A bunch of controversy has erupted recently in Australia over the work of artist Bill Henson, whose exhibition at the Roslyn Oxley gallery has been the target of police raids over his shadowy depictions of young adolescents with not many clothes on.
I really don’t know how I feel about his work, but I do know that he’s been working on similar themes for decades and until now hasn’t caused an explosion of outrage. I know that I am disappointed by Kevin Rudd’s public reaction against the work:
“I find them absolutely revolting… Kids deserve to have the innocence of their childhood protected. I have a very deep view of this. For God’s sake, let’s just allow kids to be kids… 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.”
Myself, I find the pictures a little creepy, and think it would be foolish to try to pretend that these images aren’t about adolescent sexuality and even occasionally titillating– Perhaps the issue is that they aren’t de-sexualized enough?
It all poses an interesting question: is it ever ok to publish photographs of naked kids? When I first added the image above it was without the nipple-blocking squares, but to be honest it was kind of creeping me out (and I didn’t want to risk problems with my ISP) so I went ahead and censored it. Even the newspaper article linked at the top of the page published it intact, so I’m more of a wowser/prude than I realized– and look, by censoring the image I have in fact made it dirty; it’s no longer art when black bars appear!
When good people with good intentions (ie protecting children) start yelling about this stuff it’s hard not to wonder where the line can be drawn between the artistic and the criminal. Personally I don’t think Henson should be charged… and as long as only nice people look at his work in nice ways I guess I have no problem with what he does. Even if creepy pervs now flock to his exhibitions (they won’t) in order to catch a glimpse of the occasional pubescent tit, it’s still a long way from conventional child pornography in that these works are created with the blessing of the subjects and their parents.
Of course porn could created with similar consent… so… I guess it’s both the consent and the intention that matter. But what if the intention is, say, to create a serious work about the sexualization of children by photographing them in overtly erotic situations…?
Obviously I have no frakking clue where I stand on this… but I know criminal prosecution is really inappropriate in a case like this (logically they would also implicate curators and collectors everywhere for providing a “market” for this alleged exploitation).
Related: Lock up Lewis Carroll
