There's a giant disconnect between the arts community and the legislative assembly of Australia, and it comes down to one stupid thing. When the arts community see a naked person in a work of art, they see a nude. As such, they respond to the work in relationship to all the other nudes in history - and there is a mighty long history - and ponder its aesthetic merits.The elected officials of this land see a naked person and think it is borderline obscene, and then if they see the person is a under 18, they see 'the sexualisation of children'. It truly is a case of Art being in the eye of the beholder. Whether it is the Bill Henson pictures last month or this time, Olympia Nelson's photos of her daughter this month, the same concern for protecting children runs through the diatribe coming out of our politicians.
Again, I can't state this enough that I personally believe that children should be protected, but I cannot and will not concede that a policeman or a politician is better fit to assess whether a work is pornographic or not. We have the censorship/classification board for that (and that is bad enough but I concede it is a necessary evil). So it disturbs me greatly that the politicians want to have it out with artists over this issue.
THE girl at the centre of the latest controversy over child nudity in art said yesterday that she was "really, really offended" at comments by the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, that he "cannot stand" the naked image of her, aged six, on the cover of an art magazine.Oh dear. Is that really Mr. Peter Garrett, formerly of Midnight Oil saying it is 'needlessly provocative'? Well we know one thing for sure now: Midnight Oil and everything they stood for was phony and bullshit. What the hell would the younger Peter Garrett have said if say, Bob Hawke or Paul Keating had condemned his band as being 'needlessly provocative'? It's a joke and a very bad joke at that. he would have thundered "Piss Off" and that would have been his belligerent position of choice. Now that he's the Minister for the Arts, he's turned into this moralising turd - which goes to show how shallow his artistic commitment to his craft and causes were in the first place. I feel nauseous from the disgust. Peter Garrett, you are the worst hypocrite. It should be your job as a practitioner in the arts to stand up for the artist, not to bury them.
At the same time the Opposition leader, Brendan Nelson, described the use of her picture as "a two-fingered salute to the rest of society".
Olympia Nelson, now 11, appears naked on the cover of Art Monthly Australia in a photo taken when she was six by her mother, Polixeni Papapetrou, a Melbourne photographer.
Speaking to the media outside her home yesterday alongside her father, the art critic Robert Nelson, Olympia said she was "really really offended" at Mr Rudd's comments that he could not stand the image of her.
But the federal Minister for Families, Jenny Macklin, joined the chorus condemning the pictures yesterday, saying children were being sexualised in ways that robbed them of a childhood.
The federal Minister for Arts, Peter Garrett, who has described the publication of the photos as "needlessly provocative", said the Government would call on the Australia Council to devise a set of protocols addressing the use of images of children in art and publications that receive government funding.
It gets worse:
But Olympia Nelson said she loved the photo used on the cover of the arts journal in protest at the recent furore over the work of the photographer Bill Henson. "It is one of my favourites, if not my favourite photo, my mum has ever taken of me, and she has taken so many photos of me," she said.This is so idiotic, Dr. Nelson should shut up before he loses more credibility in the eyes of the public. The only person who would be disturbed by the screen-saver using this image would be the person who looks at it and sees child porn instead of art. And yes, that's th very definition of a wowser, Dr. Nelson.
"I think that the picture my mum took of me had nothing to do with being abused, and I think nudity can be a part of art.
"I'm really, really offended by what Kevin Rudd had to say about this picture."
Dr Nelson said he would ask the police to investigate the use of the picture of Olympia Nelson and added that it warranted a review of classification laws.
Dr Nelson said he was no wowser, but "the use and sexualisation of children in this way is indefensible, whether in the name of art, parental consent or political protest".
"If you were sitting on a bus and the person next to you turned on their laptop and this was the screensaver, you would be very concerned. What these people have done in this publication and using the photographs of this child in this way is send a two-fingered salute to the rest of society."
Dr Nelson said parental consent was inconsequential.
"Once consent for use of a child in this way has been given, it can never be taken back."
A spokesman for the Australian Federal Police said yesterday that it had received no referral over the images.
But it was the context in which the photographs were published alongside other more disturbing sexual images in the magazine that needed to be taken into account, said the director of Women's Forum Australia, Melinda Tankard Reist.
"The little girl is in there along with bondage images, including one of a Japanese schoolgirl in school uniform trussed up in rope while another image shows an adult woman also trussed up, with breasts and genitals exposed."
Ms Tankard Reist said it was hard to talk about art restoring dignity when another image in the magazine showed a woman being fellated by an octopus.
Dr. Nelson would win more points if he stood with the artists. Of course he likes to pose with the artists but he won't stand up for their freedom of expression - instead he's lining up with the conks to put the boot in. So much for the trendy poser with the ear ring.
Now, I understand there's a gap, and that both sides want it to be buried conveniently in some wonderful stroke of the spin doctor's advice. Well, life is a whole lot more complicated than that, and that is exactly where the artist comes in. There won't be any easy answers to this, and there won't be a solution unless the politicians stop trying to be censors.
In the mean time the hysteria is getting out of hand. I don't know why more artists and writers are not speaking up about this. It's always been the case that one person's obscenity is another person's art. If you let the wowsers take down a photographer who took a picture of her daughter, then who is to say they won't come after you next for your political views or *gasp* your artistic views?
No comments:
Post a Comment