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Hamilton: Art or p-rn is not the question
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For decades in post-war Israel performances of works by Richard Wagner were banned. The associations between Nazi Germany and Wagner’s music were too strong in the minds of most Israelis. The argument was not about the quality of Wagner’s music but the political meaning of it. I make this observation in the context of the furore over Bill Henson’s photographic exhibition, which includes pictures of a n-ked 13-year-old girl, to remind us that art, like sport, cannot be separated from politics. All art engages with culture, at least good art does. Henson has been praised by critics and supporters for challenging our sensibilities and pushing the boundaries of social acceptability. So why is Henson, by all accounts a garrulous man, refusing to defend his work? Artists and the artistic community cannot push the boundaries of social acceptance and then, when they get a reaction, step back declaring “I’m just an artist” or “Art is sacrosanct and should be above the fray”, especially when the reaction is the one they wanted, if in smaller doses. There are at three ways of looking at Henson’s latest images. The first is to see them as artistic representations designed to elicit certain feelings and ideas concerned with themes like the vulnerability of youth, the transformation of children into adults, and the contrast between teenage angst and the pointlessness of life. Something along these lines is Henson’s primary purpose and, it’s fair to assume, is the type of experience anticipated by most of those who would have visited the Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery to see Henson’s work. The second way of looking at the pictures is through the eyes of pederasts and perhaps the much larger number of men who have normal s-xual lives but cannot help finding these sorts of images disturbingly er-tic. In most of the public comment on the controversy these are the only two ways of understanding Henson’s photographs ─ they are either art or p-rnography. Within this conventional frame, they are art in my opinion. Despite her nakedness, the girl is not posed or presented in a s-xualised way; if they are consumed in a p-rnographic way it is not the artist’s intention. Although not expert in the law, I would be very surprised if a court convicted anyone for taking or displaying these pictures. However, deciding that the photographs are not p-rnographic does not end the ethical argument. Despite the predictable positions taken by moral campaigners and civil libertarians, the situation is more complicated, which brings me to the third way of seeing Henson’s pictures. Over the last decade or so advertisers and the wider culture have increasingly er-ticised children. They have been over-loaded with adult s-xual material and have had attributed to them forms of adult s-xual behaviour, including being dressed, posed and made up as if they were s-xually active, taught that having crushes and s-xual feelings is normal and even that engaging in various s-xual practices at their age is fine. Children as young as eight and nine are now routinely treated in this way. This has been a recent phenomenon ─ previously it was only teenagers of around 16 or more who were presented this way ─ yet it has occurred slowly enough for most Australians to be inured to it or to accept that that is just how the world is. After all, when even respectable retailers like David Jones er-ticise 10 and 12-year-old girls in their advertisements, it is easy to dismiss any objections we may have as peculiar to ourselves. The er-ticisation of childhood means that we have been conditioned to see children differently, as having adult s-xual characteristics, urges and desires. How else can we explain why we seem to accept mothers going shopping with 12-year-old daughters dressed like pr-stitutes? Why are we blasé about pre-teens watching video clips showing simulated intercourse? And why do we allow girls magazines widely read by pre-teens to advise that an-l s-x is a “personal choice”?” Why have we done nothing about these and a hundred other manifestations of child s-xualisation? In such a cultural environment, the n-ked body of a child, particularly a girl of 12 showing the first signs of s-xual development, can no longer be viewed “innocently”, and cannot but be seen by everyone, other than hermits, in a s-xual context. If Henson did not know this then he should have, and so should the gallery owner and the girl’s parents. Putting the images on the internet was unforgivable, for in doing so they relinquished all control over how the images are seen and consumed. It is fair to ask whether Henson was entirely innocent of the s-xual context in which his pictures would be viewed. Even among his fans, there seems to be a widespread feeling that his earlier images of intoxicated youths engaged in s-x in dingy settings are ‘creepy’ and exploitative. I suspect that the extraordinary levels of anxiety over paedophilia in recent years have represented, at least in part, an over-compensation by society for its complicity in permitting children to be s-xualised. Now that anger is being directed at the real targets, Henson’s latest work might be collateral damage or it might be more deeply implicated. CRIKEY: See Leo Schofield in conversation with Bill Henson here. Crikey hyphenates words like s-x and v-gina not out of prudery, but in an attempt to lull over-zealous email spam filters into a false sense of security. |
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27 Comments
Surely it’s obvious that youth has been one of zillions of topics up for depiction for decades. Children are just one focus of the human species in its evolution through a myriad of situations across centuries. To ignore they exist is bizarre. To assume babies, toddlers and teens have no expression, emotion or body type worth reproduction or comment, tells us our society is so driven by the un-natural we’ve literally thrown the baby out with the bathwater. Banning analysis or depiction of the human species in all stages from birth to death is archaic.
Pornography involves the exposure of genitalia and sexual acts. Sexual abuse involves physical contact.
Consent of minors is given by parents. If the photographic subject has suffered as a result of this episode then that should be dealt with appropriately.
Recently I flew to Qld with my wife & 2 children. We got seat allocations over the internet with me seated behind them. At the boarding gate I was paged & told that because my seat allocation was next to 2 unaccompanied teenage girls and I am a middle aged man I would have to moved elsewhere.
We need to make the response proportional to the risk.
I absolutely agree with Clive Hamilton.
In the eyes of some people nude photo’s of pre-pubescent children may be art, whilst in the eyes of pedophiles and perverts it simply feeds their sexual appetite.
However, one also needs to ask why we allow people to profit from childhood. Whether that profit is financial or enhancing an artist’s reputation makes no difference , profiting from childhood is a despicable undesirable occupation. It should be illegal. Also R Vincent, just calling something art, does not make it so. And there is nothing prudish about protecting the rights of children to be allowed to have a childhood, free from the profiteering of marketers and purveyors of popular culture and free from so called art and artists!
Art is a form of beauty that should be conducive to the health and wellbeing of a community, not to its debasement. What you call prudish , I call responsibility , the responsibility of an adult to protect a little child innocence.
Clive Hamilton’s thoughful article was spot on. It certainly is not a matter of pornography, but rather one of the exploitation of children. I do hope we can carry our protests to the advertising industry who seem to be quite merciless in their exploitation of children.
Martyn. For the record, I too think calling in the police and proposing criminal charges is a serious mistake. A civil remedy is much more appropriate, and I think we have had that in the last few days. It worries me a great deal that some talk-back commentators are calling for a lynch-mob, and getting plenty of volunteers from their listeners. I would hope that within the arts community there will be, as a result of this furore, a better understanding of the implications of presenting children in the way Bill Henson did. But I hope even more that this controversy has sent a chill down the spines of those who run the advertising agencies, girls magazines and television stations that are responsible for sexualising children.
A few of notes. (1) Why should Henson “defend his work”? He’s done it and the work can speak for itself. For him to speak now would distract from the the current discussion and make it about him. (2) re the question: “Why have we done nothing about these and a hundred other manifestations of child s-xualisation?” A cynic might argue that “we” haven’t done anything because we haven’t been whipped into a frenzy of outrage by the media. The very same media that, after all, makes its money from many of these manifestations, either as publishers or by providing the advertising space to their clients. Attacking an artist and a small gallery distracts from the real issues and protects the real culprits by establishing a bogus set of rules. Now big business and big media can say, “How can you compare our pouting 12 year olds with the smut Henson does? There isn’t a nipple in sight!” (3) Two of my daughters saw Henson’s work during their VCE years at high school - they both think he’s ‘brilliant’.
Guy Rundle recently postulated on issues such as incest, euthanasia, live organ transplants, birth technologies and more that “contemporary society is so incapable of thinking in any but individualist terms that people lack the vocabulary to express it”.
Perhaps this is why this debate struggles to articulate an old fashioned concept of the common good and question the benefit to society of such art at a time when our children are commodified, commercialised and exploited. Furthermore while the intent of the photographer may not be prurient, what of the intentions of viewers?
Since most 13 year olds lock the bathroom door to even their parents out of shyness at their changing bodies, what pressure was applied to these children to willingly expose themselves to the camera lens and on a pragmatic note, how informed was the consent they gave to do so?
Freedom of expression - a fraught issue in these post-modernist times!
It amazes me that all the nonsense about “art” and “artistic” is expected to cover for a person who for the last 20 years has been fixated on one theme. A true artist would have surely have advanced in their “art’” so that they have now moved on in life. But no, we have the same old, same old, reproduced with ever more clever photographic trickery, so somehow, this is “diffferent,’ “new”, and more meaningful? I am totally beyond the reach of the scrabbling apologists for this man, who has been unable to move on in life. A middle aged man who is patently stuck in a timewarp, and is not beyond stooping to any level to find gratification of his needs, whatever the damage it does to the young people in his orbit. Give me strength!
B. Pace: In your haste to condemn artists who might profit from images of prepubescent children. You fail to condemn the society which didn’t stop the advertising industry’s sexualization of children. Ditto the women’s magazines that condone any form of sexual deviancy as long as it involves Zillionaires (Elton John) or members of British royalty.
If an artist wishes to comment on our society, it is his or her responsibility to reflect that society with truth, ugly or beautiful, without people like you weighing in with your hyperbole and cant. Read todays Crikey comments, c*ckups section. Page 3. Where I said that I wanted proof that scientific research has revealed that the careers of paedophiles are kick-started in art galleries before I rush to condemn artists. Or is it easier for people like you to attack the lone artist rather than entire industries?
From all those who would defend this material I’ve not heard any consideration of what possible good purpose being photographed this way has served in the development and adjustment of the child involved. Whether the intention was artistic or pornographic, whether or not the photos were ever seen, hung, published or banned, how did the actions of the parents and photographer help this child forward? Lots of arguments about the rights and responsibilities and the blah-blah yadda yadda of the community and artists etc - no consideration of the child though. And as to the likelihood that it may actually have done the child measurable harm which is yet to be manifested, well, has that thought ever actually occurred to any of these people? Not bloody likely.
In defence of little girls who love pink spangles…they don’t dress like prostitutes. Prostitutes dress like little girls, to please their clients. And yes, 12 year old girls DO have s-xual feelings ( I remember it well, from an era much less s-xualised than this one.) That uncomfortable truth one of the themes of Hanson’s work- and one of the reasons his work is confronting. Art? Yes. Great art? Possibly. Tactfully and responsibly exhibited? Probably not.
I was in Paris over the weekend and whilst walking down one of her seedier streets in search of a postcard I was approached by a man in a raincoat who said “Psst … wanna buy a Henson?”
I have just watched the video of Schofield interviewing Henson - twice, just to make sure that my reaction to his comments were reasoned based on what he said and not on any emotion. My considered comment is to quote that great modern day philosopher (I forget his name) “don’t piss down my back and tell me it’s raining”. Henson attempts to compare the concept of immediacy and intimacy and in that he fails dismally and whilst clearly understanding photography he has no understanding of music and both the intimacy and immediacy it presents to a listener.
Henson also cites his desire to show the maturing, ageing and changing process of man something that we all go through and how it affects all our lives. OK so where are the naked pictures of the matured and aged? Why photograph just the young and pubescent?
To elevate this event into a cause celebre of art versus society and the rights of the artist to self expression and to challenge the viewer is demeaning to both topics. Henson invites criticism and derision by not publishing the whole ageing series from birth to grave images and demonstrating his concept of immediacy versus intimacy, in his photos.
I assume that Henson sells his works ….. so where does the commercial part of the topic fit into his mantra?
Art is an integral part of our society and only a fool would deny the existence and role of pornography in that same society. I have seen some of current photos as well as Henson’s previous exhibition at the Art Gallery of NSW. I found the subject matter of that exhibition of little appeal whilst acknowledging the quality of the light and composition of the images. I am not calling either set of photos pornographic far from it but to bestow upon this insignificant event such communal reaction once again and sadly demonstrates our fixation with the trivial at the expense of the significant.
I’m deeply offended by Anne Geddes! She takes not only takes photos of naked babies but also babies dressed as flowers and gum nuts! AND SHE MAKES MONEY! I demand the police act today and raid every gift shoppe because Geddes is exploiting our children for financial gain. I’m only mildly being facetious, the issue of money is a distraction - so what if Henson makes is able to sell his works? This is not actually the issue. Pause for a moment, is the hyperbole and debate surrounding these images THE POINT? As an artist is say yes.
Hugh,
I disagree with you about how to understand consent. Society needs firm lines for public policy purposes and in order to provide clear guidance to citizens. But everyone knows that the psychological capacities ( conceptual knowledge, relevant life experiences, etc) that put one in a position to give consent can exist both above and below any line society draws. This is why we would all hope the models were consulted. Think about the age of consent for getting a tattoo. Surely, all one needs to be in a position to give informed consent is knowledge of what tattoos are like (they are permanent, they hurt like hell, etc) and the consequences of getting one (you might change your mind and regret it, etc).Yet society says you cannot have one until you reach a certain age. There is no reason why someone under the age of consent for getting a tattoo (whatever it is, I wouldn’t have a clue) couldn’t have the relevant mental states to give consent. I think it is patronising to the models concerned to assume they are not in position to have their views heard.
All of that said, it would be nice if things were as black and white as you suggest, but I susp[ect they just aren’t.
What a shame you have chosen to run this second piece by Clive Hamilton. The sexualisation of these children has not happened on the walls of the Oxley gallary but on the pages of newspapers such as the Daily Tele, and yes, even now in Crikey. The self-appointed moral guardians (generally male, 50+) in this country should be ashamed of themselves for turning Henson’s art and these children’s images into a media frenzy (and achieving maximum column space in the process). Furthermore, the NSW police should be the one’s facing the real criticism here - for annoucning that they were going to lay charges and then not doing so, thereby ensuring that the pictures could and would be plastered all over the media and seen in an utterly different context than they would otherwise have been.
The real issue here revolves around consent. It’s generally held in our society that minors are unable to give informed consent in the same way as adults, and in certain areas that consent can’t be given by their parents/guardians either. Did the children exploited by Bill Henson in these photographs consent? Of course, probably aided by their parents. Is such consent valid? Never. These rules are in place to protect our children from exploitation by people like Henson, who while being cast as a martyr to the cause of artistic freedom, no doubt will sell his snaps for very big price tags, even bigger now that they’ve generated all this great publicity.
I’m sure a lot of people now feel for the photographed children in the grips of this, whether in the primary instance(because of the photos themselves) or, like me, in the secondary instance; that is, having them reproduced for the purpose of media coverage. Although I’m aware that the exhibition had photos on their own website, the reproduction of all these images on the internet (censored or otherwise) for the purpose of reportage is damaging to the context of the primary images. especially when the Daily Telegraph online places some of the photos in a pop-up, then posits the question ‘Art or Pornography? have your say!’ please. The grotesque nature of the reproduced images is far more disturbing than anything henson has done. totally abhorrent. good on you amy (from a few posts down), sorry to repeat, but the internet coverage just makes it even worse.
If 9,999 people had viewed Bill Henson’s photographs of a naked young girl and admired them for their portrayal of the innocence of youth, by the use of shadow, compassionate use of balance, texture and sensitive pose, that would not be a problem. However, if one person who viewed those same photographs became aroused, filled with sexual desire and uncontrollable urges, then the “problem” is surely with that person, not the photographs, the camera or the photographer.
If 9,999 people who own firearms treat them with care, as a piece of metal and wood, used as a tool of trade, or a piece of sporting equipment, that is not a problem. However, if one person takes the same firearm and it arouses in him so much hatred and anger that it causes him to take it and shoot someone, surely that one person has the problem.
But our government introduced gun bans, rather than tackle the one person in one thousand who has a deep seated psychological problem. So now we are witnessing extreme censorship.
Mind Control, brought to us by the same people who brought us Gun Control.
What’s next? A Camera buy back and crushing program?
So because we live in an over-s_xualising environment we should now start censoring art? What if, just for argument’s sake, Henson were to say that his images were specfically produced to comment on this very issue? Surely it should still be possible to make art and comment in this way?
As for the concern about these images being on the internet … surely the argument that a paedophile will s_xualise even the most innocent image of a child should defend us from this rather prudish anxiety.
I really enjoyed reading Clive Hamilton’s - “Art or P-rn is not the question” ; but once again (in the article before Clive’s) Bernard Keane was caught out making his usual snide remarks against “church goers” thus revealing his own atheistic religious bias. I didn’t find the P.M’s comments judgemental and I respect him for having a point of view which is on the conservative side of mainstream. I find our post-modern society producing endless relational and moral chaos in people’s lives. What is wrong with a non-judgemental counter-cultural point of view ? You don’t have to be a church goer to to hold one or two of those.
No, I wont take Bernard Keane’s snide remarks but give me Clive Hamilton’s balance anytime!
I want all those supporting it as art to ask a simple question ” do I want a strange man photographing my teenage child in the nude to make money and call it art”?
Where are the pictures of naked young boys? Why did the artist choose naked young girls to express whatever it is he is expressing?
The people who are defending Henson’s right to pursue and develop his art aren’t claiming “He’s just an artist” or “His art is sacrosanct and should be above the fray”. By all means have a robust discussion about the meaning of his images. But banning the images and threatening him and his gallery with serious charges does not make one young person safer from the predations of paedophiles. However what it does do is further diminish the visual culture in which our children are growing up, leaving it to the likes of the tabloids and the TV shows to set the agenda with their banal sexual dichotomies and overheated social scenarios. If the corporate sexualization of children is a pernicious as Hamilton suggests what we need is a more open, nuanced and complex picturing of adolescents, not a climate of fear, paranoia and panic about anything to do with childhood, or anything to do with personal expression, or anything to do with concepts like beauty or enigma. Children aren’t being defended, our culture is being attacked. Art isn’t above the fray, it’s right in the fray.
The gloom of Henson’s imagery depresses me. Also Henson is a master of publicizing himself. This whole charade is making the value of his work go more through the roof than it already is. Now I’ll cut to the chase:
Bill Henson has taken shots of angst ridden young males; why do people not condemn this aspect of his work?
Could it be that he took these shots before paedophilia became of such urgency to the community?
Clive Hamilton makes the fatuous statement that artists who are always pushing the boundaries can’t plead innocence when other people complain. What if the artist acts before the public mind has changed?
If blame has to be apportioned to anyone it must be to the gross state of our society. On the other hand, how can the millions of people on this planet be instantly aware when a pernicious idea surfaces? Do we blame the people who have allowed the advertising industry to wallow in its own sexual manipulation. Or do we blame the women’s magazines who laud any kind of behaviour and sexual deviancy if it is perpetrated by a Zillionaire or is a member of British royalty?
If an artist reflects life; what kind of artist would he or she be if they decide to comment on human behaviour not depict it in all its shame and glory?
If the advertising and fashion industries can profit by the sexualization of children; why should the artist who reflects about this same subject be penalized by denying them of their income? Or is it so much easier to sacrifice the lone artist, rather than whole industries who benefit from soft-core child pornography?
PS: Could Crikey please desist from addressing adults as if we too were children. The use of hyphens trivializes any issue under discussion.
Clive,
You say posting the images on the internet was “unforgivable.” This is a bit strong don’t you think? Posting images many consider serious art on an art gallery website when one can reasonbly foresee only a handful of arty afcionados with serious interest in art will ever view them. Hardly a hanging offense in comparison to all the other terrible things some people intentionally do to eachother. Moreover, you haven’t made a case for any causal link between the images you object to and terrible things been done to children. Until you can, it is just that you find them crass, distateful, revolting or whatever. As Mill, pointed out in the 19th century. Harm and offense are very different things.
I agree with Hamilton but, hopefully, to would also add: 1) It would be good if Henson came out to say,or if it was clear, that his work was actually framed to draw attention to the pernicious commodificiation, exploitation and voyeurism of adolescent girls, especially; however, the only comments I ‘ve read are banal and rather questionable expressions of the fascination he holds for adolescent subjectivity, placed on the threshold between childhood and adult, and burgeoning s_xuality. Problematic in itself, if true. 2) We should critique all representations, including those produced in ‘art’. Feminist art historians have been doing this for quite a while and undermining the value of the portrayal of the ‘still-life’ (i.e,.lifeless) female body/form in art, as an object of the male artist’s gaze, subject to his contemplation and rendered a voiceless object. Certainly, Henson’s work, as well as its production as a commodity, should be, and are, open to the same readings. We need to question why the adolescent, particularly the young female adolescent form, presents such a facscinating figure, made to signify, typically, fantasies and elegies of lost innocence . This is not an argument for the vice squad to confiscate such images, some of which may well be quite beautiful, as much as it an appeal to raise some of the underlying, and often disavowed, politics, use-value and motivation surrounding the adult portrayal of children… now and in centuries past, in both ‘high’ art and the media.