Nan Goldin closure at Baltic, UK

[donbga]

Of course it's not the same thing. But Goldin's photo and child porn aren't the same thing either.

Just for the record, I find her photo particularly distasteful and unpleasant. But that doesn't make it porn. And it doesn't mean that the children were exploited either. The only people who can really judge that are the children themselves and possibly their parents.

Some of Goldin's work that I've seen first hand is pornographic and I think it is the right of a local community to determine what constitutes pornographic material. However if admission to the exhibit is restricted to card carrying adults then I think the work shouldn't have been removed.

Now least anyone think I'm a prude I'm a big Helmut Newton fan. But as for Goldin, her work totally bores me.

Don Bryant

 

[Ray Heath]

I'm pretty sure the gallery employee who dialled 999 should probably consider whether the arts field is really where they should be working, do they really have the judgement and values to be a positive asset to an arts institution?

g'day Dave

so you don't feel that an employee should raise an issue in the workplace that they feel strongly about, they should believe in their "betters"

Ray

 

[David H. Bebbington]

I don't think we have the full facts, Ray. What I have read is that the gallery employee felt it necessary to have the police vet the picture, despite it being common knowledge that the potentially offending picture had already appeared in public in numerous forms, in particular in a show at the Saatchi gallery a few years before. at which time this gallery resisted calls to withdraw the picture and the Crown Prosecution Service subsequently decided there was no basis on which to mount a case. On the basis of these facts, the Baltic gallery person seems to have made a poor, if not ludicrous, decision. If he/she felt they had a good reason to act as they did, I would like to know what that was.

Regards,

David

 

[DaveOttawa]

g'day Dave

so you don't feel that an employee should raise an issue in the workplace that they feel strongly about, they should believe in their "betters"

Ray

I suspect your post is missing a "?" at the end, assuming it is then the answer is they should raise an issue if they like, regardless of betters, whoever they may be in this case. What they did goes a bit beyond "raising an issue" though.

The work in question is quite well known, has been exhibited and published over the years since its creation and has not been the subject of any criminal charges. Presumably the gallery had a chance to see it before it agreed to the loan from the collector. So, if you are going to raise the question of whether it is obscene, it would seem good judgement would be to do that BEFORE it is hanging on the wall in your gallery for the exhibition, maybe even before you agree to exhibit it. Poor judgement would seem to be to wait the work is hung and then call the police who take it to the CPS who decide it is not obscene, during which time the collector withdraws the loan anyway. As I said the judgement of the caller is suspect, and it is hard to see how they have done the gallery any good by their actions. Whether intentionally or not they have in effect censored an exhbition (that definitively in law did not contain obscene material) at that institution. Who gave them that power? My point was: is that what you want staff at an art institution to do?

 

[Ray Heath]

I suspect your post is missing a "?" at the end, assuming it is then the answer is they should raise an issue if they like, regardless of betters, whoever they may be in this case. What they did goes a bit beyond "raising an issue" though.

The work in question is quite well known, has been exhibited and published over the years since its creation and has not been the subject of any criminal charges. Presumably the gallery had a chance to see it before it agreed to the loan from the collector. So, if you are going to raise the question of whether it is obscene, it would seem good judgement would be to do that BEFORE it is hanging on the wall in your gallery for the exhibition, maybe even before you agree to exhibit it. Poor judgement would seem to be to wait the work is hung and then call the police who take it to the CPS who decide it is not obscene, during which time the collector withdraws the loan anyway. As I said the judgement of the caller is suspect, and it is hard to see how they have done the gallery any good by their actions. Whether intentionally or not they have in effect censored an exhbition (that definitively in law did not contain obscene material) at that institution. Who gave them that power? My point was: is that what you want staff at an art institution to do?

hi Dave

well said, and you raise valid points, but surely what happened after the gallery employee raised the issue to authorities was not under their (the employee's) control

if the episode became a messy, expensive and futile excercise isn't that another matter that raises more questions

why did it become messy?

how do the authorities handle such issues?

who are/what is the CPS and why/how do they get to decide such issues?

who/what should decide such issues?

why does anyone need to view such images in other than a personal, private or family setting?

Ray

 

[Ian Leake]

hi Dave

well said, and you raise valid points, but surely what happened after the gallery employee raised the issue to authorities was not under their (the employee's) control

if the episode became a messy, expensive and futile excercise isn't that another matter that raises more questions

why did it become messy?

how do the authorities handle such issues?

who are/what is the CPS and why/how do they get to decide such issues?

who/what should decide such issues?

Ray

The authorities seem to have handled this by the book which is, on balance, the right thing to do. One can't expect the average police constable to know the background of any particular photograph. The CPS (Crown Prosecution Service - in the UK the police investigate and then pass a dossier of evidence to the CPS who decide whether to prosecute) also seem to have been sensible about this.

The lack of judgement is clearly within the gallery. And because of this poor judgement they've not only lost an exhibition and made themselves look ridiculous, but they've also wasted police and CPS time that could have been spent dealing with some real criminals.

Ray, I infer from your earlier post that you consider this person to be a 'whistle blower' not a moron. It seems to have been the gallery management who called in the police. I'd expect the management of a contemporary art gallery to have an understanding of contemporary art. And if they're involved in a 'big name' exhibition then I'd expect them to have done some research on the artist's background and all works to be displayed. It seems to me that they did none of these, instead they had a panicky reaction born out of ignorance. That's incompetence not whistle blowing.

why does anyone need to view such images in other than a personal, private or family setting?

That's not a fair question. It's using the same argument that authoritarian politicians routinely trot out when they're taking away our civil liberties: "Why would any law abiding citizen complain about... ?" It implies that people arguing the other case are criminals, or at best apologists for criminals.

In a liberal society we have to defend the rights of people 'who aren't the same as me' to do things when our response is 'I wouldn't do that.' Given that this particular photograph had already been assessed by the authorities, it doesn't seem unreasonable to expect a gallery to have shown it.

 

[Andy K]

who are/what is the CPS and why/how do they get to decide such issues?

who/what should decide such issues?

The Crown Prosecution Service

 

[Ian Leake]

...and here's an article that says it better than I can: http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/3933/

 

[Andy K]

...and here's an article that says it better than I can: http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/3933/

Thank you for posting that Ian. Much better said than I (my bold type):

'When it comes to looking at children, our very gaze, it seems, has lost its innocence. As Cosmo Landesman pointed out in The Sunday Times: ‘The naked child, once a normal part of public life, has become a public nuisance – a source of embarrassment and parental anxiety for one simple reason: paedophilia. Or to be more precise, paedophobia, the fear that someone is secretly taking pictures of our innocent child and then posting them on the internet and using them for perverted sexual gratification.’

<edit>

Yet even in this case, it was the sensitivities and insecurities of a few individuals that led to an installation being removed from a public exhibition. This is another example of the ‘tyranny of the minority’ where a handful of people can call on the authorities to decide what is or is not appropriate for the rest of us to see.

 

[catem]

I do not consider the photograph child porn, nor do I think it should be censored, but that doesn't mean I have to like it - or that I am necessarily right in thinking that way.

I think the wider implications of this are quite interesting from an ethical point of view, and it would be interesting to set the Baltic affair to one side for a moment.

How far are individuals allowed to question 'Art'? If a work is hung, or shown, - does that mean it is always unacceptable to object to it?

What do people make, for example, of the 'Starving Dog as Art'??

 

[DaveOttawa]

hi Dave

well said, and you raise valid points, but surely what happened after the gallery employee raised the issue to authorities was not under their (the employee's) control

if the episode became a messy, expensive and futile excercise isn't that another matter that raises more questions

why did it become messy?

how do the authorities handle such issues?

who are/what is the CPS and why/how do they get to decide such issues?

who/what should decide such issues?

why does anyone need to view such images in other than a personal, private or family setting?

Ray

News reports indicate the employee was part of management at the gallery, and while they weren't in control of the police and CPS actions I would suggest the course of those actions was easily foreseeable once the call had been made. The action of the lender is not surprising either.

No one NEEDS to view Goldin's work but it would be best if it wasn't, in effect, censored in this way at least in my opinion.

 

[DaveOttawa]

How far are individuals allowed to question 'Art'? If a work is hung, or shown, - does that mean it is always unacceptable to object to it?

One answer would that art often challenges and questions us, art and artists can expect to be vigourously challenged and questioned back. That way the art might actually mean something to us.
Of course that is not so easy when you can't see the art in question...

 

[Ian Leake]

I do not consider the photograph child porn, nor do I think it should be censored, but that doesn't mean I have to like it - or that I am necessarily right in thinking that way.

I agree. In my opinion it's a quite unpleasant picture which is not to my taste at all.

I think the wider implications of this are quite interesting from an ethical point of view, and it would be interesting to set the Baltic affair to one side for a moment.

How far are individuals allowed to question 'Art'? If a work is hung, or shown, - does that mean it is always unacceptable to object to it?

What do people make, for example, of the 'Starving Dog as Art'??

I think you've asked two questions here Cate. The first is easy: it's always acceptable to object to anything, so long as you don't employ violence or the threat of violence. But the objector should also be prepared to accept that they may be ignored...

You're second question is harder. My first reaction was that this turns my stomach and is quite outrageous. But then I got to thinking...

This Columbian seems to have demonstrated a level of cruelty that I don't think would be acceptable in Western Europe or North America. But maybe what he did is not so remarkable in the context of an extremely violent society. Just to be clear, I'm not condoning what he seems to have done (I use "seems" because some of the discussions I've seen report that the dog didn't actually die), but I do think it's more complex than it appears on the surface.

 

[Ian Leake]

Of course that is not so easy when you can't see the art in question...

Did anyone else notice that this picture couldn't be found using Google? I decided to look for it after the broohaha had been raging for a while, but even with the title of the photograph it was nowhere to be seen. I gave up after about an hour and I tried Yahoo - and found it instantly. I wonder whether the technology Google uses to censor democracy activists in China has been put to other uses. And if so, who decides what I'm allowed to see on the Internet?

 

[Ian Grant]

I found it it using Google Images, took a bit of finding an uncensored version but certainly not difficult. I have to use Google UK as well google.com always switches to google.com.tr in Turkish.

Perhaps its very interested that almost all APUG members who have posted on this thread supported the right for the image to be shown, despite the fact that no-one liked it. Also not supporting the Gallery's Assistant Directors action.

Ian

 

[Dave Wooten]

Did anyone else notice that this picture couldn't be found using Google? I decided to look for it after the broohaha had been raging for a while, but even with the title of the photograph it was nowhere to be seen. I gave up after about an hour and I tried Yahoo - and found it instantly. I wonder whether the technology Google uses to censor democracy activists in China has been put to other uses. And if so, who decides what I'm allowed to see on the Internet?

On page 4 of this thread is a link to another discussion forum, including the image...

 

[Matt5791]

Haven't had time to read this whole thread throughly, but, leaving the controversy aside, the photograph in question is just rubbish - absolutely no two ways about it. That's just the way it is.

If I was the photographer I really would be laughing all the way to the bank.

A story springs to mind: The Emperors New Clothes.