mil, i've tried to treat your posts fairly. i'm sorry if you feel otherwise. but i regard your latest post as unfair, presumptuous, and not a little bit paranoid. i'm sorry, but i simply cannot see a point in composing a substantive reply.

Vanilla, well reasoned. I agree with all of your last double post, except perhaps the comments on the NSW police. But I won’t harp on them. I’ve said enough about what I think of the police action.

Bronwyn wrote:

“I think it's totally disingenuous for his supporters to argue that art is art and that artistic freedom should come before all else.”

Who has argued this? Perhaps a couple of extremists might have. But it is certainly not a widely held opinion that art is a free-for-all vehicle for any expression.

“As with all freedoms, artistic freedom should carry an equal degree of responsibility"

Of course. We now at least know that Henson’s works fall within accepted norms (or we have had this reconfirmed, as it has been the case all along up until the recent debacle). But just where the cut-off between acceptability and indecency is, we still don’t know.

As a fundamental part of this debate and legal process, we now need the DPP or someone else with authority to define just what the limits are.

Is there any indication that this is likely to happen? Or are we going to have another artist hauled over the coals for obscenity when he/she is confident that their work falls within acceptable boundaries, before the boundaries are more tightly defined?... and perhaps with that artist's career destroyed and a criminal record registered against their name.

Vanilla

"You talk about a growing unease in the art world. Can you be specific about this unease?"

I heard a regional art director being interviewed on Radio National and she referred to both her own and colleagues' unease. I didn't take any notice of her name and can't remember which program I heard it on as RN's running pretty much continuously when I'm at home. I've done a search but couldn't find it, so I'm sorry I can't be more specific. You'll just have to take me on trust on this one!

As with any group though, I'm sure those in the art world are not an entirely homogenous voice on this or any other issue. As discussions here on OLO indicate, this debate seems to split people along different fault lines to those we might normally sit along. Many who in all other circumstances would defend the rights of the artist, I think have a more nuanced view when those rights intersect with the rights of children.

"Because society — not just the elite, but people in general — are, or should learn to be, intelligent consumers of art, and emotionally and sexually sophisticated enough to discriminate between art and porn."

I’ve never claimed Henson's work to be pornographic. I just think his decision to photograph naked pubescent children is an unwise area for an artist to move into at a time when the society in which he lives is increasingly struggling to cope with problems of child abuse and the sexualization of children. I won't go over the same old ground again. You've seen my arguments before on various Henson threads and on others like the Tankard-Reist threads. You and I agree on a lot of things but this is one area where we view things differently and will just have to agree to disagree I think!

To be continued.

Vanilla (cont.)

"What Henson seeks to do is DEcommodify childhood..."

I think it can equally be argued that his work just reinforces the commodification of children. He’s using children's images to create a product from which he makes big money. No doubt a lot can be read into his work, but I don’t see how it makes any sort of statement about the dangers of commodifying childhood.

"His work is the very opposite of the premature sexualization of children..."

Again, I don't see that. I see his photos as intrusive - as moving into the personal space of a child who hasn't lived enough to fully comprehend the vulnerability of her position. I don't see his work as pornographic, but I think he has created a sexual statement just the same, however innocent or sensitive its portrayal. And because of the age of the children involved, I tend to see it as just more 'premature sexualization' rather than the 'very opposite' of it as you do.

I thought at one stage you and I had established some common ground on this issue, but I must have read too much into that at the time I think! As always though I’ve enjoyed the debate!

Ludwig

When I stated that artistic freedom, as with all freedoms, should carry an equal degree of responsibility, I meant that Henson in today’s environment should have exercised the responsibility not to venture into this area at all. I know you won’t agree with this. I guess once again we’ll have to agree to disagree!

Bronwyn, no one will establish common ground with you, because you are wrong.

Your fixation with Henson is more than disturbing. There is a female artist who is exhibiting photographs of two naked 11 year old boys in Victoria at present, but no one -particularly those most critical of Henson- has said a word about it. No one cares about all the other artists who do this (particularly the female one). The sexism is so obvious it should be waking people up a little to feminism and it's damaging doctrines that have infected thousands of women in our society.

Your constant use of the term commodification is stupid. There are thousands upon thousands of advertisements and artworks that feature children as their models. I often see this term used in an anti-capitalist manner as if somehow commercial enterprise was innately a bad thing... and then unbelievably only when it comes to Henson.

You also cite to regional people to support your claim about unease...again another fantastical exaggeration ("epidemic", "ubiquitous" etc...). Why even bother? Regional people are known to have a tendency toward idiocy. Even a former regional gallery owner however called all this hysteria at the beginning of this witch hunt.

I'm sick of hearing it, Bronwyn. You are wrong. Your ideology is wrong. Just face the fact that you have been suckered in like a fool with some powerful propaganda and reactionary activism.

Q. Vanilla: since Henson's supposed “liberation” of children from the shackles of philistine child protection, should you expect him to relinquish his profits from the enterprise? You claim that he means to “DEcommodify childhood”, but he seems to have made a nice upper-middle packet from the opposite process.

No challenge bush, you've made hardly any “substantive reply” anyway, so you never saw that point. I appreciate how your saccharine courtesies and other lip service could suit the high sleaze and base dishonesty that have continually inspired this Henson enterprise. Yes bush, Salo's honesty is so “offensive”!

However, after my substantiations above and in many posts elsewhere, I can now offer some adjectival judgements of my own...

Henson's photo work is opportunistic kitsch, stylistically echoing those black velvet paintings of Pacific island themes found in some households since the 1950s. Slightly less obvious is how Henson's style is further compromised by his derivative dependency on such precedent portraiture as Caravaggio's and Vermeer's. Such tenuous, superficial historical reference in his work offers no interesting or useful dynamic however, suggesting additionally “uninspired plagiarist” to overall impressions of “opportunist”. The banality of those aesthetic factors betrays the dishonesty of both Henson and many of his supporters. But the photo art's subject matter betrays Henson's unscrupulousness in a market where strenuously stylized poses of under-age nudity attract fanatically ardent admirers in the way excited infrastructure investors cheer state announcements of full privatization for hitherto protected assets from public domains.

I agree fully with these of bush's words though: “the henson case was never about the greatness of his art”. A perceptible core of the case was really about the mediocrity of Henson's art, and the incongruous situation where such mediocrity could be marketed, exhibited, defended so vigorously, celebrated and now, it seems, sanctified.

One disagreement, Bronwyn: I think Henson's combined cheeziness and preoccupations qualify his art as “soft kiddie porn”; Koontz and Cicciolina proved the “art/porn” binary's pointlessness.

It should be banned on social, cultural and ideological grounds. Some of our most reviled criminals perceive the whole genre as validation and encouragement.