Save The Children

A controversy rages today over the attempted inclusion in a major show in a leading art museum of a piece containing child nudity and deliberate sexual provocation. Quite rightly, in my opinion, a gallery worker complained to the police about the work. Now, the gallery, as well as the artist, and the extremely well known collector, are under investigation. What the art world seem to forget in attempts to defend such things is that we have a minor being photographed naked here - with its legs apart, according to some reports - and without that minor being in a position to prevent it. Before going anywhere near the issue of what this kind of imagery might ignite in a particularly sick mind, it is exploitation anyway. (I have another gripe - that of the use of dead people in clips, presumably without their permission, such as Steve McQueen in a famous TV commercial, but here we are talking about the living.) There happens to be another artist who has been under the spotlight for this kind of thing. Years earlier she was a model on the other side of the ocean with a fashion photographer boyfriend with a rather tiresome habit of discussing pornography in a loud voice. To have heard this woman a few years ago defend what she was doing - she was photographing her children in studiously lurid poses - was, bizarrely enough, like hearing a child going on about what it's like to be an adult. I believe totally that art should be free to express itself. I believe that people should be free to express themselves. But child protection laws are in place for very good reasons and must be upheld. Of course one must defend the undefended, but this is not the same as defending the indefensible. The only good thing is that the museum may be safe from prosecution by virtue of the fact the piece had not yet been exhibited, and it was a museum employee who contacted the police. (People need their museums.) The artist and collector are different. It's sad. Children, clothed, are also the principal characters in the work of the artist of this blog, so there is a kind of clean authority on this subject here, but such a lasting anger at the exploitation at the heart of today's story. I saw the artist in question across the ocean once. It was on a wintry day and she was sitting by a table with vodka bottles. It was during the opening of a photography exhibition. I don't remember much else, except for the fact she looked unhappy. Was she a victim? Maybe she was a victim too.

A round of claws for the artist please

A natural frustration has descended on the house and I can only assume it is something to do with the absence of any gallery progress. Not that they have been blitzed by either the artist or the artist’s husband with examples of the work – and maybe that is the problem. That said, gallerists even at the best of times don’t exactly endear themselves. I have mentioned previously their disappearing trick when it comes to incoming artists. Some are fantastic, I have said, but others are indeed like trickster absentees. For example the gallerist whom the artist emailed, as promised, recently - well, a month ago - about coming to see her work in person hasn’t even had the courtesy to reply. And they were the ones who in the first place on the back of some colour reproductions invited the artist to be in a group show. So what is going on here? Apart from anything else, though I do not wish to be misconstrued as threatening, an artist is a sensitive being. An artist is often an artist because it is impossible for them to be anything else. They require kid gloves. Yes, they are fragile. Yes, they can break. No, it does matter. And if they are talented they can deserve this unusual degree of protection, though without it they can also perish on the vine. I remember one person when I was twenty-two jumping to their death in a fast-flowing river because of rejection. Not that their circumstances were comparable with the artist's. But manners - and their importances - do run deep. I should know: I have failed before myself. Or is it nothing to do with art or artists? Is it simply a fact that grace and sensitivity has been sucked from the fabric of our culture? Are manners no longer seen as the management of emotion but the bane of commercial progress? Certainly people today seem to care only about moolah, lolly, greenbacks, doe, spondoolies. Mind you, that’s probably why they are rich and we are not. Still - bringing the blog back home again - the artist will reach her mountain top. I can promise you that. (We can't afford to disbelieve this fact.) But we will not apply the normal rules of engagement here. Oh no. The artist might just show you up.