art
7 Jul 2008
Getting Away With Murder
Cover image from Art Monthly Australia
Donald Brook considers the "but it's just art" defence
The recent outcry over allegedly pornographic photographs of children exhibited as works of art seemed to settle down after the police took sensible advice from a number of quarters - including the legal profession - and saw that prosecution would be inappropriate.
But the flames have now been stoked again by a picture of a child on the cover of the magazine Art Monthly Australia.
In considering this issue, it is worth asking what works of art are for - but that question is often obscured by another that is both shallow and misconceived: is the framed object a work of pornography or a work of art? The fact is that works of art may be pornographic and pornographic objects may be works of art.
And works of art can be offensive in other ways than by being pornographic. They can be incitements to violence and insurrection, to sadism, torture, murder, lewdness and causing inconvenience to the Pope. All of these provocations have from time to time been offered, and indulgently protected, as works of art.
The right question to ask is this: why do most people believe that, up to a point, there should be a domain of public entertainment in which we are invited to contemplate things that we might consider offensive - perhaps even intolerably so - if they were thrust upon us in the context of ordinary life?
Not everybody goes straight for the wrong question. One of the popular responses to the right one is to say that works of art are all play-acting or its pictorial equivalent - that what is represented is not really there and not really happening. Works of art are essentially representations and therefore harmless. The blood is all tomato sauce; the performers, although apparently at each others' throats, are really the best of friends.
There are two things wrong with this response. The first is that it's not true. Many works of art are perfectly real, and some are noxious. The other is that even if it were true, it would not explain why works of art are granted a dispensation different from ordinary episodes of pretence and play-acting.
We often condone representations, pretences and deceit in everyday life. It is of course not a good idea to frighten the bank teller with a toy gun or to amuse Airport Security with quips about the bomb in your suitcase, but make believe in general often gets away with murder without needing to call upon a "work of art" defence.
Turning back to the wrong question, the most popular answer given by pundits from the art world is to say that works of art are endowed with a mysterious virtue called "aesthetic quality", and that aesthetic quality always and absolutely trumps.
Another is to plead that the artist didn't mean the work to be pornographic. We can be reasonably confident in most cases that when a patient dies the physician didn't mean it to happen, and deserves a break, but artists are not in the same way above suspicion. Whether they meant it or not, they carry the can.
The right answer to the right question goes something like this. The art world's recognition of an object as a work of art is effectively a public invitation to a public audience that selects itself on the basis of a common understanding. At the core of this understanding is the idea that works of art are things that should be contemplated in a distinctive way.
The mode of contemplation appropriate to works of art is one of radical detachment from the usual imperative by which we respond to the promptings of moral, political or practical interests.
To contemplate with detachment is ideally to explore all of the possible responses to an object from every imaginable point of view, and to temporarily disregard the imperatives to action that determine our behaviour in everyday life. When appraising a surgeon's cut, what matters is that it is in the right place. To treat it as a work of art is to say that other considerations - should it be seen, for example, as an assault upon the temple of the soul? - are also entertained.
The art world's reasons for recognising something as a work of art may not always be the right ones, but that is not the point. The Prime Minister's reasons for appointing certain persons as high court judges may not be particularly good, but we nevertheless agree to treat the office and the office-holder with respect.
Detached contemplation offers insights that may be radically unexpected, not all of them qualifying as virtuous. Opening one's mind is a little like opening Pandora's box - there is no guarantee that it will always be good for us. We may come to wonder as we watch Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will whether Hitler was after all a hero of legendary status, or it may give us the creeps. The point about works of art is that our freedom and autonomy depend upon the availability of opportunities to expand our minds. To lack detachment is to surrender to the compulsions of obedience, habit and custom.
There are risk-averse societies in which detachment is discouraged. Fortunately we do not live in such a society. Nor do we live in a society in which it is considered appropriate to offer up public executions as works of art. There are limits to detachment. A line must be drawn somewhere; but not always, and not necessarily, in the place where it is drawn in the practical world of competing interests.
Some people will convince themselves that if detachment from the compulsion of particular interests is really what works of art are about, then the art world had better be abolished. There have always been such people, and they will justifiably remain unpersuaded by aesthetic claptrap such as that of the anarchist Laurent Tailhade: "What do the victims matter, if the gesture be beautiful?"
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great article donald. a fresh angle on what was becoming a tired issue. cheers, jasmine
Most of the debate has been based on sex, as in the act of sex being mandatory when nudity is present. This is false.
This is as false as the reasoning forcing women to wear burkas, to when female school teachers were banned from wearing red, to women being accused of asking for it if they dare wear a short skirt, beach inspectors checking bikini sizes for public morality etc etc.
It is a mind set that no man in society can be trusted. We’re all rapists and any little thing will turn us into rutting beasts. We have not evolved from our caveman days and everyone must compensate with excess clothing due to our inability to behave in a civilised way. We are all sinners and sex is worse than murder, just look at the classification of TV shows. We can watch gun battles raging and people blown to pieces or dying slowly in a pool of blood, battered and tortured even, and we don’t go on murderous rampages but show us one tit and its lock up your daughters time, its not safe on the streets.
Quick! Hide that comely ankle before I have my filthy way with you.
Do you remember the picture by Phan Thi Kim Phuc of the young girl fleeing the napalm bombing of her Vietnamese village? (just google and you will find many reproductions of the image).
It’s full frontal nudity, of a child who has clearly not given her permission for the photograph, let alone the napalm. It’s certainly a powerful and provocative image. Some might consider it art, some might be excited by it, and a few twisted minds might even find pleasure in it.
Is it pornographic? Is it obscene? Is it immoral? Would you have it on the front of a magazine or newspaper? Would you tolerate it in an art exhibition? Would it be OK to hang it in a war museum?
Or would you have it censored?
OK Donald. How could you apply this "detachment" criterion to some HARD-core artistic kiddie porn (not just the SOFT-core stuff of this case and the publicized Henson works)? By your rationale, such detachment in treating hard-core kiddie smut could qualify the "contemplative" as an especially insightful adventurer - a kind of exemplary super-aesthete, no? But even when such detachment is achieved, would it not by definition exacerbate, or at least be quite compatible with, the very alienation, exploitation and brutalization that characterizes a world of normalized pedophilia?
Good though to read someone in Oz asserting clearly that art can be porn and vice-versa! The Koontz-Cicciolina hard-core art demonstrations made it abundantly obvious years ago, but this debate in Oz has been dumbed into a simpleton’s binary: "Is it art or is it porn?" I spelt this out in detail on another site’s thread (see: http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=7463&page=0).
However, a pity Donald that you avoid pursuing the issue of fascist art beyond a passing mention of Riefenstahl. Fascist art has a certain relevancy to this, Henson and other related cases. Thorough historical research tells us clearly that the most energetic and trusted fascists proved similar skills of "detachment", though in different contexts, but you seem to promote such a mentality as both a distinguishing quality or privilege of aesthetes, and as an achievement peculiar to our type of society. Commanders of the Einsatzgruppen murder squads had great "detachment" in perpetrating their atrocities; they had the highest proportion of tertiary-qualified among both commanders and rank-and-file members. No "risk-averse society" or "nanny state" there, Donald!
The fascist-elite boss characters of Pasolini’s "Salo" showed certain detachment too in dealing with their objectified naked child victims. Pedophiles are an extereme expression of alienation - or is the word "detachment"?
I don’t know if any reasonable person (and I don’t include Hysteria Johnson in that group) have mentioned PORNOGRAPHY in this debate.
Something doesn’t need to pornographic to be inappropriate, something doesn’t need to be pornographic for society to view it as not a good idea for children.
You don’t have to equate nudity (I had hippies parents nudity is no biggie to me no matter what age) with sex to take issue with these photos.
Many people don’t jump so instantly into a black or white position, why does it have to be a case of creative people who "understand" art and uncultured oafs and moral panickers on the other?
I find myself sitting on both sides of this fence but get increasingly annoyed at those who defend it by painting all opposition as prudery of a hysteric over reaction.
Regardless of the original controversy over Henson’s work (and on that whatever the merit of the photography it’s utter crap to claim they’re not sexualised when you apply red lipstick to a child) the editor of this magazine used a photo of naked child to make a POLITICAL point, or frankly more realistically to get free publicity for his publication.
Using a naked child to sell something makes him every bit as vile and exploitative as the creepy people marketing bra tops and g-strings for girls who haven’t hit puberty yet.
YES there should also be a debate about the use of children’s images in advertising - naked or otherwise that doesn’t mean you get a free pass for anything and everything simply because you call it art and hang it in some pretentious gallery.
Most people defending this particular photo (the magazine cover) would feel considerably different if the photo was displayed on a website called littlegirlsinthenude.com - why is that? would they feel exactly the same way about a picture of a sunset on such a website? if not then, clearly there ARE issues here that should be able to be discussed without the taxpayer subsidised art world howling us all down as ignorant philistines. Because some of on that philistine side of the fence have degrees in art history.
I also find myself on both sides of the argument.
Each case must be seen on its own merit.
When I first heard of Rudd’s comments re Henson I was in agreement in principle although I am not usually in agreement with Rudd per se.
When I heard that the police gave back the pictures and dropped the charges, the ques were out the door and down the street with paying customers, or voyeurs.
When the "Art monthly" front cover furore broke, I also felt moral indignation, "taxpayers money" to boot."perverts"
However, when I heard Olympia’s pleas of offence at others being offended, I decided to look at the picture on the cover in a newspaper.
I found it inoffensive, aesthetic, dare I say artistic in its framing and not pornographic.
In fact the face of this child reminded me of one of my own kids, whom i would’nt personally proffer up to the mass media, but whom I would’nt argue if she wanted to appear as such.
So, no I would’nt normally look at renaissance paintings of cherubs in detail, nor would I be upset that nude children appear in textbooks of paediatrics ( not peadophilia).
So to sum up, It would appear that pornography is probably more in the eye of the beholder rather than the artist’s paintbrush.
Oli
Donald Brook
Mil-observer evidently concurs with me that works of art may be pornographic, and that they may also be offensive in many other ways. He/she singles out political or ideological offensiveness, but the available range of provocations is infinite.
The question then arises: Should we recognize a domain of public entertainment in which spectacles that would ordinarily be counted abhorrent enough to justify suppression are, by common consent, allowed some measure of indulgence? And if so, with what justification?
Mil-observer’s answer to the first question is not made quite explicit, but it seems to be “No”. And of course it is easy to think up justifying scenarios. Licensed gladiatorial contests and the feeding of Christians to wild animals in the National Gallery, no matter how mind-expanding, is not on.
But this negative response takes no account of the answer – which is not an “aesthetic” answer - to the second question. We open up our minds to new possibilities only by inhibiting our already reflexively conditioned responses to the world as we presently conceive it. It is true that the effects of mind-expansion may be unwelcome but it is not true that because of this the mind should be closed, and detachment proscribed. (At precisely what age, and in precisely what state of belief, should reflective thought be shut down?).
The concept of the work of art as the locus of detached public contemplation is a very useful one. It allows for two intricately related, but significantly different, debates. One is the ongoing debate within the artworld about what is, for the time being, institutionally acceptable as a work of art. The other, ongoing outside the artworld, is about how much indulgence the artworld can advantageously be granted.
Both debates are moderated by the consideration that their central topic is a domain of public entertainment. It is not a site of individual alienation, and “aesthetic” considerations (whatever these may be) are no more germane than moral, political, religious, legal, ecological and all other human considerations.
In his only direct contradiction to my previous post, Brook claims that the contemplative and discursive realm of soft-core artistic kiddie smut "is not a site of individual alienation". However, I made no claim about specifically "individual alienation" (Brook’s term), because my assessment of "alienation" can well cover collective (and class) processes, as in the case of pedophiles who are renowned for their very energetic networks, for example. Therefore such people are understood to be alienated, via their degeneracy, from a wider community’s healthy, fair and mutually respectful and supporting cycle of life. Such foundations of health and respect seek protective guarantee via the limitations which child defenders would impose here i.e., bans, confiscations, arrest and punishment. The UK and others have no problem doing this, but maybe those other countries’ middle classes have much less baggage than Australia’s. It seems over here that both “aspirationals” and their more established patrons are often desperate to prove that they “get this art thing” - they already got properties, cars, etc., so they need something a bit more cerebral, emblematic and less materially obvious and straightforward in order to assert their entitlements to various privilege. Such are certain aspects of “class alienation”, and they apply quite obviously to this issue – a person’s choice of words can also betray such alienation. I do not presume to know that Brook himself fell into that camp of the insecure and pretentious too, though I have noticed many who would when embarking on Brook’s field as undergraduates.
Brook’s claim against my alienation assessment appears unsubstantiated, except for his attempt to confine it to a notion of "public entertainment". But if it is an actually public "locus", as he states, then the Henson kiddie oeuvre contradicts that notion by its intrinsic or causal aspect of business decisions to make private sales, apply for grants and other funding, and to create private and exclusive exhibitions (it would be surprising if Papapetrou did not have similarly important marketing arrangements leading to her Olympia snaps).
Moreover, the aesthetic justifications for Henson, Papapetrou et al seem so weak and nebulous when we consider the favourable reception i.e., their supporters’ preoccupation with idealized concepts of individual and artistic freedom, the neo-liberalist and consumerist-inspired mantra "choice", pubescent and pre-pubescent narcissism, parental facilitation for perceived “higher” purpose (do they really mean “higher class” goals?), and those latter sentiment’s uglier corollary of ogling pedophiles who, we know, only very rarely and inadvertently make public offering of their own less ambiguous contemplative musings about their under-age objets d’art.
I have not yet read or heard anything else to justify such art except for this shocking banality from Oz academic Kelli Fuery: "These artists’ [including Henson’s] photographs offer an insight into a time of life that falls between categories, a chance to witness identity evolving, something to which we can all relate". Thus we have nothing more profound, useful or insightful than a punter’s (potential) comment: "Hey, I can relate to that"! I parenthesize "potential" because I have noticed that nearly all punters actually respond to such art with the bored sigh of workers confronted yet again by efforts to alienate them further from any senses of community, solidarity, the common good, and chances of a safe, just and bright future for their children.
Upon returning to a consideration of the ideological and aesthetic spirit of such soft-core child porn, I find Brook’s allusion to Riefenstahl quite creepy. I am concerned that Brook’s reference to fascist art is at best a fence-sitter’s surrender, at worst a clandestine endoresement. Would Australia’s Niezchean-inspired neo-liberals backing Henson and his ilk actually regard this latest “Olympia” foray as “Triumph des Willens”?
Let me put to mil-observer the main question to which my original note offers a brief answer, in this way.
Do you believe that works of art occupy a cultural domain in which there should be some latitude that is not granted in most other departments of social life? In short, when offensiveness (of whatever sort) is alleged, is there or is there not a viable “work of art defence”?
If (unlike most people) you think that there should be no latitude given to works of art, then a clear argument to this conclusion would be welcome. But if (like most people) you think that there is a viable “work of art defence,” then how shall it be constructed?
You reject, as I do, the “aesthetic” defence, and also (presumably) the defence that works of art are essentially representations, and therefore harmless. You reject my suggestion that detachment from the immediate promptings of particular interests encourages an expansion of the mind.
What remains?
"Do you believe that works of art occupy a cultural domain in which there should be some latitude that is not granted in most other departments of social life? In short, when offensiveness (of whatever sort) is alleged, is there or is there not a viable “work of art defence”?
There doesn’t need to be a defence. Just as I don’t need to defend things that I do that others may find offensive.
Plenty of people find my politics offensive, they say so and I can take their opinion or leave it. Sneering at them, claiming they are just too simple to understand or insinuating they’re all repressed religious prudes would just make me look like a pompous git.
Self appointed art world = pompous gits
I reject emphatically any notion that artists deserve some special, hallowed domain of presumed higher social value, with detached privilege away from traditional moral constraint; any pursuit of such radical artistic brahmanism leads logically and philosophically into that Berlin cavern where it was last discussed between a certain Herr Speer and his own more infamous artist-mentor boss in April 1945. It is a clearly fascist notion, articulated in characteristically vague and pretentious fashion by Henson himself just recently (see: http://www.smh.com.au/news/arts/henson-defends-art/2008/07/10/1215658038…). The associated benefit for pedophilic infiltration is similarly obvious, though more specific as a kind of vanguard for an alienated and fascistic concept of “freedom”.
Note that matters of "public interest" and serious intellectual value take no valid place among the defenders of such soft-core artistic kiddie porn as we see in the Henson and Papapetrou cases. Pasolini’s "Salo" and the Vietnamese napalm victim occupy quite obviously different and valuable spaces in the culture; the posed soft-core photos of this celebrated Australian oeuvre are even gratuitous by comparison, with only vapid and essentially dishonest attempts at justification.
Fitting though that once we see the great crash well underway, beyond cover-up spin as it is now, the neo-liberalist chickens are coming home to roost in their true spiritual nest of fascism. Violent destabilization, impoverishment, dirty tricks and hypocrisy towards developing countries - including blatant crimes against humanity through high-tech warfare and proxy terror - while claiming some high ground of “individual freedom” (actually for a very small minority) and “human rights” (ditto). This art issue has a relevance to such broader ideological and strategic conditions indicating a degenerate culture in its nasty, petulant death throes.
I believe the debate reveals a most profound corruption in Australia’s culture. That tenured academics can defend such misanthropic degeneracy would prove how far intellectual standards have been eroded by the IMF-led, user-pays and almost feudalized “reforms” of this country’s education system. Notice how academic and art-professional defences of the naked kiddie oeuvre rest on vague, contrived and conceptually lazy arguments to the point of neo-liberalist and fascist mysticism.
Once again I put to Brook: how can you apply the “detachment” privilege to HARD-core artistic kiddie porn?
Mil-observer assures us that he/she can imagine things that (perhaps) nobody would condone, whether or not privilege is claimed for it as a work of art.
So can I. So can everyone.
What he/she does not spell out is the logic that will take us from this shared premise to the conclusion that under no circumstances can there ever be a viable “work of art defence.”
Most people would not have wished to see the jester who mocked the King summarily hanged for the heinous crime of lese majeste. How does it follow from our shared ability to imagine the indefensible, that the clown’s licence (for just one example) was always mis-allocated and should be formally revoked?
I do not argue that the “work of art defence” must succeed in all circumstances. Instance by instance it can fail for a range of reasons. I only argue that if such a defence is mounted, and if it is to be taken seriously, it should have a certain shape.
An irrelevant point, just in case my take on the logic of the question should be judged evasive. I would readily support a "work of art defence" on behalf of Polixeni Papapetrou’s replay of Lewis Carroll’s 1873 photograph of Beatrice Hatch. I would not support such a defence on behalf of President Bush’s staged spectacle of shock and awe.
No, I did not so assure that I can imagine things, etc., as Brook claims, so his criticism that I do “not spell out the logic” opposing an unqualified “work of art defence” is groundless. I specified “public interest” and “serious intellectual value”, thereby implying clearly such educative and informative values as essential criteria in determining critical viability and artistic merit. Such example from art would rather accentuate art’s influence on ostensibly non-artistic media in the wider society. Brook cites the much-publicized Papapetrou work on the magazine cover, which should, if I am not mistaken, qualify as the same sort of derivative and weakly inspired kitsch that has caused Henson so much ardent celebration and admiration.
Brook’s Dubya comparison is almost entirely irrelevant in a discussion about commonly understood “art”, except that such “shock and awe” propaganda has similarly obscene implications in a more exclusively ideological context. Although Brook concedes that his comparative example is irrelevant, I gather that he wilfully ignores my preceding and very relevant concern that such “work of art defence” can easily encourage yet more egregious cases of propagandistic terror and deception, but more pointedly within actual works of artistic creativity (think lampshades, pelvis ashtrays, etc.).
I alluded to hard-core artistic kiddie smut as a related oeuvre of yet greater threat; again, snuff and human body parts would be similarly transgressive comparisons for testing. Such comparison would destroy the hubristic and absolutist nonsense of “free expression” advocacy, and Brook’s less strident but equally misguided proposals for artistic privilege via “detachment”.
Brook keeps avoiding my question compelling some comparison between the soft-core art-porn and conceivable hard-core parallels. He thereby dodges moralists’ considerations surrounding Papapetrou, Henson et al. He thus evades also the need to spell out the actual artistic merit of such work by Papapetrou (and Henson). Is Brook simply interested to have as wide a scope as possible for available opportunities in his own business, as if art has no more responsibility than say a mining company has concern for the widest possible access to exploration rights?
I suspect that these cases are just further proof that the neo-liberalist exaggeration and celebration of “self interest” is just another self-interested and self-perpetuating lie. Whatever Brook may think of “shock and awe”, his imagining of the “work of art defence” offers us the ultimate, logical result of a fascist ideology.
I do not offer an “artistic merit defence.” Many works of art have no obvious merit and they are occasionally offensive.
The defence available to them is not that they are necessarily meritorious. It is that they occupy a domain of public entertainment in which a detached mode of contemplation is encouraged. We learn things through this mode of contemplation that we did not know about ourselves, and about the world.
It is important to protect this domain from narrow-minded and partisan moral, political and ideological assault.
Mil-observer is evidently unpersuadable. So be it.
"Narrow minded": at last a condescending tone breaks free from the restraints of protracted effort at debate. Brook’s "argument" is non-persuasive, as if gleefully and deliberately devoid of substance and rigour. I am actually persuadable in matters of serious debate, but my background is probably too unashamedly working class to ever pretend adjustment with such vacuous and depraved treatment of children thinly concealed by claims to aesthetic appreciation and class-based privileges in exploitation, expression and profit.
Of course Brook does "not offer an artistic merit defence". His preoccupation with unexplored notions of "detachment" and "public entertainment" demonstrate an irresponsible disregard for the very attachment and private entertainments invited by such work as Papapetrou’s and Henson’s pedo-kitsch. In the same way, Brook takes no responsibility at all for helping to normalize such tastes and thereby give emphatic reassurance to many of our most reviled criminals.
Yes, we learn things about the world from Australian-endorsed pedo art. One such thing is the culture’s elevation of barely articulated kitsch into a supposed source of enlightenment. Another is the extent to which society’s more conceited intend to objectify their fellow humans, even when at their most defenceless age. And do not retreat into disingenuous self-justification by pretending that such debate as this one itself is the actual process of learning opened up by such pedo art.
Brook and his colleagues are unrepentant, and either unwilling or unable to engage in any debate of substance. That appears to be a consequence of endorsement by the Classification Board and lavish sponsorship by pretentious, decadent oligarchs.
I recommend that they try demonstrative promotion of such "mind expanding" in the UK and look at say 2 years bird as a community-inspired education. The people there do not pretend that pedo art offers anything except encouragement to the depraved and widespread revulsion for those not so afflicted by that criminal pathology.
As a sign of the prevailing corrupt values in our cult of individualism, MissnOmar’s comments actually operate on ground similar to Brook’s. MissnOmar’s “take it or leave it” view works on much the same agenda of individual disengagement as Brook’s “so be it” insouciance, which would otherwise be identified as “alienation”, or even Brook’s vaguely described “detachment” (if we analyze that latter term into some sensible definition).
Their essential ideological difference is that MissnOmar’s moral principle offers some hope of prevention and resistance against fascism, whereas Brook’s flabby and self-indulgent reasoning, and lack of concern for such principle, promises to facilitate such brutal, nihilistic regression into fascism, if not openly encourage fascism if self interest takes the bait. Notice that Brook’s carefree disregard for my points (no doubt he’d call it “tolerance” or something else nice for the neighbours and postcode) implies clearly that he is content with not exploring, testing or defending his own position. After all, in Australia he has the bosses of the police and army on his side, by default. Therefore, Brook’s “so be it” would really mean in the current political context: “So there”!
Notice too that fascists do not need to launch any “political and ideological assault” against the philosophically compliant like Brook and other apparatchiks - unless those apparatchiks show signs of growing moral vertebrae. But without such backbone, Brook and his mates may even be eligible star recruits.
There are at least three things wrong with mil-observer’s imputation of fascism to those who, like me, do not share her or his understanding of the function of works of art.
The first is that it is untrue, as well as abusive. The second is that even if it were true it would not follow that works of art must be conceived as having a duty never to be morally, politically or otherwise offensive. The third is that the tendency of fascism has been to show intolerance, rather than to argue as I do for tolerance, toward things that it judges to be offensive.
Donald Brook
Brook carries his non-engagement with my arguments’ substance into simplistic misrepresentation of my points about proto-fascist decadence and its compatibility with (ostensibly) liberalist parallels.
I predicted accurately that Brook would wear the “tolerance” badge here for its slippery semantic vagueness, and for its established prestige in middle class, liberalist respectability and hypocrisy. Less explicitly, I predicted also that he would take no umbrage at all when so identified with such middle class smugness and its discreetly feudal barbarism preoccupied as it is with alienating neighbourhoods, postcodes and other stuff.
Fascism too can show conspicuous “tolerance” for “things that it judges to be offensive”. Some obvious examples are: homosexual leaders of the brownshirt thugs; allied asians, slavonics, arabs and others deemed so “impure” during war, or; jewish ghetto police and many camp kapos.
Such ripostes are what passes for discurive rigour in Brook’s world? The main questions for Australian workers then are: how did Brook ever get on the public payroll? Was it a similar process to the smooth career of that openly JFK-hating buffoon Alexander Downer? And how to correct this offensive situation?
Ah, but “not that I have anything against buffoons, some of them are my best friends, with lovely speaking voices, furniture and gardens, went to good schools, from ‘good families’”, etc., etc.
Oh, and the other clanger: "it would not follow that works of art must be conceived as having a duty never to be morally, politically or otherwise offensive".
As if I said or even implied that "works of art must be conceived" so - I even explained and qualified my support for Pasolini’s "Salo" and the photo of the napalm victim, while acknowledging their obvious and comparable "offensiveness".
Workers pay disproportionately high taxes, see public assets looted, and endure endless humiliation for this, "Sophistry 101", in a brutally stratified society which Brook trumpets as one we are fortunate to live in because it is not "risk averse" with kiddie porn.
In a word: offensive.
Despite mil-observer’s suspicion that I may have a discreditable postcode it seems that we share a basis for agreement.
S/he now says clearly that there are works (s/he mentions a film and a photograph) for which s/he would be ready to offer a defence that (as we may assume) would not be an ‘aesthetic’ defence. Because s/he is evidently a highly principled person we must also assume that this defence would still be forthcoming if the things that s/he considers to be defensible were the targets of popular vilification, and even if they were deemed to be illegal.
I further assume (I hope this is not going too far) that his or her defence would be of a broadly moral or ideological nature, with the suggestion that, despite all objections raised, the minds of reluctant contemplators might be usefully expanded by an open-minded engagement.
This seems to me to be pretty much what I argued in my original essay.
So much amity is encouraging. I do not know whether Alexander Downer would agree with us, and I am not on sufficiently cordial terms to ask him.
Donald Brook
More misrepresentation, but apparently more dishonest: "discreditable postcode" indeed. Brook knows I’ve called his mystical condition of "detachment" for the moral vacuum and alienated snobbery that it is. Hence my allusion to Downer, because Brook’s own criticisms of him elsewhere amount to just another boathouse squabble.
His latest misrepresentation, and his condescending and sarcastic twists of fake "amity", would confirm his own alienation not only from the exploited and otherwise non-privileged of my concerns. His insincere words reveal alienation from the more basic concern for honesty as a fundamental element of human respect, including the respect shown when someone offers open and robust criticism (not the fake and superficial poses of respect via politesse). I believe this more personal aspect of the discussion exposes the basic offense of the Oz arty child porn: lack of respect for child welfare and other moral concerns has been smugly dismissed (and yes, actually vilified) because of the high self-regard of many dubiously qualified - and dubiously motivated - in and around the country’s arts community.
Although Brook expresses serious concern for popular vilification (presumably towards Henson, mainly), he seems to miss the point of such reaction against endorsed, artistic soft-core kiddie porn. Ultimately, Australia’s legal culture has either failed outrageously or it has deliberately committed an oppressive outrage against concerned and mostly powerless families and others concerned for the essential value of human life - whether in Melbourne, Manila or Mexico City.
Donald Brook should try to arrange a Henson/Papapetrou tour back home in the UK, where the only "mind expanding" endorsed for sex crime is a jail term.
correction to above:
"lack of respect for, and smug dismissal and vilification of, child welfare and other moral concerns, because of the high self-regard of many dubiously qualified - and dubiously motivated - in and around the country’s arts community."
I let this conversation sit for a day or two in order to allow space for others to express an opinion.
It seemed to me that the issue I raised had been resolved, at least to the extent that nobody challenged the proposition (supported by me, and evidently also by mil-observer) that although some objects put up for public contemplation attract popular condemnation - even horror - on moral, ideological or other grounds, these things may nevertheless have available to them a (non-aesthetic) defence.
The general form of this defence is that admittedly offensive things may have a capacity to open the minds of objectors in some way, if only they can be persuaded to reflect more broadly than they did when forming the immediately hostile response
But from this point on we begin to differ. (Or anyhow, mil-observer and I begin to differ). Mil-observer seems to believe that no such defence should ever be mounted on behalf of those things that s/he spontaneously judges to be indefensible. My own opinion is that such a defence can (under certain circumstances) always be mounted, even if everyone immediately judges it to be offensive.
This is not to say that such a defence must always succeed. Often, and rightly, it will fail. One cannot imagine a successful defence of a stoning-to-death-for-adultery in the local art gallery on the ground that some justifying illumination might reward those who are ready to contemplate it with detachment.
The point is this. How shall it be decided in advance, without settled precedents, which of the innumerable objects offered up by artists for public contemplation will prove to be indefensible? Shall the judgment be summary, conducted on the street or in the media by the loudest shouters, or shall there be a fairly regular, socially sanctioned, process?
I suggest that we already have a socially sanctioned process in which the art world has an important role. My contribution to the discussion is motivated by a recognition (shared, it seems, with mil-observer) that the artworld often takes “aesthetic merit” far more seriously than it should.
The only prospect more radical than my own (as far as I can see) would be to abolish the artworld. But (like mil-observer, as it seems) I don’t have a clear argument to show that this would be a good idea. Nor – to be practical for a moment, rather than philosophical - can I see how to go about it.
Donald Brook
Brook’s “Amityville Horror”: visions of a mil-observer poltergeist seeming to do various things contrary to actual known behaviour and agenda.
As I indicated with my allusions to circumstances in the UK, this debate should really concern the proper subordination of art to common, responsible and soundly reasoned legal determinations. Therefore, photography of naked children – where not cleared for obvious public interest and educational purpose, and excluding ephemera like family baby snaps – reverts to our traditional understanding of child pornography. Aspirational, self-conscious “artists” like Papapetrou would probably have to contemplate other courses of action for entry into oligarchal favour and/or status; on her past form, that contemplation would likely take place in prison. And this is not some spontaneous judgement, as Brook claims, because the defensible criteria I describe are obvious grounds for potentially lengthy analysis into moral, ideological and yes – contrary to Brook’s claims – aesthetic factors. Pasolini’s “Salo” is the most challenging (and instructive) case that comes to my mind.
But instead of any common expectation about legal authority, Brook assumes – and correctly it seems - a separate source of authority for the art world itself leading to such legal determinations in Australia. I would not be surprised if Brook himself or similar figures exert such influence in this country, at least indirectly via the Classification Board. While Brook calls it a “socially sanctioned process in which the art world has an important role”, I believe a clearer, honest description runs more like “an oligarchically sanctioned process in which the art world has an autonomous but ideologically compatible role”.
One of Brook’s more bizarre digressions is his all-or-nothing proposition that society must accept the notion of “detached contemplation” or set itself to abolishing the art world. Why should the discussion lead us to consider that extreme Götterdämmerung, and in a domain so proud to proclaim much more moderate tones and sentiments – usually deemed identical with liberalism, and however wishy-washy, insincere or hypocritical – like “tolerant” and “balanced” (and “moderate”)? The situation should not be deemed so drastic if Australian art circles submit to properly constructed and deliberated legal determinations like the rest of society (though I admit that serious reform, if not revolution, is needed in Australia’s legal system). But such an ultimatum as Brook’s smacks of the petulance one expects from oligarchs who would burn everything and everyone with them rather than relinquish power and admit their incompetency.
So what is left in the hazily depicted governance of Brook’s scheme as it apparently reigns in this country? We can discern an artistic elite (itself created from unclear determinations) influencing heavily, if not determining outright, legal considerations over artistic kiddie porn. That situation prompts further questions into just how the Classification Board could waste its time and more of our money over silly, woolly-headed decisions about a work’s “impact level”, or which box to tick: “art” or “porn”.
On the one hand, the situation reflects the typically oxymoronic notion of a “self-regulating” body in pet neo-liberalist jargon and euphemism for oligarchical privilege to do largely as it wants; by those sleazy double standards, the more self-regulators exploit, confound, provoke and offend the powerless the better. On the other hand, that neo-liberalist condition portends a more austere version for this currently onrushing phase of global financial crisis, hyperinflation and depression.
So we’re back to those ruminations between the bold, governing artist-pioneers in 1945 Berlin, with Speer’s revision of his pompous “Germania” project, fit for a Riefenstahl sequel to "Olympia". Brook may wave his western liberalist flag over emotive, non-artistic caricatures about adulterers stoned to death (Norma Khouri anyone?) but, whether Brook is conscious of the fact or too “detached” to notice, his flag still looks like the fascist banner I identified early in this discussion.
It begins to look, dear mil-observer, as if everyone else has got bored and gone home. But just in case there is a mind around that has not already been made up I would like to respond to the following passage. You write:
“I would not be surprised if Brook himself or similar figures exert such influence in this country, at least indirectly via the Classification Board. While Brook calls it a ‘socially sanctioned process in which the art world has an important role’, I believe a clearer, honest description runs more like ‘an oligarchically sanctioned process in which the art world has an autonomous but ideologically compatible role’.”
In fact, the role of the artworld is to determine which among candidate objects shall be classified as works of art and which shall not. This is not a legally prescribed role: it is just a fact; albeit a fact to which many societies have adapted. There was a time when the European artworld did not recognize those African ‘heathen idols’ that were often condemned and destroyed by missionaries, as works of art. There was a time when the white Australian artworld did not recognize Aboriginal artefacts as works of art. Now they do.
It is reasonable to describe the role of the artworld both as autonomous and as ideologically compatible with societies that are ordered in a variety of ways.
My suggestion has been that the effect of the artworld’s recognition of an object as a work of art is to invite people to contemplate it with a radically open mind, hoping that some revelation or insight may flow from the temporary inhibition of habitual reactions of moral, political, religious or other outrage.
It is not the role of the artworld to call for the condemnation of objects that it has recognized as works of art, or to demand that legal sanctions be invoked against them. That is one of the roles of the wider society.
When such demands are made it will not be sufficient for the artworld or its accredited representatives merely to assert that the offending object is a recognized work of art. This is something that may need to be proven, but it will not be enough. It must also be shown that the advantage of an open-minded contemplation outweighs whatever offensiveness may be alleged.
To the extent that members of the artworld undertake this additional task they are, so to speak, on their own. It is not the duty of the artworld to share and to promote a collective opinion about what is good and what is bad in the world. Notoriously, the artworld is as divided about what is good and what is bad as the footy world.
My own contribution to the debate has been to suggest that representatives of the artworld who volunteer an opinion in contested cases are mistaken if they think (a) that an “aesthetic” defence can be reiably expected to prevail (b) that their membership of the artworld restricts them to offering such a defence.
Many people in the artworld disagree with me on both these points. As oligarchs go, I think that I shall not qualify for the Olympics.
Donald Brook