During his (2005) Retrospective at the NGV, I met his Melbourne representative. She walked me through the gallery which exhibited his latest work. Pointing to a portrait of a freckled girl with sad eyes and pouting lips, she declared “This is his new model… isn’t she sublime!”. Then a group of school children marched through the gallery… part of their government funded “art education”.
When speaking to Henson some years back at a Gareth Sansom exhibition, I asked where he finds his models— Paris mostly, he replied. My decision to write a thesis on “the sexualisation of children in art” was motivated mostly by Henson’s photographs of children. Either he’s a pervert, an issues the art world have been tippy-toeing around for years, or he’s using children for its very effective, media grabbing “shock value”.
I do admire his photographs. His Paris Opera series, his crowds, even some portraits, I think these are magnificent. His brooding landscapes are moving and poetic. But his nude children—well, they’re nude children.
1. Henson’s photographs, 2. random porn site photo, 3. porn image Photo shopped
Take away the back lighting and dark backdrops of his night scenes, we can easily compare the images with those found on a cheap porn-site (see my Photoshop example above).
Portraying seductive, naked girls on the brink of puberty was OK in the sixteenth century, but today, it’s obscene–in legal terms at least. Contemporary art tries feverously to push limits, searching for the most shocking, wrong, or ugly. Henson’s photographs have been pushing the limits of Australia’s obscenity and child pornography laws for decades, whilst concurrently representing Australia at the 46th Venice Biennale, in our National galleries, publishing three photographic books… putting Australian art on the map. The question on everyone’s lips is “why now?”.
It’s probably the same tired Emperor’s new cloak?…. if the national Gallery says it’s art, then it’s art. If it sells for tens of thousands of dollars, then it’s art. But when the PM and Federal Police claim that “the Emperor is in fact naked” … well, what then?
Nothing, other than a quick promotion to “controversial art” … more exposure for the artist, more money for the galleries.
[...] See newest post on Bill Henson here [...]
Thanks for the link. This really illustrates one point I was trying to make on my own site. There’s a fine line between what costs AU$25,000 to purchase as a valuable artwork… and something that produces a criminal record.
The difference, as you’ve demonstrated, could come down to a piece of software and the ability to manipulate an image.
Yes, you’re right. This extremely delicate and subjective issue depends on who looks at it, where they look at it, and when. There have been several other international artists suspected of producing and disseminating “kiddy porn”… the difference is that they are woman taking photographs of their children. Sally Mann is one example, although I think her photographs are magnificent. On the other side, there are utterly talentless artists like Tierney Gearon, shown at Saatchi Gallery. Sadly, more nude children here… http://www.tierneygearon.com
He is being dropped by major airlines and his USA visiting entitlements are a memory. So he will have to walk and sneak in under the wire for his next foreign beabo. The Brits had Henson in mind when they re-vamped their child pornography laws (SOA 2003). There have been more foreign police complaints (relayed as per VGT) against Henson than any other subject of interest. I’d say his career, was kind of in trouble.
But he’s also receiving the best international publicity…. it sure is better for his career than it was for Michael Jackson.
That’s not going to get his laptop past US customs, I gather Scotland Yard may be asking if galleries have ‘reference’ photos or ‘child pornography’ belonging to him.
In England there will not be a debate about whether it is CP, because Henson was one of the folks the legislation ( SOA 2003) was designed to catch. I can assure you it is CP in London.
The classification board has just cleared ( in a letter to the IATC) the uncensored photographs. They’d previously cleared the censored material.
PRESS RELEASE
NO EMBARGO
05 June 2008
CLASSIFICATION BOARD CLEARS FOR PUBLICATION UNCENSORED NUDE PHOTOGRAPH OF 13 YEAR OLD CHILD
BEGIN///
The Irish Anti-Trafficking Coalitions is dismayed that the Australian authorities have cleared for publication an uncensored nude photograph of a 13 year old girl. This closely follows the Classification Board’s green light for photographers to take pictures of naked under-age models after backing down on an investigation into a fashion magazine. Australia is closely emulating Japan in its failure to regulate indecent images of children.
The decision by the Classification Board is in violation of Australia’s obligations under the UNCRC, CEDAW and ICCPR. This is the first occasion anywhere in the world that a nude photograph of a female child who was subject to a police investigation relating to a sexually motivated crime has been cleared for publication. This decision is also a fundamental breach of Australia’s reponsibilities as partner nation of the Virtual Global Taskforce.
/// END
Gregory Carlin
Director
Irish Anti-Trafficking Coalition
4 Downfine Walk
Belfast
Northern Ireland
UK
(UK) 44 (0) 2890 963164
Note:
U18 topless photographs are classified as child pornography in the United Kingdom.
The IATC was a consulting partner with the UK govt. in relation to the SOA 2003
The way i see it, is the indoctrination of young people that child pornography is good for the soul.
Henson is just a ghoul, and he uses Australia as a safe haven. It is the only country in the world, outside of Japan which asks whether ‘a person is a talented child pornographer’.
That dead horse hanging from the gallery ceiling was lucky in a way, at least it is past caring.
Gregory Carlin
“I went to Bill Henson’s latest exhibition with my school today and the pictures he displayed of 11-15 year old girls having “sexual intercourse” with 18year old boys was disgusting. Most of the girls didn’t even have breasts yet or pubic hair which made me feel ill in the stomach that people actually like this. One particular photo of a teenage guy probably about 19, had a strong grip around a little girl who had no breasts at all or even ‘nipple fat’ or pubic hair and he had his penis inserted in her from behind. I do NOT on any account think that is acceptable. I do not call them “works of art”. I am not against all of his artwork, as I think he has taken amazing landscape shots that really grabbed my attention. He definently has talent for photography. But I only saw 3 photos in the whole exhibition of adults and of course they were not alone, but with children. I will once again state he does beautiful landscape shots, but I do NOT like his portrayel of the human “childs” body, very disappointed.”
Reading the above posts now, in mid-August, it is gratifying to realise how much thoughtful discussion actually took place on arts weblogs with respect to Bill Henson’s art practice following the furore that followed the Police closure of his May show (following the exhibition and internet publication of an image of a naked twelve-year old girl).
While no longer a bobbing corpse, a malodorous cloud still envelops Henson and the arts community. Notwithstanding the failure of the Policec to mount a prosecution case (even without the genius lawyer, Mark O’Brien, it had no chance of succeeding given the vagaries and inconsistencies of NSW and Commonwealth child protection legislation with respect to sexual abuse and pornography: proving ‘a sexual context’, establishing ‘artistic purpose’ or ‘intention’ and the reasonableness of the defendant’s conduct in fulfilling it; as well as establishing pornographic purpose or intention, or whether ‘community standards’ were breached, and so on – all of which were going to be difficult to establish with respect to Henson’s images in the cultural and political context). And given the laxity of community standards demonstrated by the endemic commercial sexploitation (sexualization) of children, together with the arcane ambiguities inherent in Henson’s fetishistic oeuvre privileged by decades of abstruse curatorial hagiography, the community standards defense was not going to wash either. So it was somewhat surprising that the arts community felt so threatened by the police closure of the Henson’s show and the confiscation of his pictures as to so loudly declaim the ‘bigger picture’ issue of an imminent return to jackboot censorship, thus derailing the debate by sidelining the child protection issues as the mere histrionic emanations of philistines, wowsers and zealots constitutionally incapable of intuiting the disinterestedness of Mr Henson’s gaze and the cosmic scope of his aesthetic sensibilities.
It seems the overarching civil liberties of adults must in all instances prevail over the rights of vulnerable children. The submission of the image to the Classification Board for a PG or G rating was a triumph of the cynical legal ruse, ensuring immunity from prosecution for all parties by classifying the image as suitable for viewing by children. A public forum at the MCA, masquerading as a broadly representative panel to encourage open debate, was shamelessly stacked with art, civil liberties and censorship hacks, ensuring that the respected child advocate, Hetty Johnston, was not only isolated on the panel (apart from Clive Hamilton, who supported her) but was cunningly lured into a game of ‘dunce in the corner’ at the hands of David Marr (who engaged in the worst kind of intellectual bullying) and his clever pal, Julian Burnside. (Hetty Johnston was actually being scapegoated for initiating the Police raid on the Gallery when in fact individual members of the public had also made formal complaints to the Police, who had simply responded procedurally). Although Ms Johnston gamely held her own against this merciless squibbing, being on solid empirical ground with respect to child abuse and protection issues, she had buckley’s chance away from her child welfare turf to unfold the child pornography issue in the face of the escoriating sophistry and supercilious putdowns of the Melbourne Club, the Sydney litterati and the art mafia who made it spectacularly obvious that they disdained her as an overzealous moral campaigner and inveterate, suburban philistine driven to provoke moral panic.
The knee-jerk closing of ranks by the arts community and Creative Australia in indignant protest against the legitimate investigation of Henson and the Roslyn Oxley Gallery was disingenuous, self-righteous, patently self-serving, histrionic, ill-informed, self-rationalising, irresponsible and collusive. It mirrored precisely the familial and organizational dynamics that characteristically accompany child abuse wherein denial and self-preservation prevail and the abuser is sheltered. In privileging the rights and freedoms of the adult artist over the rights of vulnerable children, visual artists and public intellectuals have claimed for the art world and its practitioners special exemption from whatever ethical boundaries may constrain other members of the wider community from emotionally damaging children or placing them at psychological risk, on the irrefutable metaphysical premise that the aesthetic enterprise in all its endeavours, sublime qualities and overarching values can only be intuited, formulated, constructed, construed and interpreted for the rest of us solely and exclusively by its illustrious, incomparably gifted and omnipotent membership.
All that glitters is not gold. While the police investigation is long over, the critical interrogation of Henson’s work will continue – hopefully to the point of establishing that stated aesthetic intentions and preoccupations do not necessarily correspond to actual motivations, but may conversely serve to rationalise more sinister obsessions and enactments and to conceal creative impotence and stagnation.
Thank you Ilana for your tips re manipulating the chiaroscuro in Henson’s work. That has inspired me, rather belatedly (but hey, better late than never!) to try the reverse and to bleach one of two of his images. Specifically, I refer you to an image of a half-naked sleeping child (in ‘Mnemosyne’, p 298, date undetermined): by increasing exposure and reducing contrast, the image reveals itself as nothing less than kiddieporn.
Ultimately vulnerable in sleep, the child’s disney tee-shirt is pulled up revealing her pubic area. Her hand is between her legs.
The tv set beside her bed is emitting blue static. It is the paedophilic eye in the room, a decoy from Henson’s own.
This image conforms my suspicions that Henson’s entire oeuvre is a trojan horse for his paedophilic activities. His pattern over the years seems to be to pull back from the edge as soon as things get a little too explicit. Talk about ‘edgy’! Talk about ‘boundary-riding’, talk about ‘transgression’! He ruptures continuity by interpolating neo-baroque landscape and non-figurative spells, or clothed children. If you check ‘Mnemosyne’ out, you will find the child pornography, and you will find, if you cross check images with the exhibition index, that the most explicit or unequivocally child pornographic images were excluded from the 2005 retrospective. No doubt the state gallery had to play it a little safe.
Henson is very cunning. He is well versed in renaissance and baroque symbology. He leaves little clues. If you go to the Roslyn Oxley website (http://www.roslynoxley9.com.au/artists/18/Bill_Henson/98/33508/) there is is a studio shot of a girl, naked from the waist down, that includes a fallen bicycle. That is the paedophilic subtext that announces to the club that the girl is a child – as is the disney tee shirt worn by the child on p 258 (above) . The most dreadful thing about the tee shirt is that it depicts a cartoon image of sylvester the cat having captured tweetie bird – a real “aha!” moment in a classic narrative of the predator and the preyed upon if ever there was one.
Perhaps Henson is telling his own story. Many abuse survivors engage in re-enactments. Whether this is the case or not, he is now the perpetrator.
Hensons are turning up on the secondary market. It is unsurprising that the owner of ‘Untitled 1985/86′ is a tad skittish and wanting to offload it if it is indeed the same image from the ‘1985/86 Untitled’ series I mentioned in my previous blog (see Mnemosyne, p 298).
Corrie Perkin’s report in The Australian about the Henson photograph up for auction at Lawson-Menzies gives the title as ‘Untitled 1985/86′, so the photograph must be from the same series.
The image in Mnemosyne is catalogued as follows:
Untitled 1985/86
from a series of 154 type C photographs
106.5 x 86.5
Perkins describes a sleeping “teenager”, but provides no other identifying details
If the catalogue numbers/titles and dates are accurate and concordant, there is no other sleeping child on a bed in that series (in chiaroscuro the model looks older than when the image is ‘exposed’). There is only one other teenage female nude in that series (oiled and standing), but that is the sum of it – the remainder comprises his usual trojan horse mixed bag (mainly ‘romantic’ soft focus heads of girls and boys in this show).
If this is the same image (on of an edition of several usually), then it is unequivocally child pornography (albeit from Henson’s early career) that Lawson-Menzies are trying to flog on behalf of their client.
Tamara Winikoff (NAVA) is whacking it with a big club but this putrifying old corpse just keeps floating to the surface!
In spite of her fanciful pronouncements, one wonders how the Classification Board would get around this particular image…..
It’s great that there are so many moralists. If it wasn’t for you there’d be no moral left in the world. I’ll sleep calm from now on, knowing that the moral is thoroughly guarded by the intellectual elite of the society.
It’s also great that there are so many owners of the Truth who are always so sure that *their* opinion is the right one and so thay present it like something everybody is supposed to accept, because who doesn’t is the weird one, e.g. pervert. It helps me whenever I’m blundering. I love this club of mutually assuring Victorians. That’s the orientation point in questions of morality I always sought.
Ilana Payes:
————
You are great at judging people. You know that Henson makes his photos because he’s either pervert or grabbing “shock value”. No other possibility, everybody must see that your statement is so obvious, that it’s almost an axiom. I wander what would happen if Henson would question this axiom of yours at the court. You might be due at least an apology. Pray to your favorite god so that nobody tells him about your text or so that he decides you are not worth the lost time.
I also admire your Photoshop work. Do you really think that your “art work” compares to Henson’s photo in anything more then the fact of having a dark background? If so, you have more problems then it seemed initially. An if so, why don’t you open an expo and become a famous photographer?
Go and get yourself some life.
Gregory Carlin:
—————
When you are talking about Ireland as a great example of morality, you are talking about a country with one foot still in antiquated Catholic moral. A country where woman has no right to get an abortion, where contraception was still banned just few years ago (last restrictions lifted in 1993!).
Similarly UK with it’s Victorian past, although in some ways less retrograde then Ireland, isn’t always such a great example.
P.S.: Please, refine your definition of sexual intercourse. For your information: Children aren’t born after a butterfly lands on a flower!
meg mcmahon::
————
From your post I’m getting the impression that Henson kidnaps his models (of course without their and their parent’s consent) and then takes pornographic photos at gun point, during which the models are at least gang raped. You and others are bitching about “sexploitation” by Henson for taking few rather innocent photos. Like this you can turn your blind eye on real sexual abuse happening everywhere around you and sleep calmly. In the context of recent Fritzl case in Austria I’ve read that 1 in 6 girls and 1 in 9 boys in Austria are sexually abused in some way at some stage. Do you think it’s that much different in Australia?
mugsey:
——-
You would do anything to prove your point by manipulating a photo into what you call “pornography”. Just for your information, it’s you who Photoshopped the photo in order to see the girl’s sex. That’s not the way Henson was showing the picture to the public. I let you process this information and make a conclusion out of it.
BTW, please, burn that book ASAP. You wouldn’t like to get into legal troubles for possession of child pornography, would you? Please, take precautions. Fire can be very dangerous in Australia and spread very far incredibly fast, causing invaluable damage and killing people, animals and vegetation.
2all the moralist here and elsewhere:
————————————-
Stop judging what’s beautiful and what is porn because you are not up to the task. Beauty is in the eye of beholder. So is the filth.
P.S.: Do you know, that Jan Saudek took photos of even younger girls, which, in addition, aren’t hidden in obscurity? You can see everything in the smallest detail. Do you think he’s a pedophile? I don’t.
P.P.S.: Don’t forget to wear brown shirts tomorrow!