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.