Bronwyn, I agree that "a ban on adult nudes in art [should be] a different issue to the debate in question here which is about artists using photographs of child nudes". However, what I was pointing out is how both issues are part of a wowserish 'moral panic' under which anything to do with sexuality in art is apparently regarded as potentially damaging to children.

Indeed, your more obsessive cohorts like mil-observer and runner take this further and suggest that anybody who disagrees with their prudish perspectives must have paedophile tendencies - which is as offensive a position as it is plain dumb.

The controversy about Bill Henson and the subsequent 'Art Monthly' cover feeds directly into this expression of wowserism by the Tea Tree Gully Mayor:

"Ms Smith said she was also wary of recent national controversy after the magazine Art Monthly published a photograph of a naked six-year-old girl on its July cover.

This was after NSW police launched an investigation into acclaimed photographer Bill Henson, who was exhibiting portraits of young nudes."

http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,24250359-662,00.html

Here's a bit of argumentative help for Rougey (though he'd use the word "assistance" - it sounds more sophist-icated and middle class, like "sufficiently" for that tewwibly coarse word "enough")

So the following edit would have resulted had Col considered just one of the logical implications of his sweeping pretences at aesthete-idealism: "Apart from the age, assuming appropriate consent is obtained for release, what is the difference? Both children and adults have been depicted in hard core porn since people first made hard core porn. We have a few folk who seem to be obsessed in banning the creative spirit of some hard core porn because the subjects are ‘children’. When creativity is banned in any form, it makes for a poorer world. Whilst you may support making the world a poorer place, I do not"

Also, drivers of fast cars do not target children. And most people in our civilized community do not revile those who like or are good at driving fast cars. Even red herrings have more relevancy than that extra forgettable point.

I see ‘knuckles’, our resident Neanderthal, has taken to editing and rearranging what I say, instead of quoting me and making his own original statements.

Well at least he is starting from a point a reason, sure as hell, he would not have that if he relied on his own ‘creativity’.

But knuckles does not want creativity, he loathes it, someone might draw a “naughty bit” and outrage knuckles’ pet hamster….

“Also, drivers of fast cars do not target children.” no they are murderously indiscriminate, as far as that goes.

Concerning “And most people in our civilized community do not revile those who like or are good at driving fast cars.”

Obviously, the subtlety of the sentence went right over knuckles strangely prominent forehead…

maybe if her were not so obsessed with pornography, he would not see it in everything....and there would be some room, at least, for aesthetics

Col Rouge

"We have a few folk who seem to be obsessed in banning the creative spirit because the subjects are ‘children’."

I'm not advocating the banning of any creative endeavour. My point is, and has always been, that I have reservations about artists using photographs of naked children in a day and age when the same sort of photographs are being circulated in large numbers on the internet and harming many children as a result.

Besides which, I don't consider photographs to have the same creative merit as most other forms of artistic expression. Afterall, no matter what sort of reputation the artist has, deserved or otherwise, the end result is still a copy, not an original work.

I just think Henson should have shown more sensitivity and not ventured where he has, that's all. I'm not calling for bans. So jump down from your libertarian high horse.

CJ

"The controversy about Bill Henson and the subsequent 'Art Monthly' cover feeds directly into this expression of wowserism by the Tea Tree Gully Mayor.."

I see your point, but don't agree. I still think the distinction holds.

Strange, you're now making much the same type of case as I have in stating nude photos of children in art feed into the issue of nude photos circulated by paedophiles. You've argued they are two different issues, but I remain unconvinced. Now the tables are turned; you're arguing the case of a linkage, whereas I don't see it that way. I guess to some extent we all take what we want from the evidence around us and mould it to fit our own preconceptions!

"Indeed, your more obsessive cohorts ... take this further and suggest that anybody who disagrees with their prudish perspectives must have paedophile tendencies - which is as offensive a position as it is plain dumb."

While I've been impressed by a lot of what mil-observer has had to say on other threads and again here, if this is the case (and I haven't followed this particular thread all the way through) I would have to agree with you.

Nah, Hensonites miss me again by miles.

Rougy's response mostly perpetuates a pseudo-intellectual indulgence in an effort to protect unexplored argumentative positions; after all this prompting, rougey (and his mates) simply cannot go into the testing issues of art and hard core, art and human body parts, snuff art, etc.

Indeed some of my extra prompts have compared several Hensonites' responses with those irrational and fantasy-inspired claims of pedophiles. Obviously not all Hensonites make for such instructive and worrying comparison. As far as I recall, Croggon is a case in point there: clearly she falls more into the "status-anxiety" camp. My comments on rougy's pompous English suggests that as a potential "out" for him too. A related, though less committed, comment along those lines came from Barry Kosky, who expressed his own concerns based on a mystical concept of "artistic/cultural status" around Henson. Academic Donald Brook also made similar, though more articulate claims.

I do think rougy opened up by making explicit his support for "consent" around artistic kiddie porn; I prodded him and others on that matter also a while back. That consent issue was my reason for highlighting comparisons with precedent of child prostitution and its more direct and less artistic advertising media which even Hensonites may call unambiguously "child pornography". Nonetheless, such notions of "consent" too appear repeatedly in pedophiles' statements under interrogation - it's about clear impressions of argumentative or manipulative tendencies (not the alleged, more sweeping and premature claim that "anybody who disagrees...must have pedophile tendencies").

More generally however, I believe the Hensonites inadvertently invite serious scrutiny by their simplistic, cliched and unexplored recourse to "free expression" idealism and their awkward silence on my testing questions. I have read and heard several statements by convicted pedophiles offering an identical, self-righteous libertarian rationale of "free choice" when applied to sexual activity, especially in cases around that predatory criminality known as "child sex tourism".

So there you have some further substantiation and clarification for my statements here. I expect no corresponding effort from the Hensonites, who merely indulge in unqualified personal abuse with implications of class/race/breeding superiority.

Bronwyn: << ...you're arguing the case of a linkage, whereas I don't see it that way >>

I certainly don't see it that way. However, the Mayor of Tea Tree Gully evidently does, as do the wowser contingent like runner who celebrate this extension of prudishness under the cover of "what about the children".

Apparently the major area of concern is that children may have seen the artworks. They are able to be viewed with the ABC report, and any reasonable person would have to agree that they are pretty tame depictions of nude humans of a kind that is to be found in virtually any art gallery you can name.

It is precisely this kind of prudish censorship that was what originally concerned me about the hysterical and ongoing moral panic about Henson's images. Unfortunately, it seems that the wowsers have conscripted more reasonable people in their apparently successful campaign to sexualise all art portraying nude humans.

The weird thing is that none of these apparently controversial artworks (including Henson's) are pornographic - yet anybody at all with an Internet connection can download as much pornography as they like, much of which is indeed offensive and exploitative.

I predict the return of the figleaf to art galleries, while the hard core porn industry continues to thrive online.

Sigh.