I was made to think quite hard yesterday when I was reading an article about the 72 year old artist Graham Overden.
Overden is a quality artist who has work displayed in the Tate and other galleries. I am unfamiliar with his art but for such galleries to display it suggests that it has merit. He specialised in painting of young prepubescent girls and rural landscapes.
Overden obviously had an attraction to young girls. He was prosecuted and found guilty of six counts of indecency and one of indecent assault for which he received a 27 month jail sentence.
A judge has now decided to go through Overton’s art work, including his collections of work by other artists, including Sir Peter Blake, and deciding whether they are obscene. If they are considered indecent they will be destroyed.
I found this disturbing. This seems to me to be a return to State censorship that has repercussions for everybody.
I do not condone what Graham Overden has done. Young girls should not be sexualised or used as sex objects, let alone physically abused.
I suspect that the young girls who posed for Overden were doing so with their parents’ consent?
This threw me into a number of thoughts:
Are we entering a new age of prudery?
Should we have censorship of art?
Should art be destroyed?
Are some subjects, such as young girls, now off limits for photography and art?
Could some of the photographs I innocently took of my children, who seemed to have a predilection to throw off their clothes, now have to be viewed in a different light?
Is obscenity in the eye of the beholder? Can a photograph/painting of a young girl be viewed as purely aesthetic by one person and as sexual by another?
Do we have to reassess everything a person has done in their life if they are a convicted paedophile? And does that negate all their output?
I had to think hard about some of these issues. This is what I concluded:
I think paedophiles have an illness. If they have an unhealthy sexual attraction to young girls or boys they should suppress it and seek treatment. If they abuse young children they should be punished and be treated.
I do not think any art should be subject to censorship unless it incites violence or hate crime.
We do seem to be entering a new age of prudery on sexual matters. I think all matters of sex between consenting adults, of whatever gender, in private, is purely up to them.
I do not believe a judge has any right to destroy works of art. That smacks of the Nazis burning books.
I do not believe anyone can see in the mind of another. If they view something as sexual in their heads then that is up to them. The Victorians covered legs on pianos because they found them sexual, while round the corner they had brothels.
If some people find a work of art sexual that is up to them.
It is only natural to reassess the work of an ‘artist’ if they are convicted of a crime. But it does not invalidate their work.
Naked people are not sexual. They are aesthetic, including children.
Sex is not obscene. Abuse of underage children is obscene.
Artistic freedom should be sacrosanct.
Now those are my views. What do you think?
Censorship is never justified. The mind makes what it will. I can turn a mud hole into a sensual receptacle of my seed, yet most will agree that it remains a mud hole. For someone to tell me what I see when I look upon art is as absurd as it is dangerous.
I agree
as Mary Whitehouse said “… and it was the dirtiest programme that I have seen for a very long time.” They’ll be tearing up Dali’s painting of Christ on the Cross, next.
Heavens – obscenity and blasphemy!! Whatever next???
If beauty were not in the eye of the beholder, some of us would never have found a bloomin’ mate!!! What you’re talking about with the artwork is a scary thing that does, indeed, smack of Hitler and book burnings. (I wonder if they burned some of the artwork they stole that was actually considered obscene at the time — I bet not.) But why are we surprised? All of life is on a wheel, it all comes around again — and again — and again — and… But you may be comforted to know the hysteria hasn’t reached the shores here yet. The more obscene the better in this country. We truly are a modern-day Rome and I believe we will collapse from the inside, not because China bought the whole country out from under us.
The Victorians covered legs on pianos because they found them sexual, while round the corner they had brothels. Laughed right out loud at that. I KNEW that, actually. And while all those conservative and righteous men were around the corner at the brothels, those industrious wives at home where learning how to take care of their OWN needs — one way or another! ^^’
Too right. I hate hypocrisy and I love honesty.
Tricky one. As you said:
I do not think any art should be subject to censorship unless it incites violence or hate crime.
Artistic freedom should be sacrosanct.
Yep – but in the end I vote for no censorship. We have laws to cover crimes as Graham Overden discovered. I don’t think his paintings were a crime.
That is the central problem – freedom with limits. Part of the issue at present is who determines what incites violence. Do you censor to prevent the RISK of violence or hate crime, or react to it after it’s happened? And interpretation varies over time – we all know stories of books or pictures which were banned in their day for that very reason, but which are considered classics today.
It is a difficult area I agree. I guess that is why we have courts and juries. I hate it when censorship gets involved though. It intrudes into areas it shouldn’t. Art shouldn’t be censored. Too many things were banned in the past. I fear we are drifting back into an era of conservative prudery. That is not healthy. The paedophilia scandals have unleashed a monster in more ways than one. Thanks for commenting – all the best – Opher