Looking past the subject material.

[Jamie123]

I have no particular interest in the nude male body, bondage or flowers so Mapplethorpe's work doesn't hold my interest past the first glance. That does not mean that there's anything wrong with the subject matter, it just means that it does not really speak to me. I'm also not particularly shocked by homoerotic imagery so it's also not that interesting to me in that regard.

As for Bill Henson I have to say I always liked his lighting but I never really gave the work more deeper thought. Some of the underage nudes surely have an erotic aspect to them but I'm still not attracted to an underage body. I'm sure some people are turned on by it but I just don't see how that matters. I'm a lot more concerned with what pedophiles do than I am with what they think. And I'm pretty sure pictures never turned anyone into a pedophile. That's not to say that Henson should not concern himself with how the work is presented and how it will be received but I still think there are more important things to worry about.

In regards to the title, I don't quite see how I can look past subject matter. If the subject matter doesn't interest me and the way it is presented doesn't make me interested in it, then I just don't know why I should keep looking at it.

 

[bobbyrab]

I thought this might be quite pertinent to the discussion http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cornwall-22026730. I hadn't come across this painter before the court case, nor for that matter Bill Henson until Roger's post, but it seems their subject matter is not so very different.

I didn't find any of Ovenden's work in the least offensive, but seen in the light of being created by a child sex offender I don't see what choice the Tate have but to remove them.

It does change how you perceive the work. The work itself hasn't altered from that which the curator deemed to be important enough to be in their collection, but how could you argue with their removal.
Can you separate the work from the authors motivation?

 

[Roger Hicks]

I thought this might be quite pertinent to the discussion http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cornwall-22026730. I hadn't come across this painter before the court case, nor for that matter Bill Henson until Roger's post, but it seems their subject matter is not so very different.

I didn't find any of Ovenden's work in the least offensive, but seen in the light of being created by a child sex offender I don't see what choice the Tate have but to remove them.

It does change how you perceive the work. The work itself hasn't altered from that which the curator deemed to be important enough to be in their collection, but how could you argue with their removal.
Can you separate the work from the authors motivation?

A superb point. It reminds me of a spoof move review I read many years ago. "For some, this is the story of a boy and his dog. For others, it's much, much more. Ratings: for those who think it is is the story of a boy and his dog, U (no age restrictions). For those who think it's much, much more: X (adults only)."

Ovenden: you'd need to be quite keen on pubescent girls to find his work erotic. Likewise Sturgess. Hamilton: no, it really IS soft porn, but not in my book worthy of banning. Henson: you'd need to be REALLY, REALLY keen on pubescent girls to find his work even remotely erotic.

Disclosure: I have a couple of Hamilton books, because decades ago I knew a young girl (a girlfriend's younger sister) who said she really liked his work but who (as it turned out) had not seen much of it. So I bought the two Hamilton books. She then produced what is, for me, the perfect summary of Hamilton's work:

"The first few pictures, you think, 'That's really good.' Then you see some more and you think, 'Yeah, they're pretty good too.' Then you see some more and you start thinking, 'Well, what else can he do?'"

I've not bought another Hamilton book since (well over 30 years, since my mid-to-late 20s). All thanks to the brilliant art criticism of a teenage girl whose name I've long forgotten.

Cheers,

R.

 

[Sparrow]

Yep, best lock the buggers up to be on the safe side ... thankfully I remember little of the 1970s, gawd knows where all those dodgy negatives and drawings came from ...

... in the event if folk elect right wing governments or allow them to assume power one gets censorship, ... BTW I'm not not talking party-politics here for you lot who can't tell the difference

 

[willie_901]

Sally Mann's young children ran around nude during the summer months on their farm in rural Virginia. Often the family would go swimming on their farm.

She published a series of photographs her children. The Moral Majority wanted her locked up for child pornography. They wanted the government to take her children away.

Somebody asked Mann why she chose to do a fine art project centered on her nude children. She replied that hanging out with her children on the farm was her life at tha time and she just photographed what she saw every day. To her it seemed innocent and normal... essentially unremarkable.

The Religious Right saw something altogether different.

 

[Michael Markey]

This conversation started this morning between Keith and myself on my FB when I linked these shots by Norman Seef.

Other than that I`m afraid that I too find it hard to look past the subject matter but I do like his Lisa stuff .

http://www.retronaut.com/2013/04/ou...-robert-mapplethorpe-session-by-norman-seeff/

 

[sepiareverb]

This notion fits quite well with the review of the Winogrand exhibit in SF.

I say "anything goes" when it comes to subject matter. I may not have an interest in X, Y or Z, but there are plenty of people who do. I don't have to look. I close my eyes all the time in movies when the violence starts up.

 

[paulfish4570]

exactly, sepiareverb: i (we) don't have to look at it.
the market will censor itself.
there are market forces on the left, on the right and in the middle.
mapplethorpe's work found its slice of the market.

 

[mfogiel]

He was onto looking for beauty. He had some luck with the choice of subjects, but his compositions were often second rate. As to showing male nudity, sometimes it worked, sometimes not. If I really have to look at it, I prefer the photos of Herb Ritts.

 

[DominikDUK]

Herb Ritts another superb photographer who is rarely mentioned on RFF maybe because he was a fashion guy. Mapplethorpe and Ritts are very different though at least in my opinion.

Dominik

 

[Roger Hicks]

A photographer that gets discussed very seldom around here is Robert Mapplethorpe ... ...

Innumerable far greater photographers than Mapplethorpe or Ritts are seldom or never mentioned here. Roger Fenton. Aleksandr Rodchenko. Bill Brandt. Raghu Rai....

Their major oversights were to fail to be (a) alive recently and (b, far more important to most here) American.

Cheers,

R.

 

[jsrockit]

I can't think of anything that warrants censorship, and as already stated, who would decide what was censored? It may be perhaps that in extreme circumstances, it needs to happen, but it's difficult to think of what those circumstances may be.

The type of people who would be likely to push through censorship laws are probably the very last people on earth you would want in charge of it.

Ok, I guess I have to go there. I sure don't have a problem with a photo of a baby being raped being censored (real not faked). 🙁 These photos are currently censored through child pornography laws no?

 

[Rodchenko]

Innumerable far greater photographers than Mapplethorpe or Ritts are seldom or never mentioned here. Roger Fenton. Aleksandr Rodchenko. Bill Brandt. Raghu Rai....

Their major oversights were to fail to be (a) alive recently and (b, far more important to most here) American.

Cheers,

R.

Well, with my chosen forum name, I'd have to agree with you wholeheartedly there, Roger!

True, though, I don't see Kertesz or Hardy or Tudor Hart or Chambre Hardman mentioned here much.

 

[Keith]

Interesting input into this thread.

Re ... Bill Henson, until all the fuss in 2008 about his images I'd never heard of him. I wasn't really that impressed with his work having 'discovered' him.

At the time the Mapplethorpe exhibition was banned in Queensland we had a very repressive state government who had the police force as it's private army ... protest marches were actually banned and obviously the censorship board was also under it's control. Like most regimes of it's type it eventually came unstuck and the police commissioner at the time subsequently wound up in prison for taking bribes! 😀

 

[DominikDUK]

Roger I wholeheartely agree with you about that american thing and living or recently living thing. I personaly vastly prefer William Henry Jackson to Adams. And many things that are attributed to Adams were in fact done by Jackson.

Dominik

 

[mugent]

Ok, I guess I have to go there. I sure don't have a problem with a photo of a baby being raped being censored (real not faked). 🙁 These photos are currently censored through child pornography laws no?

I think in this case, I have more a problem with the rape, the photo is inconsequential by comparison. Maybe that's why a lot of society likes censorship, so we can pretend things aren't happening.
As an argument against censorship, if this rape photo gets out into the world, sure the perpetrator is more likely to be brought to justice, censorship doesn't stop anything, it just keeps in underground where it's more dangerous.

 

[Roger Hicks]

I think in this case, I have more a problem with the rape, the photo is inconsequential by comparison. Maybe that's why a lot of society likes censorship, so we can pretend things aren't happening.
As an argument against censorship, if this rape photo gets out into the world, sure the perpetrator is more likely to be brought to justice, censorship doesn't stop anything, it just keeps in underground where it's more dangerous.

Brilliant! I couldn't agree more.

Cheers,

R.

 

[peterm1]

Years ago there was a Mapplethorpe exhibition at the Sydney Contemporary Art Gallery. Including his famous (infamous?) ones of a man being well lets be blunt - "fisted". I never quite saw the point of it although some USA based commentator (it might have been Lewis Black - its the kind of thing you would expect him to say) suggested maybe these images were meant as a metaphor for struggle. (Or perhaps pain!!??) In any event neither I nor that commentator thought that they should be banned or in any sense censored. (I could joke that we never got to the bottom of it but do not want to put you through such an obvious joke). Ahem!

I just think some artists try too hard to be outrageous and for the most part I find that to be a boring and rather obvious substitute for real creativity and I suppose I mostly kind of self censor by making a decision not to reward them by visiting their exhibitions. The only sense in which I am outraged is that such poor taste should be perpetrated on the viewing public. (You can see I am not a moralist - just a critic!)

Although I suppose Mapplethorpe had a real purpose. Perhaps to de-sensitise people to images of homosexual sex and thereby normalize it. And no matter what you think of gay rights (I confess am supportive - like I said I am no moralizer) that has at least some element of legitimacy to it.

Having said that I still feel there is some place for censorship. But I am not quite sure where or when. But I think some subjects may be too taboo and society has a kind of residual right (which should be ever so seldom exercised) to reject some images \ topics. Suppose for example someone wanted to exhibit images of children that were pornographic and exploitative (I am not thinking of Bill Henson here - think worse). Clearly there is a case to ban these because of the harm it does to the kids involved quite apart from harm to society which is a bit harder to argue about (although even here an argument could be made that the right response might not be to to use a general censorship law but to instead use the criminal law punishing child porn.) But I think that if someone had the same purpose I postulated for Mapplethorpe -but in this case the purpose was to legitimize child sex then society has a right to say no that's not on and we will not accept it. In this case censorship is legitimate in my view.

Its a thorny issue but I still believe that some residual power must exist.

 

[Rodchenko]

All of Mapplethorpe's models were adults, and the acts were consensual. I think that makes a big difference.

 

[Ade-oh]

I think the only reason to censor an image or movie is that someone has been deliberately harmed - physically or psychologically - in order to create it. I suspect that is unlikely to be the case with most nude images of children and, indeed, with most adult pornography too. Of course, there are grey areas. Some paedophiles, I'm led to believe, genuinely think that their attentions are not harmful to children and presumably this applies to some child pornographers too, thus, inevitably, the law becomes involved.

However, what we shouldn't do is censor on the basis of aesthetic judgements: if we did, I'd have banned Ansel Adams years ago!