Art

The NSW government have released a set of recommendations that would place responsibility for the work of a grubby network of international paedophiles and child exploiters on a handful of innocent visual artists.

Cartoon: Eric Lobbecke

Speaking at a press conference on Tuesday the Attorney-General John Hatzistergos said the NSW government would support new legislation that makes a “clear legal distinction between pornography and art” in order to protect victims and make it easier for police to prosecute cases of child pornography and exploitation

With plans to scrap the defence of “artistic merit” while asking artists to fork out up to $500 per image for Commonwealth classification, Hatzistergos’ recommendations are taking a stab at a group, who up until 2008 had stayed fairly shy of scrutiny in Australia.

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  • james campbell says:

    04:11pm | 14/03/10

    A good friend of mine put it simply when he said that it is pornography if you think it is. thank you Tony. We are doing what the artist, for want of a better word, wants. We are discussing his works and therefore justifying his existence and his views. Read more »

  • Decent says:

    11:39am | 14/03/10

    You mention topless sunbakers. -  Taking a photo of them is perverted! You mention Kim PhĂșc (the naked young girl fleeing a napalm bombing raid) - This was an acclaimed photo because it caught a dramatic moment not because she was modeling for the photo. Paying a minor to take… Read more »

 

It’s Friday @ The Punch.

Edvard Munch’s iconic artwork ‘The Scream’ was stolen from the National Art Museum of Oslo. After the painting was recovered, one of the two thieves, Paal Enger, went on to become a legitimate art dealer.

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  • Daddio D says:

    03:01am | 15/02/10

    Art Dealers ARE thieves. Thieves are Artistes - of a kind. Read more »

  • stephen says:

    02:54pm | 12/02/10

    All thieves become Art Dealers. (Or is that all Art Dealers become thieves). Read more »

 

If Green Day sang that the Jesus of American suburbia is a lie, Chris O’Doherty (aka Reg Mombassa) offers a surreal Aussie equivalent: the Jesus of our suburbia is a regular guy, eating a pie, wearing a tie, with a third eye.

Jesus of Suburbia: the art of Reg Mombassa.

Mombassa was a member of iconic Australian rock band Mental As Anything before becoming one of Australia’s most recognisable visual artists and helping to establish the fame and fortune of the Mambo surfwear brand.

The release of Murray Waldren’s beautifully-produced biography of Mombassa, The Mind and Times of Reg Mombassa, highlights just how prominent Christian, or ‘neo-Christian’, themes are in his artwork.

Lauded as a pop culture artist, Mombassa self-identifies in a more religious fashion: “It’s like being a priest. To some extent, it’s a calling”, he tells Waldren. His “Self portrait with beard and plastic ring”, painted last year, is an obvious Christ-figure, with the ring as a halo.

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  • Liz says:

    08:29am | 01/02/10

    Yawn, tell us something about a real artist. Read more »

  • Jethro says:

    08:10pm | 31/01/10

    Jeebus loves you. Yes he do. Read more »

 

The proposal this year to remove the artistic defence from the NSW proposed legislation on child abuse, which includes child pornography and exploitation, is not particularly about censoring artists. 

The police raid on Bill Henson's photographs at the Robin Oxley 9 Gallery in Sydney in 2008.

In fact, the Australia Council for the Arts believes that the proposal, which will harmonise NSW laws with the Commonwealth laws on the definitions of child pornography, has the potential to be advantageous to genuine artistic expression. 

Mention art and pornography together, and people immediately position themselves at opposite ends of the room.

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  • A-Cup says:

    03:52pm | 31/01/10

    What’s even more preposterous is that our country’s censors - oh I’m sorry, ‘classifiers’ - are so paranoid over this issue that they have even refused classification to some adult films (and publications?) featuring small-breasted women, on the premise that they “look” like they’re underage. Read more »

  • stephen says:

    11:15pm | 30/01/10

    Your objection has nothing to do with Art. Read more »

 

One of the strongest arguments against the exploitation of children by photographers is the potential for long term damage to the child.

There was nothing artistic about Blue Lagoon

What a child may “consent” to when they’re 10-years-old, might make them feel incredibly uncomfortable when they’re 17. Most of the time we don’t get to ask them.

But the Tate Modern in London has just been forced to withdraw a picture of Hollywood star Brooke Shields, taken when she was 10. It’s a rare case where we can see how the subject’s life has turned out.

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  • Jay says:

    05:07pm | 02/10/09

    The disturbing aspect to this particular case is that Brooke’s mother organised it all. Just like poor JonBenĂ©t Patricia Ramsey, the parent(s) so hungry for fame - and prepared to sacrifice their own children (sometime literally) to get it. Yes - we need to protect children. However, more and more… Read more »

  • Shama says:

    03:11pm | 02/10/09

    You can keep debating what is child pornography and come to no consensus.  But these are pictures that are placed in a public space.  A child may not suffer the consequences of such public exposure - on the other hand it can given any society’s morals, taboos etc.  + consent… Read more »

 

TO a graffiti vandal, it’s the equivalent of a madman running through the Louvre with a knife at night slashing the Mona Lisa and other canvases. A secret squirt squad is systematically defacing illegal “artworks” daubed along Melbourne’s train lines by painting the letters “CTCV” over the top.

Victorian Graffiti: Who ever is behind CTCV has gone to war with Melbourne's street artists. Picture: Flickr

The anonymous vigilantes are bombarding hundreds of sites across the rail network with their simple tag, prompting cries of foul play from graffiti crews.

Outraged vandals have accused employees of train operator Connex, and also the transit police, of somehow orchestrating the blitz as some sort of bizarre “tit for tat” campaign to wipe out street art.

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  • DEEPONE says:

    02:00pm | 24/01/10

    If arts a crime I hope god forgives me. You would have NO problems at all with advertising along the train lines and it will happen, in time. I’m sure you’ve seen the advertising on the trams in the city for McDonals and the like? They got that idea from… Read more »

  • erhjkl says:

    07:37pm | 23/01/10

    i hear it stands for   ” catching the city vandals ” Read more »

 

The Gallery of Modern Art in Glasgow with a local community church has opened a new exhibition that originally aimed to “reclaim the Bible as a sacred text”.

.Looking over his shoulder, author Salman Rushdie with his work Satantic Verses

In a somewhat unorthodox way of achieving this end they have left a Bible open at the exhibition inviting people to write whatever they want in it.

“If you feel you have been excluded from the Bible, please write your way back into it,” asks the gallery.

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  • DG says:

    04:53pm | 28/08/09

    In the interests of intellectual honesty - Hitchins does not make the like between Islam and the crusades that was my own take on why Islam is at that phase now, while Christianity has moved to a more liberal approach. Hitchins went no further than observing that the media tend… Read more »

  • Basher says:

    04:15pm | 28/08/09

    I can’t speak for the artists, merely for myself. I don’t have much to say about the Koran because I don’t know much about it. On the other hand, I have plenty of criticism to level at the bible because I’ve read it. Cover to Cover, contrary to Mr Klitzke’s… Read more »

 

In 2007, for the first time in its history, The Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning was awarded to a cartoonist whose submission consisted of both print cartoons and animations.

America’s editorial cartoonists, already under siege from dwindling newspaper circulation, syndication and political correctness, were quick to circle the wagons around their craft. “What next…the Family Guy gets a Pulitzer?” bleated USA Today’s Scott Stantis.

They miss the point. Anybody who’s ever picked up a pixel and tried to churn out an animation knows how laborious, how mind-numbingly tedious, how frustrating a process it can be.

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  • stephen says:

    02:35pm | 13/07/09

    Yes Lucien, I think of it as ‘wiseguy’ commentary. I look at this stuff, fold my arms, tilt my head, and go “huh, KOOKY”, (then check the t.v. guide when’s showing re-runs of Mister Ed.) These ‘cartoon capers’ is where bart simpson, Jay Leno and any advertising gets its ‘philosophy… Read more »

 

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