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timmy
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Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13800
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I know we are concerned here to ensure that children are not victimised, abused, or exploited. We've just has a discussion with some heat over one interpretation of the question asked.
Today a photo by a well known artist, exhibited without problems globally, is in the hands of the UK Police who are deciding, presumably, if there is a case to answer.
On http://tinyurl.com/34xxo2 Elton John, the owner of the picture says:
"The photograph entitled "Klara and Edda belly-dancing" (1998) is one of 149 images comprising the "Thanksgiving" installation by renowned US photographer Nan Goldin.
The photograph exists as part of the installation as a whole and has been widely published and exhibited throughout the world. It can be found in the monograph of Ms Goldin's works entitled "The Devil's Playground" (Phaidon, 2003), has been offered for sale at Sotheby's New York in 2002 and 2004, and has previously been exhibited in Houston, London, Madrid, New York, Portugal, Warsaw and Zurich without any objections of which we are aware."
This has made national, perhaps global news.
I have not seen the picture, but it is variously described as "potentially pornographic" and "innocent" by people interviewed on the BBC news.
The art gallery called the police when they were asked to exhibit the work.
But there are many nude pictures of children and many statues of nude children. The Manekin Pis in Brussels is a supreme example of genitals being used for urination in a public display.
Where does art stop and porn start?
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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It's art until someone calls the police, then it's pornography. Once it's been tainted by that, no-one wants to own it in case they are accused of having ulterior motives.
Generally, whether something is art or pornography depends on the sensibilities of the person looking at it. These days, where children are involved, people are likely to err not so much on the side of caution as the side of extreme prudery, to avoid any allegation of impropriety. I don't think you can set a point, as there's a really huge grey area between the two ends. People project things onto artworks that were never in the mind of the artist.
David
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After looking at the picture I would hesitate at calling it art, But don't think its porn either.
Looks more like a badly composed snap shot.
A slightly edited verision can be found here:
http://hitsusa.com/blog/140/klara-and-edda-belly-dancing/
If you for some reason need to see the real thing, just google the name of the photo "Klara and Edda belly-dancing" and you have about 19,000 choices.
(\\__/) And if you don't believe The sun will rise
(='.'=) Stand alone and greet The coming night
(")_(") In the last remaining light. (C. Cornell)
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marc
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Needs to get a life! |
Registered: March 2003
Messages: 4729
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1) Its porn when the laws say it is.
2) It's porn if you have to ask if its porn. If it werent then there would be no question.
3) It's porn if it abuses or uses another in its production.
[Updated on: Fri, 28 September 2007 00:44]
Life is great for me... Most of the time... But then I meet people online... Very few are real friends... Many say they are but know nothing of what it means... Some say they are, but are so shallow...
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JimB
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Likes it here |
Registered: December 2006
Messages: 349
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It would be nice if the tough questions were so easily answered.
"1) Its porn when the law says it is." But the law is very ambiguous in defining pornography, and always has been.
"2) Its porn if you have to ask if its porn. If it weren't then there would be no question." Some art will always be border line and raise questions but that doesn't necessarily mean that it crosses the line. This also implies that it is an individual decision which would result in ever greater ambiguity than exists with the law. For some pornography is the display of a women's cleavage; for others it requires a display of sexual activity.
"3) Its porn if it abuses or uses another in its production." A person can be abused in the production or display of art that is not pornography. Anyone appearing in a portrait or picture or who posed for a sculpture was used, whether they were compensated or not.
"Where does art stop and porn start?" As a society we will be asking and answering that with constant variations until the end of time. Just as we have since man first drew on cave walls. That is why the law is so ambiguous in this regard. I'm sure we could find things 200- or 300-years old that was considered art then and is thought of as pornography now.
I would not be surprised if we found cave drawing that we would deem to be pornography; but did the artist's language even contain such a word? Does anyone know the history of the word pornography? When did the concept first arrive on the scene?
I'm sorry Timmy, but your question has no perminant answer. At least in a free society. In Iran, where they execute homosexuals, they also execute pornographers.
JimB
[Updated on: Fri, 28 September 2007 03:51] |
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ChowanFarmBoy
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Toe is in the water |
Registered: January 1970
Messages: 93
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Damn you dudes love to split the hairs on the ass end of a mule.
If it gives you a boner, and you feel like jacking off, then it's porn.
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JimB
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Likes it here |
Registered: December 2006
Messages: 349
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And I thought the question couldn't be answered. LOL But I find it difficult to disagree with you.
JimB
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cossie
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On fire! |
Location: Exiled in North East Engl...
Registered: July 2003
Messages: 1699
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This furore is taking place just a dozen or so miles from where I’m sitting as I write this – and The Baltic (a former flour mill on the banks of the Tyne) is actually in Gateshead, not Newcastle, as stated in the link provided. Gateshead Council will NOT be pleased!
The Baltic has a reputation for indulging in what might be called ‘peripheral art’, and it’s pretty clear that the artistic management team are an oddball – and very self-opinionated – group of people. Local press reports quote ‘sources’ as indicating that the police were called by an (apparently female) assistant director, and the tone of the reports creates the impression that the call was not unanimously supported.
So much for the local background. I’ve done a bit of googling, and I see that the issue has brought forth the usual bunch of cranks and idiots on both sides of the fence, so let’s try for a balanced view.
This sort of thing sells tabloid papers, and that, in a nutshell, is what it’s all about. Those same tabloid papers have, for precisely the same reason, fanned the frenzied flames of puritan disgust for the past thirty years or so. In the mid-1970s hardly anyone would have batted an eyelid. The present situation in the UK is so bad that child psychologists are warning that children are being seriously damaged by over-protective parents, who see bogeymen lurking behind every tree. That gets reported in the quality press, but not in the tabloids. I wonder why?
Pressure groups have lobbied for ever more draconian legislation, with some bizarre results; for example, with her parents’ consent, if your girlfriend is 16 you may marry her, and the two of you can then indulge in carnal desires to your heart’s content – but, unless you marry, it is a serious offence to photograph her nude, even with permission from her parents.
Newspapers trumpet an increase in sex crimes against children, but it takes some imaginative statistical analysis to come up with that conclusion. In fact, the number of reported incidents of sexual abuse of children has remained fairly static, despite all the additional publicity. What DOES inflate the sex-crimes-against-children statistics is the number of prosecutions for the relatively new offence of viewing child pornography on the internet. Now I’m not suggesting that looking at child pornography is acceptable, but it’s not exactly a heinous crime and there is absolutely no evidence that looking at pornography makes the viewer more likely to commit a sexual assault upon a child. It is, in fact, manna from heaven for law enforcers; prosecutions triggered by credit card account numbers are easy to mount and very difficult to refute, so the proportion of successful convictions rises and the police look good. The Courts pontificate about it ‘not being a victimless crime’; that’s true, but only in a pretty tenuous sense. The subjects in the photographs are certainly victims, but on any logical view they are victims of the photographer, rather than the eventual viewer. It is probably true that in most, though not necessarily all cases, the photographer is motivated by the prospect of financial gain, and it is therefore undeniable that ‘the market’ plays a large part. But surely the measure of individual guilt should be the consequence of that individual’s actions. This brings in the mathematical and statistical concept of marginal effect; to what extent is the plight of the subject made worse by the fact that a given individual has looked at a picture? The answer must be hardly at all. Yet those charged with having ‘possessed’ – which, to all intents and purposes, means viewed – a pornographic image of a child or children can find themselves penalised more heavily than those charged with inflicting grievous bodily harm. The recent case of the UK actor Chris Langham is in point here; he viewed some pornographic images, admittedly of a serious kind, and finds himself jailed and effectively deprived of his livelihood – yet not a scrap of evidence was adduced to show that he was a danger to children.
The attitudes I have described have no logical substance, but they are relevant to Timmy’s original question because they reveal the distorted backdrop against which the question must be considered.
So, what is my answer? Well, on the subject of art, I have to admit to traditional leanings. Constable, Turner, Sisley, Monet et al move me – Tracy Emin’s ‘Unmade Bed’ leaves me with no other reaction but a desire to make it. Nevertheless, the photograph in question was one of a substantial number in an aggregate work, so I have little time for those who dismiss it as ‘badly lit’ or ‘amateurish’; without seeing the overall context, it’s impossible to form an opinion.
But is it pornographic? Well, according to my good friend the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, ‘pornography’ is ‘the explicit description or exhibition of sexual subjects or activity in literature, painting, films, etc., in a manner intended to stimulate erotic, rather than aesthetic feelings’. So the test is objective rather than subjective; what matters is not the opinion of that bastion of UK society, ‘Disgusted’ of Tunbridge Wells, regular contributor to the ‘Daily Mail’, ‘Daily Express’ and ‘Daily Telegraph’; the test is what the photographer intended. This single photograph was part of a substantial series, and I have seen no evidence to convince me that the photographer’s intention was pornographic.
And that, I suppose, answers Timmy’s question. That’s how we ought to make the distinction. So. If YOU find the photograph erotic, you need to ask yourself why.
In conclusion, I’ve seen a huge number of posts elsewhere referring to the embarrassment the subjects will feel in later life. That may well be so in the context of the posters’ families (and I’m rather sorry for their kids!), but in this case the parents presumably agreed to the photograph – which, after all, depicts two little girls having fun together – and it is unlikely that children brought up in such a liberal family will suffer grievous psychological damage. And, of course, the face of the younger girl isn’t recognisable.
Sorry to go on so long – and no, I’m not a devotee of pornography – but I AM a devotee of logic and, on this topic, that commodity is sadly lacking in UK society today.
[Updated on: Sat, 29 September 2007 04:45]
For a' that an' a' that,
It's comin' yet for a' that,
That man tae man, the worrld o'er
Shall brithers be, for a' that.
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timmy
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Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13800
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I don't find it particularly tasteful, and I concur with Cossie's thoughts about unmade beds (lower down), but I don't see it as pornographic either, primarily because it is nothing whatsoever to do with sex. It's just a pair of kids, playing.
No-one has addressed the Manekin Pis Fountain. Is that harder, then?
Have advertisers considered the borderline between showing naked babies and showing naked "just older than babies"? You bet they have. We now have naked babies with airbrushed out genitals!
The attitude of "If the law says it's porn then it's porn" doesn't wash, Marc. You are entitled to have an opinion about the law and to lobby your elected representatives to get laws altered. Of course, with lobbying about porn laws one is either "the moral majority" or "a sicko" depending in the direction of lobbying
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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marc
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Needs to get a life! |
Registered: March 2003
Messages: 4729
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It might not "wash" to you.... But when a person is sitting in the plaintifs box and waiting for the hammar to fall..... it surely is when the law says it is it is.
Life is great for me... Most of the time... But then I meet people online... Very few are real friends... Many say they are but know nothing of what it means... Some say they are, but are so shallow...
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I am now drawn to ask a few more questions :
What of the Statue of David by Michelangelo, is this not porn ?
And what of the painting of Vincent Van Gogh's with his ear cut off, now I know that he is still fully clothed but it this not "hurt" for art ?
And what of authors that write sexually explicit stories for the world to read ?
These really are true questions from my side, because I feel very strong on the point of " if it upsets you, DO NOT DO IT "
So if you catch a show on telly that upsets you change the station, you are not forced to sit an watch it. And the same goes for books, if you are reading something or looking at the pictures and you do not like it put the book down.
Now you see, I really did not think that this would be so hard to do. However, it seems that in a society blessed with so many fools and sheep, it really is quite hard to do, say, feel and act as you please.
"And so the lion fell in love with the Lamb"
"What a stupid Lamb"
"What a sick, masochistic lion"
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JimB
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Likes it here |
Registered: December 2006
Messages: 349
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LOL
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jack
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Likes it here |
Location: England
Registered: September 2006
Messages: 304
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Where does art stop and porn start?
In my opinion this could be called porn, i would not want this hanging on my wall.
i would call it light porn , but in the art world would say it is art..
life is to enjoy.
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marc
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Needs to get a life! |
Registered: March 2003
Messages: 4729
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The question at hand was not what I consider porn, or you for that matter.
The question was asked as to where the line is that divides art from porn.
I believed I answered that question.
Life is great for me... Most of the time... But then I meet people online... Very few are real friends... Many say they are but know nothing of what it means... Some say they are, but are so shallow...
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cossie
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On fire! |
Location: Exiled in North East Engl...
Registered: July 2003
Messages: 1699
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Do they do mail order?
For a' that an' a' that,
It's comin' yet for a' that,
That man tae man, the worrld o'er
Shall brithers be, for a' that.
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Re: When is it art, when is it pornography 
Re: When is it art, when is it pornography 
