Comments on: Bill Henson, the unlikely poster boy for liberalism

By: Peter

Peter — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 10:00:00 +0000

[Presumably the thought behind publishing David Marr’s The Henson Case was to make a case for artistic freedom and the intrinsic quality of Henson’s work]

I believe the "thought" was to try and detach (and try analyse) the large range of public issues that coalesced to create a tsunami around Bill Henson.

Regards

Peter Gillespie

By: meg mcmahon

meg mcmahon — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 10:00:00 +0000

Kerfuffle like the cat amongst the pigeons? If I’m not mistaken Michael Heyward is not unfamiliar with boundary-transgressions - if he is the same person who wrote a glowing review of the ‘Untitled 1983/84’ (‘Junkie’) series (referred to by Marr in the GW extract), republished for the Mnemosyne catalogue accompanying Henson’s 2005 Retrospective at the AGNSW. This 1983/84 orgy of aesthetic transgression was described by the male (who survived his addiction) as something of a clinical exercise: “His (Henson’s) personality was mechanical. There was no time for niceties”. Time enough to exploit the abjection of two teenage junkies, however, not to mention the third little star of these degrading tableaus (overlooked by Marr), posed in stunned, naked chiaroscuro among the pigeon shit - a naked 8 year-old girl (Mnemosyne, p 273). I had previously assumed that Henson had engaged actors (his work is regarded as ‘cinematic’) to pose as his ‘junkies’ (whatever the purpose of the exercise). But even way back then it seems he found it an absolute requirement for the sake of his first world art to engage in third world seigneurial levels of abuse by exploiting the ultimately vulnerable and dependent. A year later, Henson was producing the explicit child photographs that coincidentally turned up on the secondary market after the storm broke around ‘Untitled 2007/08’ (Lawson Menzies, May &September, 2008). The first, sold in May, features a sleeping girl of about twelve, naked from the waist down, wearing a Sylvestor & Tweety t-shirt. The second depicts the same girl lying on her back completely naked with legs akimbo. So, were these photographs being offloaded, and if so, why? This is certainly a kerfuffle, and an extremely vexing one.

By: JamesK

JamesK — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 10:00:00 +0000

I'm surprised that Jonathan Green has some insight.

But it is not that Henson models himself as a poster boy for liberalism, he doesn't.

it is the liberal 'elite' who defend his 'art' and his methods that shoot themselves (and Hanson) in the foot.

David Marr is(/was?) a poster boy of this 'elite' .......or perhaps more a poster clown.

By: Dave Liberts

Dave Liberts — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 10:00:00 +0000

Good article. I’ve no problems with Henson being considered compromised by the peculiar machinations surrounding the Marr book, and I agree that it would have been naive not to expect that there would be some fallout from the revelation that Henson searched for models in schoolyards (the implication in the earlier controversy was that his models had been engaged via modelling agencies and/or their parents). I’ve no problem with anyone asking the question ‘can we be sure that Henson’s models knew what they were doing, were their parents fully informed and consenting and has anyone in the production of the photos complained about Henson’s conduct?’ (As I understand it, Henson passes all these tests.) The two things about this matter which do really rile me are the pronouncements that Henson’s work is porn (which therefore implies that his models have engaged in sexual conduct of some form, which will presumably be both news and offensive to them) simply because nudity is involved, and that so much focus on this matter detracts from where the focus should be: on preventing child sex abuse, particularly where complaints have been received by authorities about alleged offenders.

By: David M

David M — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 10:00:00 +0000

Why do you discuss such platitudes? You embolden, and make respectable a man who is a paedaphile!
He must go to gaol. Where is your head in this matter?

By: Frank Birchall

Frank Birchall — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 10:00:00 +0000

The debate itself is well worthwhile. However, the third-last paragraph of Jonathan Green’s piece is shabby in its use of the journalistic weasel words “… many perceive as something closer to a pornographer …” . First, “many perceive” is a species of the “some say” genus. No one knows how many people hold a particular view but it’s probably safe to say “a lot (many)” because it’s impossible to prove you wrong. Even then, what is “many”? Ten, one hundred, one thousand? Ten percent, twenty percent, fifty percent?

Second, “closer to a pornographer” (implied, “than an artist”) is conveniently vague: what is meant by “closer to”? Is there a spectrum with “artist” at one end and “pornographer” at the other? To do justice to this, even if these terms should be on the same spectrum, requires a shared understanding of both “artist”
and “pornographer”. Particularly in the Henson debate, there is immense subjectivity in defining those terms. So the phrase used by Green is gratuitous and, on a quick reading, smears Henson as a pornographer.

Perhaps Marr and Heyward were in fact conscious of the possible fallout from the schoolyard episode but were not prepared to omit it because they had confidence in Henson’s integrity as an artist. I see no reason to believe they expected it to “work in the artist’s favour”.

By: Carl Mather

Carl Mather — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 10:00:00 +0000

“cultured australia”? Do you mean the bits grown in a petrie dish?

By: stephen

stephen — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 10:00:00 +0000

Jeepers Jonathon, the sensibilities of broader Australia delivered us John Howard dressed as Pauline Hanson for over a decade. Howard it could be argued was a child abuser of monsterous proportions, I’m thinking detention camps, uncharged child prisoners etc,etc. How come he gets away with it and Henson gets portrayed as a devo?

By: Dave Liberts

Dave Liberts — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 10:00:00 +0000

David M, that’s probably a libellous statement but that’s not even the reason your statement pisses me off. Clowns like you do far more to HELP paedophiles than anything else. It’s a simple point of fact that paedophiles don’t keep parents informed about what they’re doing, they don’t produce publicly available evidence of what they’re doing, they don’t get consent and they don’t go public. If they’re near a school yard, it’s never with the knowledge and consent of the principal. It’s entirely reasonable that concerned people ask whether Henson has been above board. All the evidence so far is that he is. Meanwhile, as this silly debate drags on and on, real paedos and kiddy-porn producers get less and less attention about their actions.

If you want to be angry about paedophiles and kiddy porn, good on you. But if you want to help paedophiles instead, insist that the cops occupy themselves with naive but well-intentioned and transparently conducted artists. I note you’re doing the latter.

By: Dave Liberts

Dave Liberts — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 10:00:00 +0000

Kerry, if the kids are as you assert shy and vulnerable, surely one of Henson’s models over the last twenty years would have lodged a complaint about him, or alternatively gotten their parents to do this. Everything I’ve read on this matter seems to confirm that the models were across all the details of what they were doing (and as a step-parent of four kids who have all gone through being twelve/thirteen in the time I’ve been their step-parent, I feel I can safely confirm that some but not all kids this age do have the requisite maturity to be sufficiently worldly to grasp all the implications of doing something like non-sexual nude modelling and assess whether they feel comfortable doing this). They don’t seem to have regrets. There was a great article in the Perth media recently about a now elderly woman who modelled nude aged 10-ish for a sculptor in the thirties being at an exhibition of her statue. She was extremely proud of it and was delighted to have modelled for it. The only Henson photos I’ve ever seen are the ones which were published in The Australian. I agree they’re a bit creepy, but they’re also beautiful. What I can’t see is how they’re considered sexy (not that they’re meant to be, but a lot of commentators on these pages keep calling them porn, which by definition is material intended to be found sexy).

By: steve martin

steve martin — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 10:00:00 +0000

It seems that pornography, like beauty, is oin the eye of the beholder.

By: Kerry

Kerry — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 10:00:00 +0000

Henson’s work is not just “eerily prurient” but it focuses on shy and vulnerable children. Other entrepreneurs seek confident happy children — in the advertising and the sporting worlds. But Henson seeks and portrays the vulnerability of his subjects- This is what is so creepy.

By: Michael

Michael — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 10:00:00 +0000

Does it not occur to the writer that the book/article is an attempt to examine the whole Henson “thing”not to ake him a poster-boy for some notion of a liberal-arts elite. The images may be creepy etc. but there is a lot in the world that fits this image & is apposite to the stage of adolescence so illustrated by Henson. It seems that we as a society need to examine carefully our tendency to moral panic as it suggests a loss of critcal thinking. We are likely to become just the unthinking cheer squad for that aptly named organization “news limited”.I thought the use of lower case in the piece,while possibly an oversight was naively inspired