Croggon and most of the signatories are women; the letter is part of a general arts-community campaign whose most visible participants so far have been Croggon, publisher Louise Adler, and Cate Blanchett.
May 28th, 2008 at 9:38 am
David, I notice the Independent article you linked to has the headline, “Police seize ‘child pr0n’ art from Sydney gallery”. Yes “Child Pr0n” is in scare quotes but the headline is utterly making the readers’ minds up for them.
May 28th, 2008 at 3:27 pm
That is right – and that is how this stuff is made to stick. I am surprised the Independent was so unsophisticated, particularly since they had a chance to sneer at the colonials as well.
May 28th, 2008 at 5:18 pm
When I was in high school (and a child myself), I was part of an artistic production that depicted a 13-year-old girl’s sexual awakening and included kissing, plenty of sexually charged language, a “bedroom scene”, drug use and violent death including suicide.
Despite involving and depicting minors in this way, no steps were taken to ban Shakespeare or to arrest my drama teacher. For exactly the same reasons, we should defend Henson’s artistic work, not persecute him for it. Just like Romeo and Juliet, Henson’s work may shock or horrify the viewer. But both works hold a mirror up to humanity, wherein we may spy the vulnerability of youth and its inherent preciousness. I certainly know I personally got immense value from my exposure to this kind of culturally contextualised exploration of youth issues.
On the topic of context, I think that the context of Henson’s work is one of the issues his detractors seem to completely miss. I read one opinion article on The Age website which argued that Henson’s work, in a men’s magazine, would be illegal, and rightly so. But to me, this is putting an article into an absurd context – just as viewing Henson’s work online is. A clay pot in a kitchen is a commodity – its context turns it into an article for use and consumption. A clay pot in a museum is studied and revered; it is analysed for its historical and cultural significance.
I’m saddened that the thoughtful context in which Henson’s work has always been displayed has now been violated by reproduction in newspapers and news websites, cropped out of composition, often with black “censoring” bands or bits pixelated out. All of a sudden, the images have been defaced and commodified – irreparably cheapened by consumption and reproduction. This makes it too easy for Prime Ministers and philistines alike to discount the artistic merit of the works in question. It’s no more difficult that throwing an old clay pot out of the kitchen.
May 28th, 2008 at 9:12 pm
What a great simile Ozartist.
May 30th, 2008 at 4:33 am
I think the most interesting feature of this brouhaha is that it is occurring 6 months after the Federal election.
Wasn’t it Doug Anthony who said “We just wanted to get our arses back into the black limousines”?
The only thing the conservatives have going for them is a trumped up, whipped up “morals in art” controversy.
June 1st, 2008 at 8:17 pm
Thought you might be interested in reading my take on the context in which this ongoing Henson censorship is unfolding.
Australian photographer Bill Henson–scapegoat for a wider assault on democratic rights
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/may2008/hens-m30.shtml
June 4th, 2008 at 1:57 pm
So the Trots are endorsing photos of naked little girls? That’s some darn distance from them eradicating the White armies during the Russian civil war.
That was something panoramic, long lines of empty White trains, the Tsar and his family butchered & burnt with acid, that was something. so, now the Trots are endorsing Henson!
Revolutionaries, like artist whom the Gods wish to destroy they first make theoretical. I can’t see his visa for the USA, survive his whacko friends and his dirty little girl fetish ‘art’
June 4th, 2008 at 2:00 pm
“I think that the context of Henson’s work is one of the issues his detractors seem to completely miss. I read one opinion article on The Age website which argued that Henson’s work, in a men’s magazine, would be illegal, and rightly so.”
Henson put it all over the internet.
June 6th, 2008 at 3:26 am
The classification board has just cleared ( in a letter to the IATC) the uncensored photographs. They’d previously cleared the censored material.
PRESS RELEASE
NO EMBARGO
05 June 2008
CLASSIFICATION BOARD CLEARS FOR PUBLICATION UNCENSORED NUDE PHOTOGRAPH OF 13 YEAR OLD CHILD
BEGIN///
The Irish Anti-Trafficking Coalitions is dismayed that the Australian authorities have cleared for publication an uncensored nude photograph of a 13 year old girl. This closely follows the Classification Board’s green light for photographers to take pictures of naked under-age models after backing down on an investigation into a fashion magazine. Australia is closely emulating Japan in its failure to regulate indecent images of children.
The decision by the Classification Board is in violation of Australia’s obligations under the UNCRC, CEDAW and ICCPR. This is the first occasion anywhere in the world that a nude photograph of a female child who was subject to a police investigation relating to a sexually motivated crime has been cleared for publication. This decision is also a fundamental breach of Australia’s reponsibilities as partner nation of the Virtual Global Taskforce.
/// END
Gregory Carlin
Director
Irish Anti-Trafficking Coalition
4 Downfine Walk
Belfast
Northern Ireland
UK
(UK) 44 (0) 2890 963164
Note:
U18 topless photographs are classified as child pornography in the United Kingdom.
The IATC was a consulting partner with the UK govt. in relation to the SOA 2003
June 6th, 2008 at 9:13 am
Pornography is an item which stimulates a human into an aroused state… hence it has little if anything to do with the intent of an “artist” but the potential for sexual arousal of the viewer. Any artist who potentially objectifies a child or adolescent with this potential, is not an “artist” they are a part of the problem.
“Art” is no excuse, though “artists” hide behind it all the time!!
June 6th, 2008 at 12:00 pm
Jeff says: “Pornography is an item which stimulates a human into an aroused state… hence it has little if anything to do with the intent of an “artist” but the potential for sexual arousal of the viewer.”
Under your “definition,” childrens’ footwear catalogues (which might “stimulate” pedophile foot-fetishists) are clearly illegal, and swimsuit catalogues should only be sold through adult stores, as they must be porn!
Ridiculous. ANY image might potentially stimulate a person sexually – you need only look at “furries” (who get arousal from stuffed toy animals and people in furry costumes) to know that.
In which case, Jeff, you will have to campaign to ban or restrict all forms of photography of everything. Perhaps we should regulate eyesight, as it’s clearly the root cause of all this problem “arousal” in society.
June 6th, 2008 at 12:12 pm
Gregory Carlin says: “Henson put it all over the internet.”
No, Henson put it up in physical and online gallery spaces. There was no implicit or explicit sexual context in either case – both the website and the physical gallery space were privately controlled spaces without any other sexual content or imagery that might imply a sexual context.
The subsequent media frenzy resulted in Henson’s images being displayed in ways which the artist did not originally intend – with bits blacked out, pixellated, and cropped out of composition – and distribution of those images far beyond the controlled contexts for which they were originally intended.
June 8th, 2008 at 8:07 am
The gallery had it all over the internet, the invitations were also scanned. Pedophiles were over the moon. They know more about Henson than Joe Public,
they would have known he was knocking out genitalia photos of naked little boys to rich clients, that material being kept ‘out back’. We all know how these things are done.
The gallery’s web-site also had a photo of a very young girl, legs open with blood smeared on her thighs.
The documentary also lingered over a huge photograph of a pubescent girl, legs astride, with menstrual blood smeared over her thighs, and another showing a boy, side-on, his penis clear
http://www.smh.com.au/news/miranda-devine/artistic-crowd-the-real-philistines/2008/05/28/1211654120223.html
That one? THhat would have a huge thing going with it for pedophiles, surely one doesn’t need to be a psychiatrist to work out that much, pedophiles often leave little girls smeared with blood. It is messaging isn’t it?
June 8th, 2008 at 8:22 am
The internet thing was BEFORE the police raided, as with the Centurion thing, that was 12 million hits over three days, pedophiles can find any nook or cranny fairly quickly. The pedophiles were delighted before the police raided anything. Henson had scattered that girels photo as a commercial promotion, and various galleries had web-sites.
Including the one at the centre of the storm. Also, Henson, would be linked to the SOa 2003, he is one of the reasons we needed to revamp our porn laws here. Don’t believe everything that Alison or Catharine Lumby say. THe porn report had the pedophiles of Australia being sufficiently small in number to fit on a short train, the FBI would have it at 300,000.
That would be a conservative estimate, how many hits on one server in Croatia from Oz, 2,000 or so, that may not be even one percent, how could it be? Are we saying all the pedophiles knew because they have a Internet Guide magazine? That 2000 will be the tiniest sample.
“Jenkins estimates that people involved in the hardcore child porn subculture number in the tens of thousands globally – certainly a disturbing number but one that represents only a tiny fraction of online material. He also notes, reassuringly, that the bulletin boards and newsgroups he used for his research are “exceedingly difficult to find” and cannot be located by using an ordinary search engine. Easily accessed websites that claimed to show young teens, he found, almost always showed adult women and men claiming to be younger than they were. Genuine child pornography, Jenkins concludes, is made, shared and consumed by a very small underground circle of people who are almost all male. ”
The person who authored Bill’s letter posted that cite today as an expert view! I’m not kidding. So the 300,000 on Avalanche alone must be the entire heap and their twin brothers and a few cousins. These people are advising the govt! It is no wonder you have Bill Henson.
“To give another example of the scale of the problem, in 2004 the biggest police operation ever mounted in Australia to target consumers of child pornography netted 194 men out of a population of 20 million. ”
Didn’t you just do ten times that in a crevice in Croatia, the problem with your experts, is that they’re not, they products of a society that thinks Bill Henson is soe kind of normal. He isn’t.
June 8th, 2008 at 12:39 pm
Being any kind of artist of any interest pretty much precludes being “normal”! (Perhaps we’re not normal, but I and most people I know consider “normal” an insult…)
As for the whole “but someone might jerk off over it” argument, that’s just ridiculous, as others have pointed out. It is the people insisting that everything be judged by the standards of pedophiles – Hetty Johnston and co – who are pushing pedophile values on society, not Bill Henson.
Hetty Johnston is working to create child pornography by having previously innocent material reclassified as pornographic. Bill Henson is doing the oppposite. It is Johnston and co who are aiding and abetting the child pornography industry, not Henson.
June 8th, 2008 at 8:56 pm
Gregory,
I do not believe that posting a press release that I cannot find anywhere from your own organisation is particularly credible, particularly given your ultra-right-catholic credentials. I do not really believe that an ultra conservative catholic can EVER be qualified to give a same view on anything to do with paedophilia. You demonstrate a complete lack of understanding of the issues around Bill Henson. You demonstrate a complete lack of your own Catholic art history that has been depicting child nudes for centuries.
Your main agenda to stop sexual trafficking is a very important one, but linking this to the Henson debate via your own views of public morality is frankly absurd.
June 11th, 2008 at 1:18 am
I’m pro-Vatican, in an earlier career, I was something else, I think you will find that the Vatican perspective is supposed to be the mainstream, I can forgive you not fully grasping that, if you’ve been reading about the Bishop of Portsmouth.
We are not without our problems. I think it is a bit egomanicial to compare Bill Henson with anything on our expensively maintained ceilings, we’re the oldest institution in the western world. Our cousins in Constantinople, as the last office of the Eastern Imperium, well, they are also curators.
Bill Henson’s material has been classified as child pornography by nations not under the dictatorial sway of my religion. The material was being squirted all over the net before the police confiscated anything.
I think comparing Henson to Caravaggio and Michelangelo, well quite frankly, I have to ask myself how desperate the Australians are in that regard, it is a truly risible comparison to say the least. What abcess of the brain would incite anybody to promote Henson to such greatness?
(By the way I don’t think Caravaggio painted naked little girls)
Leaving your ad hominem remarks to one side, Bill Henson’s material has definitely been classified as child pornography in other jurisdictions. I think you will also find galleries associated with Henson are subject to self-moderation and a range of precautions. The police are still interested.
Gregory
June 11th, 2008 at 12:25 pm
Gregory
Some of Bill Henson’s work is on display in the UK.
What jurisdictions are you talking about, Iran?
By the way, I have seen you spam other forums with some of your more incoherent remarks, which as a result you doing this discussion has been closed. You should really stick to your main and very worthwhile agenda of stopping sexual trafficking, instead of trampling all over artists.
Coherent reason and argument seem to be lost on you. Which is a pity since the Catholic Church does have a long tradition of establishing belief from reason. Maybe you need to go back to reading a great philosopher and theologian like Thomas Aquinas to see how to do it without ranting and bringing into your arguments the heavy weight of church conservatism. I mean seriously Pius X, turned women out of the choirs in the early 20th century on the basis that they could not hold office in the church. This seems to be the argumentative basis that some of you seem to want to use.
Henson is no Caravaggio, but he is a very capable contemporary artist and certainly no pornographer. Nude does not equal provocation.
June 11th, 2008 at 1:12 pm
“Some of Bill Henson’s work is on display in the UK.”
The police have done a search, he doesn’t have anything along the Oz lines. The cops were talking to me about it. I can assure you his naked kids photos are child pornography here.
I know some police agencies in Britain were animated enough to have a quick look around to see if they could find anything along certain lines. Thanks for the additional ad hominem remarks.
Henson will be arrested if he shows up with his little girl pictures.
I can promise you that.
Gregory Carlin
Irish Anti-Trafficking Coalition
June 12th, 2008 at 10:34 pm
Henson would be fine in the UK, and in the rest of Western Europe people would just laugh at the fringe-dwellers calling for his censorship. (Remember the fuss over the film Lolita here? That was rated 12+ in France.) In the US he might have trouble in some local jurisdictions, but the higher courts tend to remember that pesky First Amendment.
I’m sure Henson would have problems in Saudi Arabia, but is that the model we want to be following?
June 13th, 2008 at 7:34 am
Gregory
While you busy with Henson you can also look into the following:
The album cover of Led Zeppelin’s Houses of the Holy
The album cover of Eric Clapton’s Blind Faith
Germaine Greer’s photographic retrospective The Boy –I have heard that she is a dirty old pederast.
Robert Mapplethorpe, Sally Man, David Hamilton, Jock Sturges and Anne Geddes…
That should keep you busy for a millennia or two…
June 14th, 2008 at 4:38 am
Oddly enough in a former career I did many dozens of album designs. I think we have chalk and cheese.
I also released albums by Gary Glitter.
Henson was one of the ingredients which lead to our child pornography legislation in Great Britain.
‘Regional Arts Victoria director Lindy Allen, one of the few art voices to criticise Henson, said she had been concerned for some time about the artistic merit of Henson’s work with naked teenagers. She said in his latest show he “seems to have dropped all artifice . . . she’s totally the object of middle-aged male fantasy.” ‘
http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,23775284-661,00.html
As I lobbied at Westminster I had a definite view on both Bill Henson and on Gary Glitter. A mea culpa for my lack of a crystal ball, we all make mistakes. I tried to fix mine.
What you have in Oz, is artists telling child protectionists what child pornography is, and that isn’t necessarily the direction it the information should be flowing in.
‘He candidly described “a flagrantly erotic series [from 1977] of 16 photographs shot from above of a skinny elf-like boy, sprawling naked on a cushion on a wooden floor”. “But if the poses are languidly sensual, the angle of vision is stiffly predatory; in some shots the camera is poised as if to – pardon me – urinate on the subject. This is one of the few occasions where Henson really lays bare the power relations that give photographer and viewer imaginative possession of the flesh of the other. With blurry close-ups of his sleepy eyes and pixie nose, and hovering full-length shots centred on his skinny torso and his young penis tucked between his thighs, the sequence makes the boy look cute and drug-f—–, a figure of both innocence and complicit deviance, cherub and rent-boy.”‘
http://www.smh.com.au/news/miranda-devine/picture-this-society-draws-the-line/2008/06/13/1213321612249.html?page=3
I don’t think I am seeing child pornography where there is none, that’s my take on where I am.
‘His erotic photographs of skinny, grimy, gloomy adolescents have coincided with the rise of “heroin chic” and sexualised depictions of prepubescents in fashion photography (Corinne Day), advertising (Calvin Klein) and art (think of American artist Larry Clarke’s movie Kids).’
‘Or is it that this ravishing work, with its obsession with adolescents, twilight, clouds and grand architecture, is also so melodramatic, overwrought and cliched in its oppositions? And then there’s the kiddie-porn aesthetic.’
http://www.theage.com.au/news/arts/dark-lord-of-the-camera/2005/04/15/1113251754274.html
What can we say, I was speaking to somebody in Berlin the other day, “Henson used to be a talented kiddie erotica photographer, lately, he is becoming derivative”
So even for what he does, the sell-by-date may be closing for this particularly disturbing photographer.
Gregory Carlin
June 14th, 2008 at 4:56 am
“Remember the fuss over the film Lolita here?”
The term ‘lolita’ is dmissible in court in relation to web searches relating to intent, (in those jurisdiction where intent is relevant), mail order adult pornography corporations also preclude its use as a marketing term. THe credit card companies in theory, refuse to process transactions linked to the expression as a product description.
Bill Henson’s U18 ‘erotic’ material is classified as child pornography in Great Britain. Alison Croggon forget to tell the Australian public that one or two of the galleries referred to in her sign-on letter are prohibited from displaying or possessing Henson’s child images or have banned their display.
There is no artistic exception in the UK, nor innocent possession, it is enough for the material to be what it is, the mistake the Australia media made, was to focus on the Obscenity legislation and ignored the Protection of Children Act and the Sexual Offences Act 2003, Bill Henson’s child photos are illegal in the United KIngdom.
‘In contrast to the Obscene Publications Act 1959, the common law offence is one of strict liability and offers no defence of artistic merit or purpose.’
http://www.withersworldwide.com/news-publications/252/nan-goldin-contemporary-art-works-seized-from-an-english-gallery.aspx
When we worked on our legislation, we asked ourselves “will this stop Bill Henson’. So we worked towards resolving the problem we had in view and I am sure we have the Henson issue nailed down, however, we can’t stop Oz being a distribution nexus via the internet. That’s going to be difficult.
Bill Henson’s full-frontal nudes kept out the back
NEWS.com.au, Australia – 6 Jun 2008
By Kara Lawrence and Michelle Cazzulino FULL-frontal photos by Bill Henson of a 12-year-old boy displaying his genitalia were kept from public display by a …
I suppose he’ll eventually end up selling his vile material to rich pedophiles in a basement.
Respectfully submitted
Gregory Carlin
June 14th, 2008 at 10:01 am
Gregory, the only evidence you provide for Henson’s works being banned in the UK is a news story about a different artist – Nan Goldin – whose works never even made it to court because: “After lengthy deliberation, the Crown Prosecution Service decided not to bring charges”.
I think you are confusing how the world is with your vision of how the world should be.
June 15th, 2008 at 10:47 am
The Baltic Centre? They snitched on themselves, Why agree to exhibit somethig and then call the cops? I knew Elton John was connected, I assumed it was a puzzling strategy of some kind. The image had also been viewed by the CPS before the SOA 2003 became law.
I don’t have that diary with me, so if I recall correctly, it was CPS cleared in 2001 before the SOA 2003, and in 2007 the gallery presented a photograph which was pre-cleared. So when the gallery exhibiting Elton’s material turned itself in, I made the assumption there was a ploy of some kind.
‘It has been argued accordingly that the UK’s anti-child pornography law is in breach of Article 10 of the Human Rights Act (1998), which protects an individual’s right to freedom of expression, but the courts have been unsympathetic to this proposition.’
I figured that our enemies in the arts world wanted to pick the most unstable kind of prosecution to reclaim some of the ground lost to the child protection movement, on the other hand it could have been a coincidence. I also tend to focus on material which is ‘directed’ rather than arguably accidental or candid, I suspected unseen hands.
I know Bill Henson’s ‘kiddie stuff’ is banned because I work with law enforcement, the police in this part of the world have been looking for illegal images connected to Australia.
Topless photography of a 17 year old would put a photographer in jail, we legislated because of Henson et alia, if you can’t accept that, then I can’t help you any further.
The mistake that Alison Croggon made was to view the Obscene Publications Act 1959 & 1964, one can argue, artistic merit, purpose, innocent possession, the Protection of Children Act and the Sexual Offences Act 2003, they’re a different matter altogether.
We had a glut of Henson types and we passed a law to make it illegal. Bill Henson’s material is child pornography in Britain. he was an inspiration to child protectionists to close loopholes, his child fetish heroin chic stuff inspired us to legislate, I’m only sorry we didn’t call it the Henson Act 2003.
He deserves to have a child pornography law named after him. In fact if Hetty Johnston wants to give it a go, I’ll throw in some money. You are going to have to deal with your deviant photographers in Oz, they’re an embarassment to the rest of the VGT group nations.
The other thing, and I really have to say this, comparing a photographer to Caravaggio and MichelAngelo, just tells the world how short on real talent Australia is, it is preposterous. It might have been less risible, if he wasn’t a snapper with a cachet for naked little kids.
‘with its obsession with adolescents, twilight, clouds and grand architecture, is also so melodramatic, overwrought and cliched in its oppositions? And then there’s the kiddie-porn aesthetic.’
http://www.theage.com.au/news/arts/dark-lord-of-the-camera/2005/04/15/1113251754274.html
I mean, that review, is from 2005, I’ve been targeting pedophile networks since 2001, and Bill Henson was looked upon as iconic, by some of our targets. It is not as if the association with child pornography came about because of Bravehearts, Henson in my view, was deliberately creating adverse associations.
The Bill Henson child pornography show doesn’t do London.
Yours sincerely
Gregory Carlin
June 16th, 2008 at 12:52 pm
So Gregory, are you suggesting there is a godless anti-catholic fetishistic paedophilic conspracy in the arts community?
I have no doubt, in fact I know there are perverts with cameras out there, I was the victim of one. This is why I believe my experiece and my narrative matters.
You have singled out the wrong guy. This is also about 200th rant of yours I have seen where you make out that the arts community are anti child protection.
I think the art community has historically show they want open discourse on most things including how we view childhood.
As far as paedophiles finding Henson work iconic as you claim, you must admit that any image is potentially stimulating, which would automatically put all those people who share their family photographs online in contempt of their children’s safety. Also anyone who allows their child to swim naked at a public beach irrespective of their age.
Also I think many paedophiles would find anything within the tween fashion industry with all its gaudy magazines and catalogue a lot more iconic.
June 16th, 2008 at 2:04 pm
“I think the art community has historically show they want open discourse on most things including how we view childhood.”
I don’t accept that, that’s a banjaxed view of the the Oz arts world. Their UN & human rights is generally about nil. it is a bit like Japan, they just don’t get it. So the only way to get their attention is to make their stuff worth nothing in London or NYC.
Which we can do from time to time. It’s a labor, it is hard. One pebble at a time, that’s the method.
There is a whole range of photographs, coffee books, prints that are now viewed ( by the arts & publishing industry) as illegal in the USA and UK. We usually start when we get a pedophile with an image we’re interested in.
Then we do a tour of publishers etc. and tell them it was evidence in a child pornography case and deemed indecent on the day. That’s an leveraged anchor point.
I want a new law for Australia. I will never be in the same room as Alison Croggon, or anybody like her, or anybody who signed her group-think letter (which was risible).
I’ve just told one of your leading curators which photos I’m taking of his wall, the only question in my mind is how long it takes me to do that. I will do it.
Gregory Carlin
June 16th, 2008 at 9:22 pm
We can go on and on Gregory. You just do not get that there are other people in this world just as concerned about child protection as you. Just as disgusted with lives wrecked. Just as concerned to break the cycle.
In many of you claims here you have provided scant evidence for then while pretending that you have done. Of course you are entitled to your opinion, but when you lace your responses with inuendo about people here being paedophile comforters (your discourse is offensively littered with this). You seem to be insinuating that is what anyone who wants to debate the Henson issues is.
For everyone else, a fine example of Mr Carlin’s hyperbole and debating style can be found at http://www.libdemvoice.org/steven-bayes-1764.html.
Wow!
The saddest thing is that you are actually doing your cause more harm than good. Especially when you set yourself apart as the only hope for the future of the protection of our children. Now that IS risible!
June 17th, 2008 at 12:49 pm
The guy that got arrested in the hotel down the road from me? I’m kind of a cheer merchant for that, I support local cops, I have to, I’m in local politics.
That political party ( Lib Dems) helped authored the commercial child pornography policy for the Dutch Pedophiles (Partij voor Naastenliefde, Vrijheid en Diversiteit ). So I was unkind to the comforters was I?
Well, that’s my job really, I’m not supposed to be nice to them. I looked-up some ‘art’ books on Amazon, by ‘artists’, David Hamilton, well, the usual suspects, and hit the linked purchase facility. You might want to try it.
Bubble Bath Girls
Why bubble baths? Because I, like everyone else, wanted to see what
happens behind that door when a lovely girl undresses and takes a
bath. It is a time of intimacy, privacy, and vulnerability, not often
seen by others. These girls came by in cute little outfits that showed
off their personalities. They wore t-shirts with kitschy phrases
written on them, or short flowery dresses that were easy to remove.
Sometimes I had the girls get out of the tub soaking wet, run to
another room, pose for some photos, and then run back to the tub. The
girls brought over props too–jump ropes, toys, hats, tiaras, guitars,
bubbles, hand puppets, miniature pumpkins, a yorkshire terrier, an
iguana, and a duck made out of soap. There’s nothing like a beautiful
young woman, wet and playful.
http://www.amazon.com/Bubble-Bath-Girls-Andrew-Einhorn/dp/3936709157/...
Another Caravaggio fo Alison Croggon to help out.
More bubbles & soap ducks than Henson. Look at all the artists I’m trying to put out of work, I’m a real spoiler.
Gregory Carlin
June 17th, 2008 at 1:03 pm
“As far as paedophiles finding Henson work iconic as you claim, you must admit that any image is potentially stimulating”
Try starting with naked pubescent girls. By the way, a major ISP in the uSA, has decided it violates federal statutes prohibiting child pornography.
The blood on the thigh little girl, now tht really did mean something to the pedophiles, that was a straight data-squirt to their heads, no translation needed.
That’s the thing about art, you see it, bang, you know what he’ss telling you. Pedophiles love Henson. They adore him and we all know why don’t we?
Henson has ‘pedophilia’ written in neon all over what he does.
He’s their artist as far as they’re concerned. Some of them to be fair, don’t think he does enough soap ducks, that’s the way some of the customers are, they always want more.
Why doesn’t Henson do
‘These girls came by in cute little outfits that showed
off their personalities. They wore t-shirts with kitschy phrases
written on them, or short flowery dresses that were easy to remove.’
It’s all art in Australia, that would be a G, the hand puppets, miniature pumpkins, yorkshire terrier, and an iguana, the latter might kick it into PG territory.
Or child pornography as we say in England.
Gregory
June 17th, 2008 at 3:30 pm
I think it is about time to stop this thread. The positions have been canvassed very thoroughly, and I have seen no reason to change my own point of view.
July 22nd, 2008 at 8:10 am
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