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The Forum > Article Comments > Fearing reality: Bill Henson and the Australian wowser > Comments

Fearing reality: Bill Henson and the Australian wowser : Comments

By Binoy Kampmark, published 29/5/2008

Art exhibitions can be a hazardous business, especially in Australia. Seeing Henson’s works is bound to turn us all into drooling deviants.

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Binoy.

You have writen a load of rubbish - but you have written it well.
Posted by healthwatcher, Thursday, 29 May 2008 9:33:49 AM
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The sexual exploitation of children under the age of consent is not art.
DIS
Posted by DIS, Thursday, 29 May 2008 9:43:56 AM
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As one writer puts it 'When retailer David Jones used images of clothed under-18 models to promote their apparel offering, the Left described them as “corporate pedophiles” and were upset when the department store chain sued the lefty thinktank that published the defamatory claims.'

These same people are now making every excuse under the sun for this guy who photographs nude young girls (porn) in the name of art. What a bunch of hypocrites.

Moral relativism has achieved its goal of allowing the 'intellectual' to exploit young nude boys and girls and then excuse it. Funny how they were the first to call for Peter Hollingsworth's head, The latte left are the ultimate hypocrites.
Posted by runner, Thursday, 29 May 2008 10:29:40 AM
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A lot words not much content
I would like to think that "Art" is for the masses and not just for the chosen few. Most art lovers see different things in art.
I think that this photographer is happy when his work produces controversy, that makes his works sell. To me his art form is voyeurism and there would be quite a few who would love nothing more than seeing nude child photographs. Don't forget these pictures are now on the Internet. I was quite surprised to hear Bill Henson on the ABC explaining how his photographs are contrived and are not random in any way, somehow this made me think he is less an artist but an opportunist photographer. I feel Mr Henson should move on in his career, try something else to photograph and be the best photographer for the work and not for the shock value.
MAREE LORRAINE
Posted by MAREE LORRAINE, Thursday, 29 May 2008 10:56:06 AM
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This article is misleading. Using terms like wowsers and implying some sort of deviance on the part of the Henson detractors is the worse form of feigned indignation.

"Children are the noble savages of modern consciousness, deified, put on pedestals, and, as a result, beyond understanding. Adults are presumptively evil; children, the untarnished good”.

Sorry but this is emotive tosh. This saga is all about the sexual nature of photographs of children nothing else. It might go against your artistic sensibilities but fact is these images are sexual no matter the intention of the artist.

This reminds me of the story of the emperor with no clothes - if we pretend the sexuality isn't there, we can further go on to fool ourselves that these are just simply works of art as though art is somehow separate from the rest of culture and society.
Posted by pelican, Thursday, 29 May 2008 11:17:51 AM
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Mentioning the Hart/Devlin debate is apt. Society continues to struggle with moral questions. The comments about leftist views and corporate peadophilia are spot on - but hey, aren't we all hypocrites?

The funny thing about the latest uproar is society now seems to examine all representations of children through the eyes of the 'paedophile'.
Posted by malingerer, Thursday, 29 May 2008 11:18:11 AM
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I would like these posters to define pornography and please don't say "You know what it is when you see it"
Posted by snake, Thursday, 29 May 2008 12:38:27 PM
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malingerer: << The funny thing about the latest uproar is society now seems to examine all representations of children through the eyes of the 'paedophile'. >>

I find this to be one of the most interesting aspects of the current brouhaha. While there's certainly a large element of good old fashioned wowserism among the hysterics, others seem to be imagining how the minds of paedophiles work and demanding that the art be banned on that basis.

That is truly bizarre to this art lover.
Posted by CJ Morgan, Thursday, 29 May 2008 1:05:17 PM
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Fortunately for Bill Henson, and more generally for Australian liberty, the courts are required to apply the actual law to the actual facts rather than bow to public hysteria. A court will determine whether or not Henson's work is pornographic, and I suspect it will conclude that he is no pornographer (that is assuming the police ever get around to laying charges).

No obscenity trial has yet succeeded in Australia. Such trials invariably arise from witch hunts and are a complete distraction from the task of apprehending real child abusers, most of whom do not visit art galleries.
Posted by NorthWestShelf, Thursday, 29 May 2008 1:06:53 PM
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Far more alarming than Henson's photographs is the revelation that so many Australians see a sex object when they look at a child. Clearly, it's the censorious, paedophilic critics in this debate that need to be watched by the police, not the vanishing few who appreciate Henson's fine photography and explorations of reality.
Posted by Sancho, Thursday, 29 May 2008 1:09:38 PM
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A scholar in Cambridge, now in Philadelphia. Wonder if he’s ever been in Australia to know how ‘hysterical’ we are? And it’s funny how we have always been wowsers, but with Henson, we are “new moralists”.

The author’s Max Harris quote is quite silly – just as silly as people who say the law is an ass. People who lambast laws are invariably those who may be affected by the laws, or who have been affected by the laws. Most of us, who abide by the laws, are quite happy with them and the protection they give us and innocent children (in this case).

This author is a fool; totally out of touch with reality and common decency.

The only thing to be gained from his article is that, in runner’s comment, we see the hypocrisy of these permissive twits
Posted by Mr. Right, Thursday, 29 May 2008 1:39:01 PM
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If you think images of naked children are sexual and respond to them in that manner, then you are an admitted pedophile, by definition.
Posted by Steel, Thursday, 29 May 2008 2:48:13 PM
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Dave here
Haven't been in touch lately but just like to say this I haven't seen the photos in question but it is like this who the bloody hell would think or even consider taking photos of children of this age in the nude in the first place there is a point of stop & if we are going to set some form of morality for our young then this so called "ART" must stop before it starts but that's the point is has already started & once you open Pandoras Box then it is hard to close the lid LETS STOP THIS CRAP NOW NAKED CHILDREN IS NOT ART & THOSE THAT CONDONE IT ARE NO BETTER THAN THOSE THAT DO IT
May your Lord shine on you & your families
God Bless From
Dave
Posted by dwg, Thursday, 29 May 2008 4:00:29 PM
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Dwg, are you going to burn down the Sistine Chapel? Where are your pitchforks. It's a shame that you think a naked child will make normal people into pedophiles. Unscientific, but then you referred to God in your post didn't you? How typical.

Tell me, as these photographs are up to 25 years old and other models have precede even that, when is this pandora's box going to open? How long does it usually take?

Go get some therapy dwg.
Posted by Steel, Thursday, 29 May 2008 4:51:41 PM
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So the responsibility lies entirely with the observer and none with the artist? What a cop out. Are these photos any normal father would take of their pre-pubescent daughter to put in the family album? No hints of latent emerging sexuality, loss of innocence and all the other trite sub texts for the 'great unwashed' to be confused by or is it just a happy snap 'sans clothes'? I feel so inadequate in the presence of these liberated and enlighten souls.
Posted by thylacine, Thursday, 29 May 2008 5:22:48 PM
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Well said Steel.

A picture is only a picture until people read something into it. One person sees a kid, another person sees a sexual possibility whether for themselves or for others. Who has the sick mind?
Posted by chainsmoker, Thursday, 29 May 2008 5:23:50 PM
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It is easy to see that the porn industry has so many of our posters in bondage and that they don't even see the protection of children as a priority. Somehow they think that their right to view perversion and the degradation of men and women will somehow be threatened if they admit that Henson's work is child pornography. Don't worry folk the SBS will continue to give you your dose of perversion even if you face up to the truth. Just stop the crap and give a damn about the kids instead of your own little fetishes for a change.
Posted by runner, Thursday, 29 May 2008 5:35:28 PM
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I think the labels "left" and "leftist" here are not only counter-productive, but even more wrong because of their counter-intuitive nature in this case.

Imagine as "Great Champion of Workers" and "proletarian hero" one Malcolm Turnbull, who proudly admitted to owning a couple of Hensons precisely because of the added aura such association gives him in the eyes of his mates. Class pretensions around "art" have always been funny to watch, but more so in a post-modernist culture where the aesthetic usually takes a back seat to hitherto more extraneous matters of celebrity, publicity/marketing, means of communication and the increasingly esoteric conceptualizing for roles of viewer, viewed, etc.

This issue is essentially about commodification of people for an industry; the extent of commodification in this case is extreme, to the point where the aesthetic is almost negligible. The artist can (and I'd be unsurprised if he already has done) cite the achievement of eliciting reaction, getting people to debate issues, etc. Then he can return to organizing the next transfer to his account from people like Turnbull.

Henson's product reminds me of plastinated human cadavers (also much promoted by ultra-liberalist organ SBS). Such are the western world's supposedly "high values placed on human life" i.e., a commodity maybe $5-$20 per corpse, or $500 per soft kiddie porn photo shoot (with "enlightened" parents' consent).

Meanwhile, workers like myself and workmates figure out how to lynch the predators who wish that most of us become so disempowered, impoverished and degraded that the masters of cultural degeneracy more easily direct pressure - even on our children - to become their consumer items. Africa, Southeast Asia, Latin America and the Pacific Islands have witnessed much of this commerce-based mentality.
Posted by mil-observer, Thursday, 29 May 2008 7:04:21 PM
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If this is all the cultural elites can find to rabbit on about,then they are way out of touch.

Would you like your 12 yr old daughter to pose naked for Bill Hanson with the subsequent exposure on an art gallery wall?Would Bill do this to his own daughter?I most certainly would not.

Children of this age do not need adults imposing on their developing sexuality.It is their space and let them find their own way which is usually a lot more conservative than letcherous,lascivious adults.
Posted by Arjay, Thursday, 29 May 2008 7:37:59 PM
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If it is in a clear plastic wrapper and under the counter for $2.50 its porn.

If its behind clear glass in a frame on a gallery wall and costs $25,000.00, then its art.

As for the Sistine Chapel, is anyone seriously suggesting that young children posed with wings hung from a ceiling for the Michelangelo to copy? The cherubs were creatures of the imagination.

The models in Henson's photos are not creatures of the imagination. They are real, flesh and blood.

Henson's supporters have to ask themselves, would they be comfortable with someone taking photographs of their children on a beach, perhaps topless, without their permission and then puts those photos on the www and calling it art?

Because that is what Henson is doing, he is taking those photos without permission, as someone under 16 cannot give informed consent, and in the same way that parents cannot give consent to someone having sex with their under-aged children, neither can they give consent for these photographs to be taken.
Posted by Hamlet, Friday, 30 May 2008 12:04:20 AM
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How about some consistancy from all you anti-art, anti paedophilia experts.

You should join a chorus to ban 'Candide' the book by Voltaire.

It details explicitly a sexual intercourse between a man and a 12 year-old girl.

Let's hear it now! Where is your outrage?
Posted by keith, Friday, 30 May 2008 9:25:53 AM
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Comparison with the sistine chapel and other rennaissance works by some posters is hardly appropriate. 14 was quite an acceptable age to be married at that time - but not now. Michelangelo also thumbed it to the Church on a number of occasions, being deliberately provocative with highly sexualised images. Added to that is the knowledge that many Church clergy including Popes happily indulged in their own sexual antics, and church clergy were not beyond favouring young girls and boys. But by using adolescents Henson crosses to the grey zone. If he seeks to challenge our perceptions and boundaries, then he has achieved his aim, and as with all that push at boundaries he must be prepared to take the rap for doing so.
Posted by Country Gal, Friday, 30 May 2008 9:36:29 AM
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Those defending Henson's right to photograph unclothed children seem to be viewing this through the prism of an old fashioned obscenity trial. But it's a more modern argument about child protection and children's rights.

May I mention I've enjoyed life drawing of the nude at a well-established art school, and do not object to the nude in art. But I am also involved in a child protection related field and so am attuned to arguments about child safety. I imagine a'gentleman', so inclined, could attend photography classes at the art school, and for $500 improve the artistic qualities of their shots. Such a 'gentleman' might then produce some very artistically rendered child pornography. Given financial incentives, there would certainly be people willing to allow their children to be subjects.

While Mr Henson's intentions may be honourable, it would be even more honourable of him to acknowledge the problem.

Here's another way to think about it: when priests are caught with unclothed children, the church is no longer able to say - 'but he is a man of God! His love of children is deeply spiritual!'

If a fellow at the the local good ol' boys football club has harmed a minor, it is no longer acceptable for the club members to cry, 'but he is a good chap! one of us! part of the team!

Dear old art world, you must see sense - the times have changed.

I walk my sweet-natured spaniel through the park where there is a children's playground. The sign says dogs must stay on leash, but I know my spaniel wouldn't hurt a child. He's a softy. Nonetheless I don't demand an exemption. The law is designed to protect the public from dangerous dogs & I'm willing to abide by it for the sake of the greater good. Quite likely Henson is a decent fellow who wouldn't intentionally harm a child or promote their exploitation. But it's reasonable that he should abide by the law for the sake of the greater good
Posted by Miss Bennet, Friday, 30 May 2008 10:03:52 AM
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I don't think that Henson's photographs--those I have seen, anyway--are intended to titillate. I don't think that you can reasonably read into them such an intention. Thus I don't think that they are pornographic.

But they do involve an invasion of privacy. If I took a picture of a naked adult and displayed it in an art gallery without the subject's consent, that would be an invasion of privacy. 12 and 13 year-olds are not able to give informed consent to being photographed and having their photos displayed--they have not yet an understanding of consequences, and insufficient experience for them to be given such an understanding.

Parents are not entitled to consent either--the basis of parents' rights is their obligations to provide for the good of the child. They are not entitled to waive their children's rights.

I think—but I am not yet sure—that the implication is that adults may consent to the display of photographs taken when they were younger; but young people cannot. Henson’s photographs should be kept private until he receives informed adult consent.

Sometimes there are purposes so serious they clearly override the child's right to privacy. The famous photo during the Vietnam War of a child victim of napalm bombing for instance brought home to people the reality of what was being done.

There are also family photographs of naked infants, taken with a mixture of delight and amusement, and kept in photograph albums. I can’t see anything wrong with that.

For those of us who don’t think that Henson’s photographs are not pornographic, the question is whether the purposes of art, and of this are in particular, are of such importance that they override the child’s right to privacy. Do the entitle him to take the pictures but not to display them till he receives adult consent? Or do they entitle him to display them right away? I’d be glad of comment.
Posted by ozbib, Friday, 30 May 2008 11:14:13 AM
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If Kevin Rudd was serious about addressing child abuse in Australia, why hasn’t he appointed a Children’s Commissioner and called for a royal commission into this insidious exploitation of innocence in our society? With so many incidences of abuse to children having occurred in state sanctioned care, Rudd and his government bear moral responsibility to first and foremost for redressing these iniquities. In choosing instead to deflect his outrage about abuse onto Bill Henson’s art, the Prime Minister has shown political cowardice and his own determination to avoid taking responsibility for a system which has and continues to fail to protect Australia’s children.

Jane Rankin-Reid
Posted by Jane RR, Friday, 30 May 2008 2:41:44 PM
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The debate has certainly been strong and polarised around the Henson images. I personally don't think the images are pornographic or that they should be censored. I do think though that maybe the art community could put some informal protections in for themselves and the models.

I don't think it would be a huge ask for the photographic artists using underage models to store the images taken, until the model is of adult age to sign off on release. I don't think a 13 year old could have their heads around the consequences. This would mean if the models were uncomfortable about what happened back then, a degree of control could be given back to them. They wouldn't always be faced with the image which in the case of Henson's models become famous.

There have been legal questions raised about the rights of parents to consent to their child being used as a model and that the child might be able to sue the artist if they claimed harm from being used as a model as an adult. Holding off on releasing the images until they had adult consent would offer some protection to the artist.

Some might see this as a infringement on artistic rights but the reality is, it's vulnerable humans that are being used as models here not puppies. The teenage years can be turbulent anyway so why turn up the heat on the kids when if it's really good art, it will still be good when the child is an adult to fully consent to the images release.
Posted by JL Deland, Saturday, 31 May 2008 7:21:17 AM
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As an artists adult nude model I know that the job is hard work. Nude modelling for photography makes the role more difficult because an individual is recognizable and the very nature of photography. It is because of person identification that “many professional artists models prefer not to pose for photographic artists” Anon the Symposium discussion, Bay Area Models Guild, California 24th June 2004. Photographic artist’s childmodels are not mere props but are working accomplices in the creative process.

Children have‘laboured’ for Bill Henson’s art in an area of work that adult nude models generally choose not to do. So why would child nude models work in an area that professional artist models shy away from?

How much were the child/children paid for their work and who negotiated their pay conditions? What were their working conditions and were they properly informed of the work required?

The Convention on the Rights of the Child recognizes the right of
the child to be protected from economic exploitation and from performing any work that is
likely to be hazardous or to interfere with the child's education, or to be harmful to the
child's health or physical, mental, spiritual, moral or social development.

And whilst one young woman in her thirties believes that it had no damaging affect upon her can she really speak for herself as a child in the past? does she speak for all of the child nude models?

History is awash with examples of so called ‘high art’ exploiting children, we need only look at the barbaric practice of castration for the purposes of the castrati aesthetic which in one year alone mutilated 4,000 boys for the purposes of a musical fashion. Profit by the castrati singing for the elite through the sexual mutilation of young boys is much the same as profit through the fashion of exploiting children through employment as nude photographic models in that it is a fashion of the time. The elitist high art card ignores the very real issue of exploitation of child labour where professional artist nude models generally steer well clear of
Posted by think, Saturday, 31 May 2008 4:09:37 PM
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think, you are using equivocation. Look it up, because it's extremely disingenuous to try to suggest nude modelling is "child labour".

Also, I want a link to this document as I believe the context is very important (you are leaving it out of course). In fact, your highly discrete reference to it without any provision or attentiveness to the context is extremely suspicious. it begs so many questions:
-the guild 'rules and codes'?
-what artists/type of work do/do not pose for?
-ratio of guild models who said this?
-what do models not part of the guild do (far more numerous and not so flawed statistically)?
-who are the clients? for example, are they religious (America is extremely puritanical compared with other countries)?
-were the models religious?

The Convention on the Rights of the Child, indicates that religion should not be taught to children as it by definition it constitutes much of that harm. I hope you are not religious, otherwise you are abusing your child. :)

think>"can she really speak for herself...? does she speak for all of the child nude models?"

How do you exactly presume to speak for her and her parents? Don't you find that an outrageuos presumption? I certainly do. Would you let me speak for you and the models in that guild?

think>"History is awash with examples of so called ‘high art’ exploiting children"

This is misleading. History is awash with SOCIETY exploiting children. This includes parents, teachers, religious, capitalists etc...In fact no sector of society at all did not exploit children.

think>" The elitist high art card ignores the very real issue of exploitation of child labour where professional"

So a parent and child who consent to modelling for art is "child labour" that is "exploitative"? This premise more than anything shows you are a hardcore christian/socialist/fascist.

Try again, when you engage in less sophistry to make your points.
Posted by Steel, Saturday, 31 May 2008 5:36:10 PM
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A handy argument, steely: leave thin argumentation with some loaded name-calling for a critical commentator ;)

The "Pandora's Box" here is Liberalism or, at least, what passes for it today (perhaps termed more accurately "Neo-Liberalism").

As I understand it, the cult pushes the idea that some mythical stuff called "market forces" ultimately determine what is good and bad. By such measures, poor and deluded people can sell body parts to pay for study, sell the service of their artificially impregnated wombs as a kind of job, enter prostitution as a legitimized "industry", or even - in that publicized case in Germany - arrange to transact their corpse for cannibal consumption. As recent news has shown, incest too can be rendered a legitimate activity in the minds of some adults used to the ideology of "anything goes, so long as you can pay".

Any average intellect can see that underpinning all such bizarre notions of "freedom" is an artificial order or authority of monetarist value, where the arithmetic of currency becomes God. Abstracted out of the equation is human potential and its interaction with our physical world. Human life thereby lose so much of its value, but also much sense of its true potential.

I think Pasolini's film "Salo" is a useful pointer here. "Salo" (after de Sade's text) depicts how truly "Fascist" values and aesthetics impose their will on subjects by the currency of their class power or currency. The film illustrates the implications of earlier Nietzschean rants i.e., "If it's new, different morality you want, here's how easy it is to do, and here's what can happen!" But "Salo" has been banned and re-banned for Australian adults, because (I guess) of its depictions of exploitative treatment of minors - and despite the film's strong, non-gratuitous and actually moralistic message.

To attempt some balance, maybe a raid is due on Turnbull's collection?
Posted by mil-observer, Saturday, 31 May 2008 6:05:12 PM
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I have only seen the photographs taken by Mr Hensen incidentally, whilst looking through such news sites as The Age, News and ABC News. I found the ones that I saw to be disturbing, and the poses were very similar to those used by such mainstream 'soft' porn magazines as Man Magazine back in the late 1960s early 1970s, to the extent that I wonder how much Mr Henson was affected by those magazines. He is of the right age to have been exposed to them.

If Man Magazine was soft core porn, meant to titillate back in the 1960s, what is the difference now? If an adult woman posing naked (even when 'demour') in a black and white photo was porn back in the 1960s, why isn't an underage girl in a similar pose in 2008 considered as porn? Or was Playboy in the 1960s really an art magazine?

But I will ask a question.

I have not curb crawled the internet to find these images, but those of you who have may be able to answer this.

Mr Henson's pinup model-like photos are images of very slim pubescence girls, with some similarly aged boys. The figures are very slim, almost as anorexic as the models so beloved of fashionistas who use their models are canvasses for their so-called art, but which could never be worn by a mature woman.

Is Mr Henson contributing to the 'anorexic' as beauty ideal or not?

Is this encouragement of an unrealistic shape also a form of child abuse?
Posted by Hamlet, Saturday, 31 May 2008 9:40:39 PM
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Hamlet dude: I think that it is abuse - at least indirectly - of everyone who has to work and sacrifice themselves so that these self-styled purveyors of parasitic "refinement" keep feeling smug, pampered and beyond responsibility to any collective values for compassion, hope and other truly high regard for human life.

There should be serious busts here, and Turnbull has all but placed crosshairs on his own properties. I'd be glad to do it, just need the warrant, cuffs and a Glock. Second thoughts, probably need a decent-sized team too, given such circles means for hiring plenty of thugger proxies and professional sophists/lawyers.

I don't expect any of our apparatchiks now have the gonads to take action though.
Posted by mil-observer, Sunday, 1 June 2008 4:41:32 AM
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One has to wonder whether Cate Blanchett would allow Bill Henson to capture, in photographic art form, the defining moment of sexual changes, of her babies body and genitals into a toddler, and from toddler into a little boy, and set it up at an art gallery.

Would this be art Cate?
Posted by Suebdootwo, Sunday, 1 June 2008 2:22:06 PM
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I have no doubt that Henson's photographs are art... his forms with these figures that i have seen are mono-gender...boys look like girls...girls look like boys, where he says he sometimes photographs pre-pubescent adolescents for their "humanity and vulnerability"...... of youth untainted, without the infection of sexual awareness or development ..... which can only really be found in pre-pubescent children. The irony of all this for Henson is that here we see him as anti-sexual, anti-paedophilic and anti-pornographic as you can get.

The history of Western art is quite full of nudity in drawing, painting and sculpture expressing humanist ideas. A good example that comes to mind is Donatello's somewhat pre-pubescent sculpture of David that helped bring out the apocalyptic wrath of Savonarola with his Bonfire of the Vanities. Cripes, humanist ideas bring out calls associated with moral laxity. We now have our own Savonarolas.

Because Henson is a photographer, the controversial issue is not with the end product artworks, but the process involved in creating the artworks. I am not privy to this process and I suggest neither is Rudd and just about everyone else. If i was asked at thirteen to be one of his models i would be inclined to see it as anything but abuse but among others an issue of trust.

I suggest that Rudd take a good look at our ABC if he is concerned about exploitation and abuse of young minds. e.g. ...
http://www.abc.net.au/science/planetslayer/greenhouse_calc.htm

This “Professor Schpinkee’s Greenhouse Calculator" is an inexorable and schemingly designed piece of propaganda targeting young impressionable minds.
Posted by Keiran, Monday, 2 June 2008 9:00:00 AM
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Yet another example of a media beat up and rush to judgement by no less than our own prime minister. Has Mr Rudd seen the offending images?

Whether YOU consider the viewing of nude pubescent teenagers as art or pornography is probably irrelevent as it is mainly in the mind of the viewer. For example, would you react in the same way if the work were by a doctor, nurse or trainer and/or made available for public viewing.

Can we really expect the law to adjudicate on what Bill Henson may or may not have been thinking about and should we speculate on why anybody would wish to view his work in a public gallery.

This whole debacle must surely be confusing and embarrassing to the model involved and I can hardly imagine she would wish to identify herself in a public courtroom, especially if the action were to fail.

It also appears that many us are not afraid to be photographed nude in a public place for the sake of art and sanity.
Posted by tassiedevil, Monday, 2 June 2008 11:20:35 AM
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I guessed earlier that Renaissance subjects, including Savonarola, would pop up in this discussion: I was brainwashed by the same cult(ure), hence it's predictability. I am also unsurprised that our culture's adversarial English legal system has reduced and displaced the issue via a simplistic binary asking whether Henson's work is “art” or “pornography”.

Part of my youth's brainwashing too involved the nebulous concept "Humanism", an actually strange and funny term meant to be warm and fuzzy. If we scrape off the term's lustre, we can see that it's just a kind of branding. Ever seen a (still) working-class person described as "a great humanist", for example? Does it mean someone: steeped in classicism ("classicist"); humanitarian (ditto); concerned with the "human condition" (so many "isms" there)? No, "humanism" seems more a cloak meant to accord a subject vaguely positive notions of learning, compassion, artistic refinement and “cultured” status. But the term's usage actually dissipates substantial debate about whether there is truly a high value on human life in the “humanist” pursuit or person under examination.

As with Greer's article in today's SMH and its simpleton “art/porn” binary, comparisons with the Renaissance are quite irrelevant, but such imagery is perhaps the heaviest weaponry in the ideological arsenal that forms our secular cult of western supremacism. While the period is known properly (and definitively) for restoring knowledge lost since Greco-Roman civilization, what is forgotten are the period's brutalities and injustices - especially those against women, children and the poor. But Germaine and her acolytes seem to have no problem with that sort of thing, because they're OK thank you, and never on the receiving end of it.

Perhaps Henson should be stripped naked, with suitable lighting effects for chiarascuro accentuation of any “youthful vulnerability” he may have, then let punters jeer and hurl rotten produce at him. If times get harder for us great unwashed, underpaid and humiliated workers, they'll want to use live ammunition.

And why so little debate over the banning of Pasolini's “Salo”? Perhaps because that work gets to the rotten, very political core of this issue?
Posted by mil-observer, Monday, 2 June 2008 11:59:59 AM
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Kevvy the artist on Henson says ........
"I find them absolutely revolting," he told the Nine Network.

"I gave my reaction, I stand by that reaction and I don't apologise for it and I won't be changing it. I am passionate about children having innocence in their childhood," Mr Rudd told reporters.

Now Kevvy go to ....... where quite clearly we see the deceitful corruption of the truth in the name of science and your education revolution at work.
http://www.abc.net.au/science/planetslayer/greenhouse_calc.htm

Now I don't know if people have been to this ABC's “Professor Schpinkee’s Greenhouse Calculator" but please do and find out your carbon quota and when you should DIE.

Isn't this terrorizing and brainwashing children to advance a political agenda .... a la the Hitler youth?

Isn't this like the Nazis where the first objective of the ABC is to dehumanize their enemies by depicting them as sub-human, or in this case “Greenhouse Pigs”.

OR try various calculations on the cost to the state of a mentally ill patient.
OR once you have dehumanized a group, genocide becomes so much easier.

OR is it money and how much you donate to the church of Global Warming?

This ABC disgrace is more than being passionate about children having innocence in their childhood because it instructs a young mind when you should die, that you are not welcome to this world, that you are a burden until you die, that we are all guilty of this carbon sin, that you have quotas like when you use all the coupons in this book, then we kill you.
Posted by Keiran, Monday, 2 June 2008 6:40:55 PM
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Fine points of protest in isolation, Keiran.

But just stay on topic please, or at least digress only to make a general point. Your points are spurious and, therefore, wasted.
Posted by mil-observer, Monday, 2 June 2008 7:38:09 PM
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Nil-observer, my comment is very much on topic if you are discussing the topic of children having innocence in their childhood as passionate Kevvy "education revolution" Rudd repeatedly points out. However, a person with a perspective as narrow as your crosshairs on a glock and as shallow as dishwater when it comes to understanding art, artists and the art community, will follow aggressively a pre-emptive censorship out of ignorance.

When our Prime Minister condemns Mr Henson and his art he does untold damage to our cultural reputation and definitively, it is no way to
build a creative Australia that is crucial to the healthy functioning of our democracy. We get the same message from Mr Rudd when it comes to science. i.e. ignorance, superstition and aggression.

The ABC's “Professor Schpinkee’s Greenhouse Calculator" should represent the warning sign that there is something rotten to the core with its deceitful corruption of the truth whilst masquerading as honest science. This terrorizing and brainwashing of children to advance a political agenda a la the Hitler youth is nothing short of disgraceful. There is no moral purpose nor education revolution to be found at the ABC where Rudd is expected to have a definite responsibility.

Nil-observer, there are plenty of "champs" out there but the difference between champ and chump is U. The point here is that we will never have politicians or scientists or artists of substance, integrity and intellect unless the public have the same.
Posted by Keiran, Tuesday, 3 June 2008 12:51:17 PM
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Well K, I meant to actually endorse your other concerns, though redirecting them to more receptive venues. But I suppose it's always useful too provoking some personal invective and class-based condescension along the way; helps us know who we're dealing with, but I have to inform you that your implicit claims to an aesthete's depth and sensitivity are, for me, quite underwhelming.

No K, this discussion is not really guided by "the topic of children having innocence in their childhood...passionate Kevvy", etc., as you have assumed. It's Henson's art, and the writer's prods into "wowserism" and the alleged depravity Henson's work represents. Rudd's rhetoric is the usual soundbite guff we expect from that office, so I was disappointed you decided to treat the PM/Top Dawg's comments as deserving precedence here. But that would be your preoccupation, probably because you respect hierarchy too much. Also, I suspect you have serious misgivings about whether ALP bosses have the right credentials of postcode and private school; if so, don't worry, they usually come from the same circles as the more avowedly liberalist petals like yourself and other self-proclaimed "art aficionados". More pointedly, the "Henson Art" and "ABC Science" issues amount to quite separate categories of relevancy if it's several paragraphs of your forum text we're considering.

My personal perspective mainly covers concern for my young daughters and how to ensure that they do not succumb to the many aggressive pressures of our culture's various species of opportunistic predator. I've seen how impressionable they are with their age and natural curiosity, so I treat the Henson issue as so very important (and infuriating) precisely because of the Brahmin-like authority our culture accords the “high art” scene by virtue of its upper-middle class status, privileges and carefree presumptions of exceptional rights to determine trends, including those in common understanding about morality.

Yeah, your mentions of Nazis and Hitler Youth are wonderfully emotive. But examine that era's own aesthetics of pedophilia (and objectification, including homoeroticism) to understand instructive parallel notions of “degeneracy” for this case. Oh, and watch Pasolini's “Salo”...
Posted by mil-observer, Tuesday, 3 June 2008 4:40:39 PM
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mil-observer>"My personal perspective mainly covers concern for my young daughters and how to ensure that they do not succumb to the many aggressive pressures of our culture's various species of opportunistic predator."

This argument is purely one of fear and irrational. It's established that most abuse is within the family. Right there you show how ill-prepared you are, because you assume society is "doing something bad" to your child.

Secondly, you must give consent for their pictures to be taken, and they also must consent (but that is apparently optional at present because people like you assert they are unable to consent...in that case, how would you determine their approval of your consent if you were to give it on their behalf?).

Also, as a parent YOU have the responsibility to prepare them for society. Changing soceity so it protects them is extremely lazy and abusive to other adults whose rights you are infringing to produce your safety bubble.

You my friend, are a gullible fool and irresponsible as your analysis of 'threat' is incorrect and disingenuous.
Posted by Steel, Tuesday, 3 June 2008 5:16:48 PM
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Hmmm, more name-calling and other abuse. Once again, Steely aims his can of Ironic Aid spray 90 degrees away from the target. Either I didn't explain my fears properly, or steely misunderstood my previously expressed concerns about “commodification” and “value for human life”.

Clearly then, steely presumes that my fears for my daughters are all tabloid-induced “rock spider” paranoia: 10 points for condescending, presumptuous, and kneejerk abusiveness, with bonus gold star for undertones of snobbery (hostility and scathing judgementalism towards worker with family, presumptuousness about tabloid consumption) Yeeaah ;-).

Intensive objectification of children has many destructive effects, hence my term “our culture's various species of opportunistic predator”. Steely missed it completely, preoccupying himself instead with rock-spiders and incest-daddies. My concern is how such commodification of children, especially when sanctified by “high culture” brahmins, makes it more acceptable to abuse not only children, but all of us, and in so many ways, whether by ripping us off at work, in the wider market, the bureaucracy, the law, and so on.

Of course, some always claim that art merely reflects the wider society, and I don't pretend that a remote vacuum produced the neoliberalist creepiness that I perceive in Henson or his willing (let's say “aspirational”) victims. But “Changing society so it protects [one's kids] is extremely lazy and abusive to other adults...”?! Not exactly steeltrap reasoning, steely.

And “lazy” protectionism? It's very hard work trying to change society to protect kids. For a more extreme test of Steely's view, if the society is blatantly cannabilistic should WE be steely-responsible and “prepare them” with say a spicy batter? And for society's occasional war – including its criminally aggressive types - should I be “responsible” by preparing my kids to become complicit, indiscriminate invaders and cannon fodder? Just a bit closer examination and you look like a real toadying sickoe, steely.

[Maybe in this forum I should've kept quiet about being a worker. Gawd, haven't met so many pompous snobs since I accidentally walked through a young liberals' booze-up. This is what passes for Australia's arts-supporters and freethinkers now?]
Posted by mil-observer, Tuesday, 3 June 2008 8:08:46 PM
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Commodification sounds a lot like communist.... it's an anti-capitalist, anti-materialist term used to hoodwink well-meaning citizens into thinking about society as evil in nature and increase oppression/authoritarianism in the name of "protection". I do not see the reason for such terms unless that is the agenda.

>"Intensive objectification"

As in intensive farming [of children]? Is that what you are trying to suggest?

mil-observer>"10 points for condescending, presumptuous, and kneejerk abusiveness, with bonus gold star for undertones of snobbery "

That is a good description of your own comment.

>"It's very hard work trying to change society to protect kids."

I think it's very easy actually. That is why you have the over-used slogan, "Protect the children" or "Someone think of the children" (at the expense not the adults). When it comes to children, people can be moved about as much as the thread of terrorism. Completely irrationally, it doesn't even have to make sense. That's why the communications minister Stephen Conroy invoked child pornography in the hope of silencing criticism from both sides of politics on his Chinese ISP censorship/filtering scheme.
Posted by Steel, Wednesday, 4 June 2008 12:45:16 AM
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Mil, when you say the issue is ... "It's Henson's art, ..... " we are merely narrowing perception to a finite commodity with the shallow, process-free, apocalyptic wrath of the Savonarolas. i.e. The matter is settled and non-debatable. This is precisely the democratic deficit that represents the hollowing out of the central processes of democratic life.

I would comment that we have evolved long ago from this frozen-in mindset by offering just a great deal more spirit which is where intelligence evolves. Our spirit implies intelligence, consciousness and sentience. If we consider that we live in co-evolution with what our brains produce then our greatest potential lies in better learning how to learn where the true diversity is diversity of thought, of perspective and of creativity. Rather than assuming that our minds are like savings banks that we or someone else, just make bland deposits to, we need to actively find true diversity which includes an ability to adopt a framework of perspectives that can be inquiring, analytical, critical and evaluative. That is why we have art and science because they raise difficult, sometimes unanswerable questions about who we are and where we are going.

The measure of a society in anyone's value system would place significant emphasis on the core public institutions, places, public procedures and processes important for maintaining and deepening public trust for ensuring active, participatory democracy that enrich our public life at the local, national and global levels.

In Australia we need public debate whether prompted by the Henson exhibition or issues of science like AGW. Open public debate is welcome and important but our pathetic media and politicians rely on spin doctoring and how best to use the news to deceive the public into giving their fascist groups more money or more power.
Posted by Keiran, Wednesday, 4 June 2008 10:05:29 AM
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