A display due to go on show to the public at Tate Modern tomorrow has been withdrawn after a warning from Scotland Yard that the naked image of actor Brooke Shields aged 10 and heavily made up could break obscenity laws.With a bit of Googling, no doubt, I could see the image for myself and decide what I think of it. But I am writing this in an internet cafe and don't want to create the wrong impression.
As Heresy Corner's posting on Roman Polanski has brought home to me, artists are not above the law. If the image is obscene under the current law then it should not be shown.
However, it is worth pointing out that if it is illegal to show pictures of naked children then the police will have to raid every art gallery in Europe. Nor, incidentally, has the media's current nervousness about showing pictures of children at all done anything to reverse their sexualisation in wider society. Quite the reverse, I would argue.
But what really struck me was a comment later in the report from an office in the Met:
Officers from the obscene publications unit met with staff at Tate Modern … The officers have specialist experience in this field and are keen to work with gallery management to ensure that they do not inadvertently break the law or cause any offence to their visitors."Not cause offence to their visitors? It often seems that the sole purpose of modern art is épater la bourgeoisie. And that visitors go along to galleries for the sole purpose of being epatered. So that is hardly a good reason for withdrawing this exhibit.
More than that, the left-wing notion that there exists a right not to be offended now seems to have been taken up by the police. I suppose they know a good repressive ideology when they see one.
4 comments:
I wouldn't Google for it at all - if it is illegal (and it probably is) then merely downloading it out of curiosity is a crime and would leave you open to prosecution.
There's more in this story:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/culturenews/6248757/Brooke-Shields-photographer-disappointed-by-police-pornography-claim.html
Long quote:
'On Wednesday night Mr Gross told the Daily Telegraph: "The photo has been infamous from the day I took it and I intended it to be," he said, adding that he once sent a copy to Switzerland only for it to be seized in France.
Gross, 71, said he did not consider the photo pornographic although he conceded that "she was supposed to look like a sexy woman". It was supposed to have been displayed alongside another photo he took of Shields without make-up, he said.
"It certainly doesn't breach child pornography laws here because a judge said so," he added, referring to a US judge's ruling in 1983 that the photographs he took were "not sexually suggestive, provocative or pornographic".
"In order for it to be considered pornographic here, she would have to be doing something sensual or sexual," he said. "But she's not. She's just sitting in the bathtub."
In 1981, Shields made an unsuccessful attempt to buy back the negatives. A judge ruled that she was a "hapless victim of a contract... to which two grasping adults bound her". The legal battle caught the eye of Prince, and he describes Spiritual America as a commentary on Shields as an "abstract entity"'
I think that the most pertinent information is that Shields, at the age of 16 or 17, felt uncomfortable about the image; whether it is viewed as pornographic or not by others is unimportant. She tried to retract the photo from display. On the basis of good manners, the Tate should not have displayed it.
"It certainly doesn't breach child pornography laws here because a judge said so," he added, referring to a US judge's ruling in 1983 that the photographs he took were "not sexually suggestive, provocative or pornographic".
In the UK, there is no artistic defence and the test for indecency is such that the item is child pornography.
The Tate would have known that, they are big on the porn thing, it is what they do, so a gimmick, exploiting somebody ( the victim) and exploiting the Brit taxpayer
The Tate is a disgrace for caving in to pressure from the OPS. And they censored themselves again recently by removing 34 images by Graham Ovenden, whose trial ended in a mistrial this week. When art institutions march in lockstep with the censors, artists and intellectuals beware!
http://notthetate.blogspot.com/
Post a Comment