Fascinating story in the Globe yesterday about the Canadian art magazine Blackflash. The next issue has a story by Kyla and James Legard called "The Last Taboo: Childhood Sexuality and Censorship." After what sounds like quite a bit of contention, Backflash has decided to print the story with blank spots & urls in place of the intended illustrations. The "self-censored" images include Mapplethorpe as well as a cutsie painting of a little girl on a park bench by Millais called Cherry Ripe, which the Globe did reproduce online. Globe writer James Adams describes the painting as, "one of the most popular images of the late Victorian era, with prints displayed in millions of homes throughout the British Empire. In the last 25 years, however, some have argued its popularity 'bespeaks the existence of widespread covert pedophilia in Victorian society.'"
I just read a very good essay, "The Folly of Defining 'Serious' Art," by Amy Adler in a book about the complexities of censorship called The New Gatekeepers. Adler says...
"...even in this most justified area of censorship law, the legal solution has proved problematic in two ways. First, in our rush to protect children, we have expanded the definition of child pornography dramatically. It has become so broad that at its borders it endangers speech that almost all of us would agree ought to be protected. For example, the definition is so broad that now something can be 'child pornography' even if the child depicted is wearing clothes. In this way, child pornography law has come to threaten ordinary family pictures as well as important art that depicts children."
[...]
"Even as it combats the sexualization of children, I believe that child pornography law has also contributed to a world in which we scrutinize children for sexuality in a way that we never did before. In this way it inadvertently fosters the sexualization of children."
Hey teacher! Leave those kids alone.
Note: I feel a strong affinity to the last statement, above, by Adler. I have decided not to repost the Millais painting, nor to make links to contemporary artists who I feel have unjustly come under this particular legal lens. I don't like the inevitable scrutiny that this context would impose, and I don't want any part of it. Perhaps this is one of the reasons that Blackflash took the action that they did...if so, I think I understand the decision.
I remember Kate Taylor's review of an art exhibition in the Globe years ago that contained the twittering aside "it's probably illegal under the new child porn laws" and invited the wrath of the Toronto Police on Mercer Union. It invited the wrath of several of my non-artist friends until I showed them reproductions of the drawings, then they recognised how misled they had been by all the hysterical media reports that didn't include the images.
I don't agree with the decision.
I followed the link to the G&M article. My opinion of the Millais is that it seems to be erotic with a nasty feel to it. Having seen this, I was pretty anxious about tracing down the Mapplethorpe, but to me, this just looks like a kid being a kid. I do think both of these should have been published. I worked in a prison once, and saw two child predators watching what looked like normal adverising involving children on television. They were fixated on the kids. We cannot possibly let what turns such people on define what can or cannot be seen.
I've been to Vigeland Park in Oslo, which is a vast sculpture garden dedicated to the life work of Gustuv Vigeland. His sculptures are mostly nudes, and depict humans at all stages of life.
I saw a magazine on a newstand in Oslo that had a crotch shot of one of those statues on its cover. People who get off on nekid kids are going to make use works of art to feed their kink.
Should the fact that art can be misused prevent society from making and displaying art? And what of the Sears & Roebuck catalog?
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I saw the Mapplethorpe photogragh discussed in the article, about 15 years ago. I'm trying to remember where. I think it was in the SF MOMA in the old Van Ness location. The context was a retrospective of Mapplethorpe's work. That one image was in a corner of a large gallery, screened off by a partition. I found this method of display, akin to slipping into the "adult" room of a video rental shop, to be disturbing.
According to the globe article, Blackflash made their decision based on the fact that the printers didn't want to touch it, fearing prosecution under Canadian law, so Blackflash couldn't get their issue out unless they removed the photos. Unless I hear otherwise, this decision was made for them so I wouldn't support that conjecture that Sally makes in her post.
Yes, the article does say that they tried 5 printers, all of whom would not take the job. But it also says that 4 board members resigned, which implies a discussion that was more than pragmatic. However...yes...my speculation about their motives is pure conjecture. I am not sure how I feel about the Blacklash decision. My own decision not to post the Millais image on the front page was purely personal, based on my gut reaction to Adler's scrutiny comment. I would not censor art images posted in this comment thread, nor would I censor images or links that L.M. might decide to put on the front page. I think, however that the potential responsibility to show contested images is greater if you are a representative, accountable publication, running a story on the topic, than it is if you are a blogger, who is merely picking up on the issue from a highly subjective point of view (especially when the images are easy to find elsewhere online).
I agree wholeheartedly with galenagalaxian's statement that "we cannot possibly let what turns such people on define what can or cannot be seen." But I still feel, personally, that, in the context of this issue, I don't want to hold up an artwork and imply the question "is it pornographic or not?" when I do not think it is pornographic. That said, I do think the Millais painting is creepy...for many reasons.... Okay okay...here it is:
I think we're creeped out when a child gazes at the camera.
It's that knowing look. Kids are smart.
No. You're projecting. They're dumb.
hm. maybe. Allison Gopnik says kids are scientists.
Shit, I forgot about that. Allison Gopnik rocks. OK kids aren't dumb.
(well that wasn't much of a sissy fight)
well...maybe scientists are dumb.
the blackflash controversy reminds me of recent academic pissing matches about Carroll's status as perv, photog, paedo or other words like that. i think why we find millas so creepy, is that it is so similar to how we sentimentalize children...in fine and popular work. so we have loretta lux, who has a huge commerical/critical reception, but also the whole beauty pagaent cult: (cf: vs )
(one of these days, as a performance, im going to get becky carter to do me up all pretty like)
http://beckycarter.com/color.html
http://www.lorettalux.de/images/wan300.jpg
It seems there’s a structural tension wrto this stuff. On the one hand, pedophilia is the great big boogeyman right now. Pedophiles are the lowest rung of the social strata (yay, queer culture moved up the totem pole). On the other hand, we keep pushing the sexual ideal as close as possible to the magic age of consent. So we want beauty and sexuality to begin and peak at eighteen, but cross that line and you’re in for a lynching. There’s more than a little cultural culpability if we sexualize youth and banish the thought of sexuality with youth.
I think the fact that homosexuals, rapists, and pedophiles have all spent time at the bottom of popular culture is noteworthy. If we assume that a buncha people are really freaked out at the thought of open sexuality, but also want to be ‘liberated’ and cosmopolitan, then pedophiles represent a sexuality that actually does bad things. Kidnapping, molesting, and abusing the trust of kids are all genuinely bad things to do. It combines the awkwardness of public discussions of sexuality with actual harm. It’s sexuality gone evil and a good thing to hate.
In case we aren't creeped out and paranoid enough.
Stupid and useless. Since most abuse of children is not by strangers, wouldn't it make more sense, statistically speaking, to allow children to sit only near strangers?
What defines a man? Big, hairy, smelly, and wants to have sex with children.
I'm also pretty disturbed by the border laptop searches. In all kinds of areas, public safety gets invoked as the motivation for all kinds of knee-jerk infringements of rights. Everybody already knows about this tasty little organisation, but it's relevant to the context.
Carter image from Anthony's link
The magazine is Blackflash not Backflash...I've had some dealings with them as a writer and was mostly impressed with their professionalism and willingness to discuss issues. I'd be interested in seeing the article. And, of course, if the images are censored doesn't that make them more titillating for those so inclined to peek nastily?
A book I still refer to on this topic is 'Suggestive Poses: Artists and Critics Respond to Censorship" edited by Lorraine Johnson, co-published by the Toronto Photographers Workshop and the Riverbank Press, Toronto, 1997. It addresses some of these issues in ways that are succinct and perhaps still uncomfortable but forces the complexity to the fore rather than offering easy answers.
As far as sexuality 'peaking at eighteen' I would suggest that it is far earlier: marketing campaigns, such as the earlier Candy ads targetted girls between the ages of 14 and 18 years old. These ads showed condoms, booze, blow-up dolls, etc. While there is a faint rumble about the appropriateness of such images it doesn't seem to be as large as when art appears to touch on child pornography. And when it does, as LM points out, the word on the street is often misleading. Why is it that people fear artist's works so much more than those that surround us daily on billboards and appear in teen magazines that offer twelve year olds tips on how to look seventeen?
The more the topic is discussed seriously, and the (art) images are brought to the foreground directly to be critiqued, the less destructive they can be. Otherwise they just continue to lurk in dark corners where disturbed people can get off on them. They don't go away. Isn't it better to hold people accountable directly and thus lift the taboo that I think holds such fascination for people more comfortable in the dark? Whether Millais had pedophile tendencies or just a sickly-sweet style he is in the art history books so isn't it more responsible for us to situate and discuss him than ban him from the article? (Remember the Pears Soap ad? That was a painting of a boy that the Pears co. bought and subsequently used in all their marketing campaigns? It has to make you wonder about Victorian society as a whole).
Blackflash! yeesh, thank you for the correction. I've changed it. It's a very good point you make about the perceived role of art. Maybe its as simple as an assumption that mass culture is supposed to be crass but art is supposed to elevate us above our baser selves. Which I don't agree with, by the way. I like that book "Suggestive Poses" as well, and I go back to it frequently.
People are crazy for this subject. Some a-hole pops up out of nowhere and says "I killed JonBenet" and now how many billion know what his face looks like? My theory, such as it is, is that artists and the criminal class like that dude (I mention them together only because they are equally suspect to the broader public) take the heat for the way "corporate modernity" pushes the youth=beauty/younger=more beauty issue, and the exploitation of labor that results in so many kids "home alone." The guilty and confused masses demand sacrifices! Faceless executives aren't going to be burned at the stake.
Victorians did the darndest things. They appear to us as ridiculously conflicted, naive, hypocritical and pompous. They mixed their bizarre sugary sentimentality with all sorts of radical social reform. We owe them a lot, and we look just as foolish and well meaning.
The art porn, it keeps on coming.
Ah, the accuracy for which the British press is known...
"a painting by Gary Gross of a young girl in a bath, heavily made-up and looking seductive"
Garry (not Gary) Gross is a photographer--the image was of a young Brooke Shields, shot about the time the movie Pretty Baby put her on the map.
I reviewed Gross's show at American Fine Arts in 1998--he's basically a hack photographer that Richard Prince and then Colin De Land invested with "art aura." I opined that the show of swinging 70s photos could get a gallery in trouble in the prurient 90s. Amazing that 8 years later someone is looking at hard time for that trifling work.
I was surprised at that too.
Hard to find any English language links on this story or the original show. Many sites are just picking up this synopsis of an original French article in Libération. (Which is just better than me torturing everyone with babelfish for a million reasons.)
The exhibition was six years ago! I feel pretty sorry for that curator.
Apparently there's no statute of limitations in the Napoleonic code. It's ridiculous and embarrassing for France to be acting like a prosecutor in Notrees, Texas.
Regarding the "bizarre sugary sentimentality" of the Victorian era, anyone watched a diaper ad lately?
Haven't seen one lately but i did come accross this link.
http://www.thediapercake.com/index.php
I think this proves we have surpassed the Victorians for bizarre sugary sentimentality and we are now venturing into the obscene.
eeeeeeeeew!
Anyone seen Christopher Cutts' invitation image to Scope Miami? It's a digital photograph by brothers Carlos and Jason Sanchez, who generally do some interesting work. This one confuses me somewhat - and I wonder how the choice of this image for that art fair would fit into our discussion here? Simply a matter of sensationalist attention-getting in a venue that is crowded with too much stuff and one has to stand out? And, would anyone comment or is it more acceptable in a commercial marketplace than in a gallery? (Moral outrage seems to appear more when it's about public money).
haven't seen it. Is there a link? (he ain't the brightest bulb in the box)
Same old, same old. He lacks the courage needed to use a diaper cake image instead.
boo-boo be do.
Now I can't get the word diapercake out of my head. That's effective art marketing! People should take my advice. Really.
A food item made out of repositories for stuff from a baby's bowels is the essence of surrealism.
Wasn't the futurists who made revolting food?
I don't know--I was thinking of Meret Oppenheim and the whole Battailean idea of unnerving oxymorons like "rotten sun"--would like to know more about Futurist revolting food--provided it's not too revolting. (I've been saving a photocollage from Worth 1000 hybridizing a taco, a squid, and rat fur--I get the dry heaves every time I look at it).
The Futurist cookbook from 1932
Perhaps it's full of just slightly fascist and aggressive recipes.
Solar Consommé and Carne Plastica (Model Meat) sound promising.
I've read this discussion (a number of times) with great interest, and even though it's now way past the time frame in which it originally took place, as the Managing Editor of BlackFlash, I wanted to shed some light on the topic:
Sally wrote:
"But I still feel, personally, that, in the context of this issue, I don't want to hold up an artwork and imply the question "is it pornographic or not?" when I do not think it is pornographic."
This was the crux of the argument, which finally led the editorial committee and the remaining board members to blank out all of the images rather than just remove a select few.
We lost those 4 board members because the majority of the board did make a resolution to print the issue (as it was) despite the risk of us being charged criminally under the child pornography act. However, we couldn't find a printer who was willing to print the images due to this risk. I suppose we could have kept trying to find one that would, but there were other risks attached to us continuing to delay the printing of the issue.
In the end, we were not at all happy about censoring the images, but we were also not willing to make vague and absurd decisions about which ones would be considered "pornography" under the legal definition -- specifically, because we all agreed that none of them were child pornography and to assess any of them in that light would be disingenuous to our cause. We revised our editorial and blanked them all out to make both a political statement and to remain transparent about our process.
Anthea Black, a writer from Calgary, recently wrote and article that discusses the issue for Calgary's weekly Arts and Entertainment journal Fast Forward:
http://www.ffwdweekly.com/Issues/2006/1221/art.htm
Thanks for the link Lissa. I can imagine that it was a wretched and thankless experience to be going through all of that. Years ago when I was in the Red Head gallery, we used to have a public display case in the lobby of the building we were in. We used it for guest artists from outside the gallery. On several occasions I thought we'd be busted for sure, especially around 1992 or 1993 when one artist installed a preview of the "Gay Children's parade of 2000". (I wish I could remember the artist's name, the piece was great, I loved it) Surprisingly enough only one artist's installation received formal complaints. Sculptural pieces that looked like a hybrid between cosmetic containers and dildos in among a huge busy installation, you literally had to go back and wonder "where the hell are the penises they're complaining about? oh ya, I see one now.". We were caught off guard because many of the complaints came from artists in the building, and much of the argument against it involved that tired old "what if my child saw this!". It was truly inane and didn't involve the police, thankfully, as that might have brought a new level of stupid to the whole event.
Actually, LM, it's been pretty eye opening -- and surprisingly not thankless at all. It's been amazing how many people have come to our support (i.e. Frank Addario and James Missen's comments in the G&M article). I've never as an artist, personally, experienced censorship, so I do think this experience has helped me to appreciate the subject in a way that I never have before. As a magazine person, I've also realized how much we have to depend on the economy (including the private economy) and I'm not sure how I feel about this as an arts magazine. Or what I/we can do to change that reality. It's a bit of a conundrum.
Regarding the incident with a "public display case" -- Diana Sherlock recently wrote a really great article in Fuse about what happened in Calgary re: the window. Being from Calgary myself, originally, those windows almost every year had become victim to complaints (censorship) from the Children's Festival, which is housed and played out in the performing arts building. The only thing that differed here was they built a wall and put up a warning sign rather than forcing the gallery to cover its window with brown paper.
When I consider what is already available to the public via tv, etc., I am always shocked at these kinds of reactions to art in public spaces. I agree with the stuff posted above re: child pageants. That comes across as way more icky and shady to me.
You probably already know the story of Lyla Rye and her video "Byte" from 2002, exhibited for a short period at Eye Level Gallery. (the image of the child in the video projection on this thread is from another work of hers)
The Halifax police did seize the video, but she could have kept on sending copies to the gallery, after all, no charges were ever laid, or would be, but the police didn't want to deal with further complaints and one way of doing that was to send Children's Aid to investigate their home environment for possible evidence of child abuse. That's an effective technique that's used to coerce women in a lot of law enforcement contexts and it played very well into this instance of censorship.
Yes, I was aware of about what happened with Lyla Rye and her video Byte, but, I didn't know about the police sending Children's Aid to her home!
I had a recent conversation with a friend of mine who is a mother, and in a discussion with some other women she works out with ... she had brought up seeing a birthing video (I believe it was a program on TV) and the genitals of the newborns were all blurred out. She was telling them how absurd she thought it was, while apparently they all thought it was a good idea because no risks should be taken with "all the perverts out there."
Thanks for posting Lissa, and for providing clarification and background info. The Backflash decision has led to some informative and fascinating discussion, which, at least here, feels open-ended in a good way.
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Fascinating story in the Globe yesterday about the Canadian art magazine Blackflash. The next issue has a story by Kyla and James Legard called "The Last Taboo: Childhood Sexuality and Censorship." After what sounds like quite a bit of contention, Backflash has decided to print the story with blank spots & urls in place of the intended illustrations. The "self-censored" images include Mapplethorpe as well as a cutsie painting of a little girl on a park bench by Millais called Cherry Ripe, which the Globe did reproduce online. Globe writer James Adams describes the painting as, "one of the most popular images of the late Victorian era, with prints displayed in millions of homes throughout the British Empire. In the last 25 years, however, some have argued its popularity 'bespeaks the existence of widespread covert pedophilia in Victorian society.'"
I just read a very good essay, "The Folly of Defining 'Serious' Art," by Amy Adler in a book about the complexities of censorship called The New Gatekeepers. Adler says... Hey teacher! Leave those kids alone.
Note: I feel a strong affinity to the last statement, above, by Adler. I have decided not to repost the Millais painting, nor to make links to contemporary artists who I feel have unjustly come under this particular legal lens. I don't like the inevitable scrutiny that this context would impose, and I don't want any part of it. Perhaps this is one of the reasons that Blackflash took the action that they did...if so, I think I understand the decision.
- sally mckay 11-28-2006 11:51 pm
I remember Kate Taylor's review of an art exhibition in the Globe years ago that contained the twittering aside "it's probably illegal under the new child porn laws" and invited the wrath of the Toronto Police on Mercer Union. It invited the wrath of several of my non-artist friends until I showed them reproductions of the drawings, then they recognised how misled they had been by all the hysterical media reports that didn't include the images.
I don't agree with the decision.
- L.M. 11-29-2006 12:08 am
I followed the link to the G&M article. My opinion of the Millais is that it seems to be erotic with a nasty feel to it. Having seen this, I was pretty anxious about tracing down the Mapplethorpe, but to me, this just looks like a kid being a kid. I do think both of these should have been published. I worked in a prison once, and saw two child predators watching what looked like normal adverising involving children on television. They were fixated on the kids. We cannot possibly let what turns such people on define what can or cannot be seen.
- galenagalaxian 11-29-2006 1:28 am
I've been to Vigeland Park in Oslo, which is a vast sculpture garden dedicated to the life work of Gustuv Vigeland. His sculptures are mostly nudes, and depict humans at all stages of life.
I saw a magazine on a newstand in Oslo that had a crotch shot of one of those statues on its cover. People who get off on nekid kids are going to make use works of art to feed their kink.
Should the fact that art can be misused prevent society from making and displaying art? And what of the Sears & Roebuck catalog?
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I saw the Mapplethorpe photogragh discussed in the article, about 15 years ago. I'm trying to remember where. I think it was in the SF MOMA in the old Van Ness location. The context was a retrospective of Mapplethorpe's work. That one image was in a corner of a large gallery, screened off by a partition. I found this method of display, akin to slipping into the "adult" room of a video rental shop, to be disturbing.
- mark 11-29-2006 1:29 am
According to the globe article, Blackflash made their decision based on the fact that the printers didn't want to touch it, fearing prosecution under Canadian law, so Blackflash couldn't get their issue out unless they removed the photos. Unless I hear otherwise, this decision was made for them so I wouldn't support that conjecture that Sally makes in her post.
- L.M. 11-29-2006 2:09 am
Yes, the article does say that they tried 5 printers, all of whom would not take the job. But it also says that 4 board members resigned, which implies a discussion that was more than pragmatic. However...yes...my speculation about their motives is pure conjecture. I am not sure how I feel about the Blacklash decision. My own decision not to post the Millais image on the front page was purely personal, based on my gut reaction to Adler's scrutiny comment. I would not censor art images posted in this comment thread, nor would I censor images or links that L.M. might decide to put on the front page. I think, however that the potential responsibility to show contested images is greater if you are a representative, accountable publication, running a story on the topic, than it is if you are a blogger, who is merely picking up on the issue from a highly subjective point of view (especially when the images are easy to find elsewhere online).
I agree wholeheartedly with galenagalaxian's statement that "we cannot possibly let what turns such people on define what can or cannot be seen." But I still feel, personally, that, in the context of this issue, I don't want to hold up an artwork and imply the question "is it pornographic or not?" when I do not think it is pornographic. That said, I do think the Millais painting is creepy...for many reasons.... Okay okay...here it is:
- sally mckay 11-29-2006 5:59 am
I think we're creeped out when a child gazes at the camera.
- L.M. 11-29-2006 7:16 am
It's that knowing look. Kids are smart.
- sally mckay 11-29-2006 7:17 am
No. You're projecting. They're dumb.
- L.M. 11-29-2006 7:19 am
hm. maybe. Allison Gopnik says kids are scientists.
- sally mckay 11-29-2006 7:25 am
Shit, I forgot about that. Allison Gopnik rocks. OK kids aren't dumb.
(well that wasn't much of a sissy fight)
- L.M. 11-29-2006 7:36 am
well...maybe scientists are dumb.
- sally mckay 11-29-2006 7:38 am
the blackflash controversy reminds me of recent academic pissing matches about Carroll's status as perv, photog, paedo or other words like that. i think why we find millas so creepy, is that it is so similar to how we sentimentalize children...in fine and popular work. so we have loretta lux, who has a huge commerical/critical reception, but also the whole beauty pagaent cult: (cf: vs )
(one of these days, as a performance, im going to get becky carter to do me up all pretty like)
- anonymous (guest) 11-29-2006 5:30 pm
http://beckycarter.com/color.html
http://www.lorettalux.de/images/wan300.jpg
- anthony (guest) 11-29-2006 5:33 pm
It seems there’s a structural tension wrto this stuff. On the one hand, pedophilia is the great big boogeyman right now. Pedophiles are the lowest rung of the social strata (yay, queer culture moved up the totem pole). On the other hand, we keep pushing the sexual ideal as close as possible to the magic age of consent. So we want beauty and sexuality to begin and peak at eighteen, but cross that line and you’re in for a lynching. There’s more than a little cultural culpability if we sexualize youth and banish the thought of sexuality with youth.
I think the fact that homosexuals, rapists, and pedophiles have all spent time at the bottom of popular culture is noteworthy. If we assume that a buncha people are really freaked out at the thought of open sexuality, but also want to be ‘liberated’ and cosmopolitan, then pedophiles represent a sexuality that actually does bad things. Kidnapping, molesting, and abusing the trust of kids are all genuinely bad things to do. It combines the awkwardness of public discussions of sexuality with actual harm. It’s sexuality gone evil and a good thing to hate.
- Jjm 11-29-2006 6:19 pm
In case we aren't creeped out and paranoid enough.
- L.M. 11-29-2006 9:40 pm
Stupid and useless. Since most abuse of children is not by strangers, wouldn't it make more sense, statistically speaking, to allow children to sit only near strangers?
- mark 11-29-2006 11:28 pm
What defines a man? Big, hairy, smelly, and wants to have sex with children.
- tom moody 11-30-2006 12:26 am
I'm also pretty disturbed by the border laptop searches. In all kinds of areas, public safety gets invoked as the motivation for all kinds of knee-jerk infringements of rights. Everybody already knows about this tasty little organisation, but it's relevant to the context.
- sally mckay 11-30-2006 2:14 am
Carter image from Anthony's link
- L.M. 11-30-2006 9:18 am
The magazine is Blackflash not Backflash...I've had some dealings with them as a writer and was mostly impressed with their professionalism and willingness to discuss issues. I'd be interested in seeing the article. And, of course, if the images are censored doesn't that make them more titillating for those so inclined to peek nastily?
A book I still refer to on this topic is 'Suggestive Poses: Artists and Critics Respond to Censorship" edited by Lorraine Johnson, co-published by the Toronto Photographers Workshop and the Riverbank Press, Toronto, 1997. It addresses some of these issues in ways that are succinct and perhaps still uncomfortable but forces the complexity to the fore rather than offering easy answers.
As far as sexuality 'peaking at eighteen' I would suggest that it is far earlier: marketing campaigns, such as the earlier Candy ads targetted girls between the ages of 14 and 18 years old. These ads showed condoms, booze, blow-up dolls, etc. While there is a faint rumble about the appropriateness of such images it doesn't seem to be as large as when art appears to touch on child pornography. And when it does, as LM points out, the word on the street is often misleading. Why is it that people fear artist's works so much more than those that surround us daily on billboards and appear in teen magazines that offer twelve year olds tips on how to look seventeen?
The more the topic is discussed seriously, and the (art) images are brought to the foreground directly to be critiqued, the less destructive they can be. Otherwise they just continue to lurk in dark corners where disturbed people can get off on them. They don't go away. Isn't it better to hold people accountable directly and thus lift the taboo that I think holds such fascination for people more comfortable in the dark? Whether Millais had pedophile tendencies or just a sickly-sweet style he is in the art history books so isn't it more responsible for us to situate and discuss him than ban him from the article? (Remember the Pears Soap ad? That was a painting of a boy that the Pears co. bought and subsequently used in all their marketing campaigns? It has to make you wonder about Victorian society as a whole).
- cg (guest) 11-30-2006 6:41 pm
Blackflash! yeesh, thank you for the correction. I've changed it. It's a very good point you make about the perceived role of art. Maybe its as simple as an assumption that mass culture is supposed to be crass but art is supposed to elevate us above our baser selves. Which I don't agree with, by the way. I like that book "Suggestive Poses" as well, and I go back to it frequently.
- sally mckay 11-30-2006 7:38 pm
People are crazy for this subject. Some a-hole pops up out of nowhere and says "I killed JonBenet" and now how many billion know what his face looks like? My theory, such as it is, is that artists and the criminal class like that dude (I mention them together only because they are equally suspect to the broader public) take the heat for the way "corporate modernity" pushes the youth=beauty/younger=more beauty issue, and the exploitation of labor that results in so many kids "home alone." The guilty and confused masses demand sacrifices! Faceless executives aren't going to be burned at the stake.
- tom moody 11-30-2006 7:44 pm
Victorians did the darndest things. They appear to us as ridiculously conflicted, naive, hypocritical and pompous. They mixed their bizarre sugary sentimentality with all sorts of radical social reform. We owe them a lot, and we look just as foolish and well meaning.
- L.M. 11-30-2006 9:11 pm
The art porn, it keeps on coming.
- L.M. 11-30-2006 9:44 pm
Ah, the accuracy for which the British press is known...
"a painting by Gary Gross of a young girl in a bath, heavily made-up and looking seductive"
Garry (not Gary) Gross is a photographer--the image was of a young Brooke Shields, shot about the time the movie Pretty Baby put her on the map.
I reviewed Gross's show at American Fine Arts in 1998--he's basically a hack photographer that Richard Prince and then Colin De Land invested with "art aura." I opined that the show of swinging 70s photos could get a gallery in trouble in the prurient 90s. Amazing that 8 years later someone is looking at hard time for that trifling work.
- tom moody 11-30-2006 10:09 pm
I was surprised at that too.
- L.M. 11-30-2006 10:33 pm
Hard to find any English language links on this story or the original show. Many sites are just picking up this synopsis of an original French article in Libération. (Which is just better than me torturing everyone with babelfish for a million reasons.)
- L.M. 11-30-2006 10:51 pm
The exhibition was six years ago! I feel pretty sorry for that curator.
- sally mckay 11-30-2006 11:46 pm
Apparently there's no statute of limitations in the Napoleonic code. It's ridiculous and embarrassing for France to be acting like a prosecutor in Notrees, Texas.
- tom moody 11-30-2006 11:49 pm
Regarding the "bizarre sugary sentimentality" of the Victorian era, anyone watched a diaper ad lately?
- sally mckay 11-30-2006 11:52 pm
Haven't seen one lately but i did come accross this link.
http://www.thediapercake.com/index.php
I think this proves we have surpassed the Victorians for bizarre sugary sentimentality and we are now venturing into the obscene.
- mnobody (guest) 12-01-2006 2:21 am
eeeeeeeeew!
- sally mckay 12-01-2006 2:28 am
Anyone seen Christopher Cutts' invitation image to Scope Miami? It's a digital photograph by brothers Carlos and Jason Sanchez, who generally do some interesting work. This one confuses me somewhat - and I wonder how the choice of this image for that art fair would fit into our discussion here? Simply a matter of sensationalist attention-getting in a venue that is crowded with too much stuff and one has to stand out? And, would anyone comment or is it more acceptable in a commercial marketplace than in a gallery? (Moral outrage seems to appear more when it's about public money).
- cg (guest) 12-01-2006 7:42 pm
haven't seen it. Is there a link? (he ain't the brightest bulb in the box)
- L.M. 12-01-2006 7:55 pm
- sally mckay 12-01-2006 7:56 pm
Same old, same old. He lacks the courage needed to use a diaper cake image instead.
- L.M. 12-01-2006 8:21 pm
boo-boo be do.
- sally mckay 12-01-2006 8:30 pm
Now I can't get the word diapercake out of my head. That's effective art marketing! People should take my advice. Really.
- L.M. 12-01-2006 8:34 pm
A food item made out of repositories for stuff from a baby's bowels is the essence of surrealism.
- tom moody 12-01-2006 8:44 pm
Wasn't the futurists who made revolting food?
- L.M. 12-01-2006 8:52 pm
I don't know--I was thinking of Meret Oppenheim and the whole Battailean idea of unnerving oxymorons like "rotten sun"--would like to know more about Futurist revolting food--provided it's not too revolting. (I've been saving a photocollage from Worth 1000 hybridizing a taco, a squid, and rat fur--I get the dry heaves every time I look at it).
- tom moody 12-01-2006 9:15 pm
The Futurist cookbook from 1932
Perhaps it's full of just slightly fascist and aggressive recipes.
- L.M. 12-01-2006 9:42 pm
Solar Consommé and Carne Plastica (Model Meat) sound promising.
- tom moody 12-01-2006 9:47 pm
I've read this discussion (a number of times) with great interest, and even though it's now way past the time frame in which it originally took place, as the Managing Editor of BlackFlash, I wanted to shed some light on the topic:
Sally wrote:
"But I still feel, personally, that, in the context of this issue, I don't want to hold up an artwork and imply the question "is it pornographic or not?" when I do not think it is pornographic."
This was the crux of the argument, which finally led the editorial committee and the remaining board members to blank out all of the images rather than just remove a select few.
We lost those 4 board members because the majority of the board did make a resolution to print the issue (as it was) despite the risk of us being charged criminally under the child pornography act. However, we couldn't find a printer who was willing to print the images due to this risk. I suppose we could have kept trying to find one that would, but there were other risks attached to us continuing to delay the printing of the issue.
In the end, we were not at all happy about censoring the images, but we were also not willing to make vague and absurd decisions about which ones would be considered "pornography" under the legal definition -- specifically, because we all agreed that none of them were child pornography and to assess any of them in that light would be disingenuous to our cause. We revised our editorial and blanked them all out to make both a political statement and to remain transparent about our process.
Anthea Black, a writer from Calgary, recently wrote and article that discusses the issue for Calgary's weekly Arts and Entertainment journal Fast Forward:
http://www.ffwdweekly.com/Issues/2006/1221/art.htm
- Lissa Robinson (guest) 1-01-2007 11:53 pm
Thanks for the link Lissa. I can imagine that it was a wretched and thankless experience to be going through all of that. Years ago when I was in the Red Head gallery, we used to have a public display case in the lobby of the building we were in. We used it for guest artists from outside the gallery. On several occasions I thought we'd be busted for sure, especially around 1992 or 1993 when one artist installed a preview of the "Gay Children's parade of 2000". (I wish I could remember the artist's name, the piece was great, I loved it) Surprisingly enough only one artist's installation received formal complaints. Sculptural pieces that looked like a hybrid between cosmetic containers and dildos in among a huge busy installation, you literally had to go back and wonder "where the hell are the penises they're complaining about? oh ya, I see one now.". We were caught off guard because many of the complaints came from artists in the building, and much of the argument against it involved that tired old "what if my child saw this!". It was truly inane and didn't involve the police, thankfully, as that might have brought a new level of stupid to the whole event.
- L.M. 1-02-2007 12:35 am
Actually, LM, it's been pretty eye opening -- and surprisingly not thankless at all. It's been amazing how many people have come to our support (i.e. Frank Addario and James Missen's comments in the G&M article). I've never as an artist, personally, experienced censorship, so I do think this experience has helped me to appreciate the subject in a way that I never have before. As a magazine person, I've also realized how much we have to depend on the economy (including the private economy) and I'm not sure how I feel about this as an arts magazine. Or what I/we can do to change that reality. It's a bit of a conundrum.
Regarding the incident with a "public display case" -- Diana Sherlock recently wrote a really great article in Fuse about what happened in Calgary re: the window. Being from Calgary myself, originally, those windows almost every year had become victim to complaints (censorship) from the Children's Festival, which is housed and played out in the performing arts building. The only thing that differed here was they built a wall and put up a warning sign rather than forcing the gallery to cover its window with brown paper.
When I consider what is already available to the public via tv, etc., I am always shocked at these kinds of reactions to art in public spaces. I agree with the stuff posted above re: child pageants. That comes across as way more icky and shady to me.
- anonymous (guest) 1-02-2007 12:57 am
You probably already know the story of Lyla Rye and her video "Byte" from 2002, exhibited for a short period at Eye Level Gallery. (the image of the child in the video projection on this thread is from another work of hers)
The Halifax police did seize the video, but she could have kept on sending copies to the gallery, after all, no charges were ever laid, or would be, but the police didn't want to deal with further complaints and one way of doing that was to send Children's Aid to investigate their home environment for possible evidence of child abuse. That's an effective technique that's used to coerce women in a lot of law enforcement contexts and it played very well into this instance of censorship.
- L.M. 1-02-2007 1:35 am
Yes, I was aware of about what happened with Lyla Rye and her video Byte, but, I didn't know about the police sending Children's Aid to her home!
I had a recent conversation with a friend of mine who is a mother, and in a discussion with some other women she works out with ... she had brought up seeing a birthing video (I believe it was a program on TV) and the genitals of the newborns were all blurred out. She was telling them how absurd she thought it was, while apparently they all thought it was a good idea because no risks should be taken with "all the perverts out there."
- Lissa Robinson (guest) 1-02-2007 1:54 am
Thanks for posting Lissa, and for providing clarification and background info. The Backflash decision has led to some informative and fascinating discussion, which, at least here, feels open-ended in a good way.
- sally mckay 1-02-2007 7:20 pm