2001年3月16日 星期五

Nudists join the show as Saatchi's carnival reopens

Art controversy: Tierney Gearon's photographs of her naked children back on display as Crown Prosecution Service decides not to prosecute

By Thomas Sutcliffe
Friday, 16 March 2001

Just inside the inner entrance of the Saatchi Gallery there is an easy way to take the measure of its owner's attitude to media controversy. Some 15 feet of the wall is covered with a dense mosaic of framed newspaper articles bearing headlines such as "Art too hot to show" and "Art or outrage?"

Just inside the inner entrance of the Saatchi Gallery there is an easy way to take the measure of its owner's attitude to media controversy. Some 15 feet of the wall is covered with a dense mosaic of framed newspaper articles bearing headlines such as "Art too hot to show" and "Art or outrage?"

And after yesterday's opening, the first time the public could get in since the row over Tierney Gearon's photographs of her naked children erupted, it is clear that this memorial to moral consternation will soon stretch even further.

Journalists hoping to report on the seizure of the pictures may have been disappointed - the police stayed away pending a Crown Prosecution Service decision on whether there was a case. The CPS finally rang to say no action would be taken.

But there were plenty of consolations in the modest carnival of art lovers, students and protesters who arrived for the midday opening, not least the presence of Vincent Bethell and supporters of the Freedom To Be Yourself campaign.

For Mr Bethell, "being yourself" seems to be a matter of taking all your clothes off in public and - outraged by the assumption that nakedness might be crudely equated with indecency - he had come to do just that, stripping off with several colleagues just before noon.

The gesture prompted a stampede of astounded workmen from Jack's Café, across the road, and a clatter of camera shutters from the press photographers.

But it also demonstrated the curious terror that the human body can produce when exposed in unconventional ways. "I've got three children," yelled one incensed man. "If any one saw you mugs I'd slap the lot of you." Another, beside himself with rage at this eccentric defence of liberty, shrieked: "You fucking nonces."

"Hiding Obsesses, Revealing Heals" read the poster carried by one naked protester and for a moment it seemed all too likely that he would be able to apply this unconventional form of medicine in practice. Then the gates opened and the crowd surged down the ramp to queue for admission, clothed and unclothed united in decorous English patience.

Inside, Jenny Blyth, the gallery's curator, welcomed the naked protesters to the show and calmly fielded questions from journalists. Before the exhibition's opening, there had been no discussion of the pictures' potential to cause trouble, she claimed. In hindsight, she conceded, this might have been a little naïve, but she insisted she could still look at the pictures "with an open mind".

Joanna Needham and Catherine McCormack weren't quite so sure. In Jack's Café, before the opening, the two art history students from University College London, had reflected on John Berger's distinction between the naked and the nude. ("To be naked is to be yourself, to be nude is to be seen by others and not recognised as yourself" was how one of them recalled it.) And they had mused over what other art works might arouse the News of the World's moral outrage; Bronzino's Allegory of Cupid and Venus, in which a young boy tongue-wrestles with the goddess of love while tweaking her nipple, was elected as the prime candidate for a modern resuscitation of Victorian sexual terror.

In front of Gearon's images they were more hesitant about dismissing the fuss as mere philistinism. "We're slightly changing our minds about a couple of them," said Joanna, noting that in more than one picture there was a troubling ambiguity about the exact nature of the relationships. Kristina Henschen, whose child lay sleeping in the buggy she was pushing round the gallery, was unperturbed though. She could see no real problems with the pictures "but then I'm Swedish", she added, before turning away to attend to some journalists seeking to add a maternal viewpoint to those of obsessional nudists.

Outside a bereted figure who gave his name as Leon was stuffing copies of a manifesto for a free revolutionary art into the Saatchi Gallery postbox, a manifesto which called for "complete freedom for art". If he really wanted to take the battle directly to the forces of reaction all he had to do was cross the road, where Filippo Sardo, manning the counter at Jack's, was putting the case for censorship. If he were to display images of naked children, he declared, he'd be arrested. Call it art and stick it on the walls across the road though and you could get away with it.

In Mr Sardo's view the double standard was unacceptable and when it came to kids "nudidity" was out of order. The naked glamour models pinned to the wall suggested that, when it came to public display of nudity at least, he had a few double standards of his own.

Surprise, surprise

Friday, 16 March 2001

There's a surprise: the Crown Prosecution Service has decided, "after carefully reviewing the evidence", not to take legal action against the Saatchi Gallery over the photographs of naked children on show there (in a show sponsored by our sister newspaper, The Independent on Sunday).

There's a surprise: the Crown Prosecution Service has decided, "after carefully reviewing the evidence", not to take legal action against the Saatchi Gallery over the photographs of naked children on show there (in a show sponsored by our sister newspaper, The Independent on Sunday).

Plain-clothes police officers can now be recalled from investigating reports of cherubs in statuary at sundry locations around Britain, or depictions of them in paintings by Renaissance artists in public places.

The artificial panic over representations of children's naked bodies risked making worse the fearfulness for our children that so distorts our society.

Even amid our present, overheated paranoia about paedophilia, though, it was never remotely plausible that a jury would have convicted either the Saatchi Gallery or the artist, Tierney Gearon. It could not have been seriously argued that displaying the pictures put children at risk, even if some people found them disturbing.

Fortunately, common sense prevailed before this nonsense went that far.

Saatchi photographs are not obscene, says CPS

By Jason Bennetto, Crime Correspondent
Friday, 16 March 2001

Photographs of nude children featured in an exhibition at the Saatchi Gallery in London are not obscene and do not break the law, the Crown Prosecution Service ruled yesterday.

Photographs of nude children featured in an exhibition at the Saatchi Gallery in London are not obscene and do not break the law, the Crown Prosecution Service ruled yesterday.

Scotland Yard had threatened to seize the photographs after three complaints that the pictures, taken by two photographers, were indecent and would encourage paedophiles.

The case, which won the backing of Chris Smith, the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, provoked an outcry over censorship of the arts and freedom of expression. The CPS said no action would be taken against the north London gallery - which is owned by the advertising mogul Charles Saatchi - and the Metropolitan Police said the matter was closed.

A spokeswoman for the CPS, which was sent a file of evidence by the Metropolitan Police's clubs and vice unit, said: "We do not consider that the photographs are indecent." The images, which are part of the exhibition called I Am A Camera, are mainly taken by Tierney Gearon, an artist from the US who lives in London. They feature her two children, Emily, six, and Michael, four. The exhibition is sponsored by the Independent on Sunday.

In one photograph the children are wearing theatrical masks and are standing naked on a beach; in another, Michael is urinating in the snow with his sister in the background.

Ms Gearon said: "My children are my entire life ... and these are beautiful, innocent pictures. You have to understand the context ... which is that I was documenting my family for two years."

A spokesman for the gallery said: "Everyone at the Saatchi Gallery is very relieved as are all the artists in the show. It's been a very worrying time for the two artists involved and their families. We are extremely grateful to the public and press who have supported the artists and the gallery."

The exhibitors were facing prosecution under the 1978 Protection of Children Act, but the crown prosecutors said that the photographs were not considered indecent and that the Saatchi Gallery could successfully use the defence that it had a legitimate reason to show the images because they are considered works of art.

The Act makes it a crime, punishable by up to three years' imprisonment and a fine of up to £10,000, to make indecent photographs of children (anyone under 16) for possession, distribution or show.

A CPS statement said: "In reaching this decision, the CPS considered whether the photographs in question were indecent, and the likely defence of the gallery, ie whether they had a legitimate reason for showing them." Under the current law the definition of indecency is anything that "is likely to offend right-minded people".

The photographs will remain on display until the end of the exhibition on 15 April.

2001年3月15日 星期四

Prosecution ruled out over naked children photos

Thursday, 15 March 2001

The Saatchi Gallery will not be prosecuted for displaying controversial photographs of naked children despite claims the exhibition was obscene, the Crown Prosecution Service said today.

The Saatchi Gallery will not be prosecuted for displaying controversial photographs of naked children despite claims the exhibition was obscene, the Crown Prosecution Service said today.

Police were called to the gallery in north London last week after complaints that the pictures - taken by American photographers Tierney Gearon and Nan Goldin - were indecent and would appeal to paedophiles.

But a CPS spokesman said that after careful consideration there was no realistic prospect of any conviction under the Protection of Children Act 1978.

2001年3月14日 星期三

An attempt to make sense of our fractured lives

But Is It Art? by Cynthia Freeland (Oxford University Press, £11.99)

By Sue Hubbard
Wednesday, 14 March 2001

So now it seems that, among their other duties, the officers of the Metropolitan Police have become art critics. When they paid a visit to the Saatchi Gallery to denounce the work of the photographer Tierney Gearon, who had taken nude photographs of her children, it would have been interesting to hear what arguments the police used, and with which critical theory they substantiated their case.

So now it seems that, among their other duties, the officers of the Metropolitan Police have become art critics. When they paid a visit to the Saatchi Gallery to denounce the work of the photographer Tierney Gearon, who had taken nude photographs of her children, it would have been interesting to hear what arguments the police used, and with which critical theory they substantiated their case.

Contemporary art, more than any other creative form, seems to invoke the ire of the middlebrow. There appears to be a brooding anxiety that those clever-dick artists are pulling the wool over their eyes. Dripped paint, elephant dung, unmade beds - a child could do that!

In But Is It Art?, Cynthia Freeland, professor of philosophy at the University of Houston, has written a book of simplicity and clarity that may well come to rival John Berger's Ways of Seeing as a reader's digest of the rubric of theories that make up contemporary art criticism. What becomes manifest is that, so often, the wrong question is asked. The pertinent query would be: "But is it good art?"

In concise language, mercifully free of art-speak, Freeland challenges the sacred cow of obfuscation so prevalent in art writing: "A theory should help things make sense rather than create obscurity through jargon and weighty words." She cavorts with aplomb through theories about blood, ritual, beauty and sexual politics. She moves with consummate skill, ducking and weaving through readings of Greek tragedy, Chartres cathedral, African sculpture and Native American dance to the relevance of Walter Benjamin's theories on reproduction to digital media and MTV.

Freeland reminds us that, for most tribal people, art and artefact are not distinguishable; that the notion of the individualistic artist is a modern, Western construct. Medieval European Christians did not make "art" as we understand it, but saw themselves as skilled craftsmen who tried to imitate God's divine beauty. She starts in myth and ritual to show how art gave cohesion to older societies, pointing out that modern artists cannot take this consensus of shared beliefs for granted, and that meaning is therefore mutable. This, she suggests, can lead to a sense of shock and abandonment, so that art may be perceived as something alien. Symbols used in religious art, such as blood, become shocking when employed by artists such as Andres Serrano in his infamous Piss Christ (1987).

Kant is named as the predecessor to the scientific psychologists who judge concepts of beauty by studying viewers' eye movements. His influential definition of beauty is explained as "purposiveness without a purpose". This sense of an art work's "rightness", manifest largely through form rather than meaning, developed into the modernist theories of "significant form" expounded by Roger Fry.

Wagner, Kant's notion of the Sublime, and Andy Warhol are all discussed. Freeland illustrates that it is now impossible to separate art theories from practice, so interdependent have they become. The "primitive", the "exotic" and the feminine are all rapidly explored. While Freeland is careful not to give one philosophical stance privilege over another, one senses that her own view probably accords with the critic John Dewey, who claimed that art "expresses the life of a community".

This is a valuable book for anyone perplexed by the arcane theorising of contemporary art. It is, in the end, optimistic, displaying the respectable degree of scepticism illustrated in a quote from the environmental artist Robert Irwin - that art "has come to mean so many things that it doesn't mean anything any more". None the less, Freeland endorses his view that art is perhaps best described as "a continuous expansion of our awareness of the world around us".

Art can enhance an awareness of ourselves, as well as challenge and expand our perceptual relationship to our surroundings. For this reason - dead sheep or no - we will continue to create it, and look at it, in an attempt to make sense of our fractured modern lives.

Galleries face new guidelines over child photos row

By Louise Jury and Jade Garrett
Wednesday, 14 March 2001

The museum world's leading body said yesterday that last week's police raid on the Saatchi Gallery in London had serious implications for art collections throughout Britain.

The museum world's leading body said yesterday that last week's police raid on the Saatchi Gallery in London had serious implications for art collections throughout Britain.

As other galleries monitored the case, police said they would take no further action against the gallery until the Crown Prosecution Service decided whether it would prosecute. Mark Taylor, the director of the Museums Association, which represents nearly all museums and their staff, said it may have to issue advice to members for the first time if the Saatchi case ended in court.

The Saatchi Gallery, which is owned by the advertising mogul Charles Saatchi, has been told it faces prosecution under the 1978 Protection of Children Act because of images of naked children in its current exhibition, I Am a Camera.

A file has been sent to the Crown Prosecution Service by Scotland Yard's obscene publications unit and is being considered. Mr Taylor said his organisation had no existing guidelines on such issues but would have to consider issuing advice if the Saatchi display was found guilty of offences.

He said: "You have to say, if those pictures are obscene, it doesn't say much for some of the naked bodies in the National Gallery. This potential threat is very odd and, if it is followed through, then it would mean a lot of pictures being taken off the wall, which is presumably not what the authorities want."

Jenny Blyth, the gallery's curator, said it would not remove the pictures. Mr Saatchi refused to comment yesterday.

2001年3月13日 星期二

The Saatchi Gallery's I Am a Camera exhibition

The photographer Tierney Gearon contributed to the Saatchi Gallery's I Am a Camera exhibition. The show is now the subject of a police investigation and the News of the World has branded the pictures 'grotesque' and 'child porn' masquerading as art. Here, the artist expresses her shock and dismay at the way in which her accusers have 'polluted' the innocent images of her family and friends

Tuesday, 13 March 2001

It came as such a complete shock, when I turned up at the Saatchi Gallery in London on Thursday morning, to find that the police were already there - and that the reason they were there was because of the pictures of my family that are included in the exhibition I Am a Camera. That shock turned to disbelief when they explained to me that, because of my photographs, I might even be prosecuted for obscenity.

It came as such a complete shock, when I turned up at the Saatchi Gallery in London on Thursday morning, to find that the police were already there - and that the reason they were there was because of the pictures of my family that are included in the exhibition I Am a Camera. That shock turned to disbelief when they explained to me that, because of my photographs, I might even be prosecuted for obscenity.

Among my first thoughts were, "Why now?" After all, the I Am a Camera show had opened as long ago as January, and it got some great reviews back then; "brilliant" and "stunning" were among some of the words used to praise it. All my family were there for the opening, including the children, and they were so proud. I look back on all that now as a very happy time - though after the excitement of the opening, I was glad when things naturally calmed down. I thought that I could get back to normal life. And then, seven weeks later, this bombshell - a threat that I could be arrested. I was so shocked that I felt numb.

Even now, I find it difficult to understand. One of the pictures that the police complained about is one I took on a ski holiday, of my son Michael peeing - he was four at the time. To me, it's just a really comical image: as any parent knows, when little boys need to pee, they really need to go. I never thought it was anything other than funny and cute. So I was doubly shocked on Sunday when the News of the World decided they were "lurid" and "grotesque" instead. To me, it was a simple case of "when a boy's got to go, a boy's got to go..."

The picture on the beach, of Michael and his sister Emilee wearing masks, was taken when we were on holiday. We were waiting for a plane. I just saw the colours on the sea, and I thought it looked beautiful. I had been carrying round a bag of masks, we'd been playing with them, and I asked the children if they wanted to put two of the masks on. They liked the idea. Sometimes they want to, sometimes they don't. I didn't tell them: "You stand here, you stand there." They just ran around, and they stood the way they wanted to. There was nothing more sinister to it than that.

Now, reading the hysterical criticism of the News of the World and its attack on the publisher of this newspaper for sponsoring the exhibition, I'm left with a strange feeling. Indeed, until last week, it never even entered my head that there could be something seedy about these photographs. They're my family and friends, after all. Now I see my pictures described as child pornography, which is sad for so many reasons - but mainly because the accusers have polluted my images. If people go to an exhibition without being told what to think, they will just see whatever they see. But now a seed has been planted in people's heads, that seed will grow, at least among those who only read the tabloids. It horrifies me to think that people who may otherwise have seen the images and thought they were beautiful, might now see something different - because others have planted those ideas there.

I think of myself as a wholesome person. I don't smoke, I don't drink, I don't do drugs. Things at home are simple. What I was trying to do here is to give people a taste of the innocence in life. So many artists these days want to portray the dark side that it's difficult to make everyday life seem interesting - the things that make us laugh and feel good, the simple things in life. That's what I was trying to show.

I used to be a fashion photographer, doing work for glossy magazines such as Vogue, Elle and Marie Claire. I stopped for a while after I had my children, because I lost interest. Then, two years ago, I started to document my family. It was just an idea, which lit up in my head when a colleague said to me: "Nobody has been able to portray the kind of family you come from." The work of the acclaimed photographer Richard Billingham, one of the star exhibits at the Sensation show at the Royal Academy and now hanging alongside mine in the I Am a Camera show, documents his alcoholic father. It's so much more interesting - and disturbing - than my pictures. It's incredibly blistering. Whereas, when somebody looks at my family on holiday, it's: "Oh, boooring." There's no edge there. To take snapshots of a picture-perfect family - who wants to see those?

Of course, when I started photographing my family two years ago, I never dreamt any of this would happen. I was just focussing my camera and my attention on everyday moments that make us laugh, and - I hoped - touch us all. If I have succeeded, it is in taking little ordinary moments of life and making them look interesting. Now, if you're on the beach with children, then you get nudity, again as any parent knows. That's life - though in any case not all of the pictures include nudity. Of the 15 images, just six include nakedness. And I honestly can't understand the fuss.

I was born in the United States, but I've lived in London for 10 years. But though I feel at home here now, I don't know how to begin to understand the reaction in the media and elsewhere. To me, it's very unsettling, and very strange. When these people see Old Master paintings of naked Cupids - what do they see there? My pictures, by comparison, are very unsensual, very unsexual. They're humorous, if anything. My children were happy to be in the photographs. More than that, they were proud. Nor can I imagine that they will feel differently when they are older - I would not have done.

Before the nightmare of the last few days, my career as a photographer had felt more like a fairy tale. I'd never dreamed my pictures might end up on the walls of the prestigious Saatchi Gallery. I thought that if I was lucky I might publish a book in 20 years' time. But then, by chance, Charles Saatchi's wife Kay saw my photographs, liked them, and asked if she could have one to enter in Baby 2000, a charity art auction, raising money for people with pregnancy-related problems.

Then another charity - Together, a charity for the homeless - asked if I would donate an image. I gave them the picture of my son Michael on a pedestal and his grandmother looking up at him with a smile. Charles Saatchi located that image, and purchased it, too. I met other people who saw my images and loved them. Gradually, I came to believe in myself: these pictures are good. Then in March, Saatchi came to my studio, and said he wanted to buy a collection of the photographs. I thought it was a joke. "This isn't a joke," he replied. And on the basis of those photographs, he decided to do an exhibition relating photography and painting, showing the fine line between the two.

Even then, I didn't realise how big the show was going to be. I was just touched that somebody liked my pictures - until I came to the gallery at the end of last year, and saw the pictures hanging on the wall before the opening. That was when I realised that something important was happening. Everybody who saw the pictures loved them. Just one person found them a bit disturbing, and that worried me. The funny thing is, that person has in the meantime become a close friend. Now she knows my family, and loves the images, too.

As an artist and as a mother, I can only look at the images the way I see them - as wholesome. So I just hope the current furore gets diluted by time, and gets back under the shelf. After all, if these simple, innocent pictures really become a new standard for what is unacceptable, for what is pornographic, that is really frightening, and not just for me.

We have to fight it. If we don't, then something really is wrong. Personally, I haven't slept for four days. I toss and turn, I have migraines, I'm worried about my children. I've told my children: "Somebody doesn't like Mama's photos." They cannot believe it. My seven-year-old daughter Emilee asked: "Why wouldn't somebody like your pictures, Mama? What kind of person would say that? They're beautiful!"

For me, this has been a big family event. At the opening in January, the whole clan was there to support me -- and my children, when they walked in, were so proud to see their images on the wall. That night, any doubt in my mind, if I had had any, which I didn't - would have been settled. My children and their friends were so proud of themselves, and of me.

As for the reaction in the British press: who can say? I don't think it's really about British society, it's only about the media. I heard about the story of Julia Somerville, who was questioned a few years ago because of pictures of her children naked in the bath. Maybe it's because the papers don't have anything to write about any more. When I saw the pictures in the News of the World - "Child Porn They Call Art", the headline said - they put black bands across my children's genitals. The pictures looked dirty for the first time. You can't even see their genitals, and yet there's still something dirty about the way those pictures look in the News of the World, whereas on the wall, they look pure and clean. Those big black boxes succeed in making my pictures look dirty.

The police are trying for a court order to remove the photographs on Thursday. I just hope that they don't succeed. The world I've brought my children up in is a free, positive world. All I want is for that not to change.

The Saatchi Gallery should be congratulated: it is standing up for childhood

Tuesday, 13 March 2001

One jerk of the knee is bad enough, but when you get two - in precisely opposed directions - things can very easily get out of hand. You can see the effect in the debate over the Metropolitan Police warning to the Saatchi Gallery that it faces prosecution unless it removes two photographs by Tierney Gearon of her naked children. On one side, the terror of censorship provokes alarms about hysteria and police over-reaction; on the other, the fear of paedophilia generates an adjectival froth of revulsion.

One jerk of the knee is bad enough, but when you get two - in precisely opposed directions - things can very easily get out of hand. You can see the effect in the debate over the Metropolitan Police warning to the Saatchi Gallery that it faces prosecution unless it removes two photographs by Tierney Gearon of her naked children. On one side, the terror of censorship provokes alarms about hysteria and police over-reaction; on the other, the fear of paedophilia generates an adjectival froth of revulsion.

But, whatever its origins, this is not a synthetic fuss. The pictures are unsettling, as the gallery must have known they would be. It's possible that the artist - a model turned photographer - is as guileless and bemused by the row as she presents herself to be. Even if that is true, it is surely safe to assume that Mr Saatchi and his gallery employees were more sophisticated about the ambiguity of these photographs.

It's hard to believe that no one raised the possibility that they might touch a nerve in a culture that is hypersensitive about the threatened innocence of childhood. Indeed, that's the point of them. Innocence is not a quality that can be measured quantitatively and written alongside the dimensions, date and materials of a work of art - it has to be thought about. These photographs oblige you to do just that.

The important question is a simple one, but one that must be taken seriously. Do the pictures put children at risk? We should start with these two children in particular. Ms Gearon's argument that they were excited and pleased to have their images displayed is a spurious one. We do not, for good reasons, treat young children as legitimate authorities on their own safety and protection.

But it is hard to feel that they've been exposed to anything worse than the familiar embarrassments that parents have always visited on their children. All the pictures were taken by someone they trusted, and not taken furtively but in the presence of other protective adults. They may well be embarrassed in time - but a teenager's prospective embarrassment is no matter for the state. If Ms Gearon is found guilty of taking an indecent photograph of a child then anyone who has ever snapped a picture of their child in the bath is guilty too. Is this the society we want? One hopes not.

Do the pictures, then, represent a hazard for children in general? Some have argued that, by "sending out the wrong signals", they do. Paedophiles will use such respectable exhibitions as a sanction for their own activities; I'm an artist, they will insist, not a pervert. This can't be ruled out - paedophiles will try anything, after all - but if this argument is true, any depiction of a naked child, in whatever medium, might also be found guilty of being an accessory to child abuse. What is to stop a paedophile from using a Botticelli painting or an illustration to The Water-Babies to underpin his claims to purely artistic motivation?

There is another kind of risk that needs to be taken into account - that of creating a culture in which children's bodies can be seen only as a potential crime scene. Ironically, the Saatchi row blows up just as the sociologist Frank Furedi publishes a book arguing that our fearfulness for our children is distorting their lives. He is talking principally about the conditions of benign house-arrest under which many children now grow up, but his arguments are relevant here too.

The Saatchi Gallery is right to resist the steady colonisation of children's bodies by anxiety, fearfulness and paranoia. In so doing, it should be congratulated for its bravery in standing up for the idea of innocence, not condemned for damaging it.

2001年3月12日 星期一

We want to be inspired, not mimicked

From an Institute of Ideas talk by Craig Mawdsley at the National Portrait Gallery given by the senior planner at Saatchi & Saatchi

Monday, 12 March 2001

It is a time of unprecedentedly low participation in conventional politics. More people vote to evict people from the Big Brother house than vote in many elections. So what do politicians do about all of this? They try to look more like us - William Hague drinks people under the table and all Cabinet ministers are card-carrying football supporters. They wear jeans and appear on Richard and Judy.

It is a time of unprecedentedly low participation in conventional politics. More people vote to evict people from the Big Brother house than vote in many elections. So what do politicians do about all of this? They try to look more like us - William Hague drinks people under the table and all Cabinet ministers are card-carrying football supporters. They wear jeans and appear on Richard and Judy.

But none of this works. It doesn't work, because these people aren't remotely ordinary. They're politicians. There's nothing ordinary about being the Prime Minister and something deeply disturbing about wanting to be leader of the Conservative Party since you were 15 years old. No one can carry it off because it's not them. By and large, these are extraordinary people who have achieved a lot and get little credit for it. They think that we would like them more if they were like us. But they're missing the point.

George W Bush is the conclusion of all this, and I don't think we want to go there. A man who was elected president because he was less well qualified to do the job than the other guy. "Yes, he's a bit dumb like us, and he's never left the country either, so we'll have him. At least we know that he's not smart enough to confuse us."

This pursuit of ordinariness renders the institutions these people represent completely obsolete. Prime ministers are meant to be special people with vision and leadership ability. They're not meant to be your next door neighbour. Take the royal family - The entire principle of royalty is that you have a mystique, a magic surrounding the institution that makes you believe they have a special significance. If they end up succeeding in saying "hey, I'm just like you," then you end up with a group of fairly unappealing individuals who cost us all a vast amount of money for no apparent return.

They understand this in Hollywood. Julia Roberts' publicists aren't falling over themselves to send her to Patagonia to clean toilets. Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta Jones didn't get married in a registry office in Carmarthen to prove that they're just like us. These are people who are fascinating to us because they are extraordinary and lead lives that fascinate us, precisely because they are so different to our own. Catherine Zeta Jones is simultaneously us and what many of us want to be. She can appear in films wearing Prada and lounging in the California sunshine, but she still has a vestige of a Welsh accent that reminds us who she is - both familiar and extraordinary at the same time.

Even the most oft-quoted example, is not really an argument for ordinariness. Victoria and David Beckham are about as far from ordinary as you could ever imagine. You have a woman who has pretty much given up her life for the pursuit of fame and fortune. She's working extraordinarily hard to win the hearts and minds of 12-year-olds across the globe. She's one of the most successful marketing people of the last decade. Her husband is the most gifted football player of his generation, combining the looks of a fashion model with the skills and reflexes of a gifted sportsman.

These people are not remotely ordinary, and that's why they're fascinating. The problem the politicians have is that their undoubted talents are not really coming to the fore. The pursuit of ordinariness in all things prevents us from seeing what they're really for - delivering a vision and working hard to implement it.

It's important to work out what people's aspirations are and try to help them achieve them. That's what politicians should be for. Working out what people are like and then trying to look, talk and dress like them rather misses the point. People would rather be inspired than mimicked.

Don't tell police what they'd see in the National Gallery or Wallace Collection

Comment: Philip Hensher
Monday, 12 March 2001

Thomas Mann's short story Mario and the Magician, a fable on the rise of fascism in Italy, begins with a small episode that seems unconnected to the main theme but, on contemplation, is intimately linked to it.

Thomas Mann's short story Mario and the Magician, a fable on the rise of fascism in Italy, begins with a small episode that seems unconnected to the main theme but, on contemplation, is intimately linked to it.

It is directly taken from an episode from Mann's own life, when he took his family on holiday to an Italian beach resort. In the story, a liberal German family allows its eight-year-old daughter to take off her swimsuit, which is stiff with sand, to rinse it in the sea.

The Italians on the beach are outraged, and mount a public protest.

The narrator is puzzled.

"In the last decade our attitude towards the nude body and our feelings about it have undergone a fundamental change all over the world. There are things we 'never think about' any more, and among these is the freedom we had permitted to this by no means provocative little childish body. But in these parts it was taken as a challenge."

Not just, it seems, in the context of Mussolini's Italy.

Last week, the police mounted a raid on the Saatchi gallery in London, and there were suggestions that several works of art by Tierney Gearon, an American photographer, be removed. A number of complaints from members of the public had been received, and the police had come to the view that the display of Gearon's photographs of naked, masked children on a beach may contravene child-protection legislation.

This heavy-handed action roused, unsurprisingly, condemnation from across the board. Baroness Warnock said that she "couldn't imagine anything more terrible than police coming in and saying this photographer can't take pictures of their own children". Alan Yentob was "sure they are completely innocent pictures". Blake Morrison said, rightly, that our current touchstone for obscenity has become the photographing of a naked child, and that this would have baffled all previous ages.

It is certainly an extraordinary action to take, and, personally, I cannot see what rational person could view these pictures as obscene.

By the same standards, our galleries are absolutely full of works of art which might contravene the Children Acts; not just Mapplethorpe's deliberately sexual images of children, but Bronzino's National Gallery allegory, with some decidedly under-age and incestuous sexual contact going on.

And for heaven's sake, no one tell the Met about the Wallace Collection, stuffed as it is with French rococo putti, all intently observing the lewdest scenes. And there is, of course, some art of previous ages that no painter or photographer could possibly get away with now; there is a Fragonard in Munich, which depicts a barely pubescent girl masturbating with a dog.

Next to a fairly average Boucher, Ms Gearon's photographs seem statements of utter blamelessness. What's wrong with them, then, that they have aroused the ire of the coppers? Well, first, the items in the Saatchi gallery are photographs, and therefore, as Blake Morrison says, "real - in a way that a figurative painting could never be". But, second, there has been a shift in belief, one that is as evident in the defenders of the work of art as in its official detractors.

The only defence now available for a work of art of this sort is that it is "innocent"; that there is no conceivable sexual content in it that would be apparent to any serious investigator. I don't see it. Childhood sexuality is an insistent presence in these photographs, with their masks and their forward posing. The question ought to be not whether these photographs are innocent of sexual implication, but whether that is an improper subject for the investigation of serious art?

The innocence of children is the principal belief that paedophiles fervently share with their official prosecutors. Paedophiles need to believe that children are innocent; the great desire of sexual abusers is of initiation into knowledge. They are more unwilling than anyone to admit what everyone has always known - that children have some form of sexuality.

To say that is not to think that the potential for desire in children should on its own ever lead to sexual practice, but it is entirely proper to say that their sexuality is a reasonable subject for the investigation of artists, as well as scientists.

Of course, any photographer who corrupted his models should be prosecuted. But no one can possibly think that Ms Gearon, photographing her own children, did any such thing. And to say that artists should not be permitted, within these bounds, to talk about the subject with freedom is to sacrifice an important civil principle to a single dubious proposition.

What readings will be drawn from Ms Gearon's photographs, a Bronzino allegory, Lolita or, for that matter, Little Dorrit, by someone who is already deeply disturbed, no one can say. If these subjects cannot be talked about by artists, then we have begun to lose our belief in the value a civilised society should place on art altogether.

Art lovers and culture minister defend artist over 'family snapshots'

By David Lister, Media and Culture Editor
Monday, 12 March 2001

The Culture Secretary, Chris Smith, yesterday spoke out against censorship in art after police warnings that the gallery run by contemporary art collector Charles Saatchi could be prosecuted for exhibiting photographs of naked children.

The Culture Secretary, Chris Smith, yesterday spoke out against censorship in art after police warnings that the gallery run by contemporary art collector Charles Saatchi could be prosecuted for exhibiting photographs of naked children.

For eight weeks of the exhibition at the Saatchi Gallery in north London the exhibition has attracted the attention only of those interested in contemporary art.

Then at the end of last week police visited the gallery, possibly studying art history, but equally possibly because they were tipped off by the News of the World, which ran a long excoriation of the exhibition at the weekend. Believing there was at least a case that the photographs constituted pornography rather than art, the Metropolitan Police have referred the case, concerning the exhibition called 'I am a Camera', to the Crown Prosecution Service.

The pictures involved are images by the London-based American photographer Tierney Gearon, 37. They depict her young children, Emilee, 7, and Michael, 4, clad only in masks.

Yesterday the debate moved from being between the gallery owner Charles Saatchi and the police to involving the government. The Culture Secretary, who has not seen the exhibition, became involved, warning of the dangers of censorship.

Speaking in a television interview Chris Smith said the key was to strike the difficult balance between the need to protect children from exploitation and maintain free speech.

"We must be very careful in this country before we start censoring things that are happening, either in newspapers or in art galleries," he told Sky's Sunday with Adam Boulton programme.

"We are a country that believes in free speech and we need to hold very fast to that principle. If there is material that is exploitative of children then obviously you need to have some degree of protection. Balancing those two objectives is what difficult questions of this kind have to be about."

Under the Protection of Children Act, it is an offence to take or exhibit "indecent photographs or pseudo-photographs of a child."

Raids on art galleries are rare. In 1966, police raided the Victoria and Albert Museum to investigate pictures by 19th century artist Aubrey Beardsley. In 1970, under obscenity laws police confiscated sexually explicit lithographs by John Lennon from a gallery.

Six years ago David Hockney spoke out at the Royal Academy in defence of the depiction of naked children, saying it was a tradition in art.

And, among those defending the exhibition, Lady Warnock, the moral philosopher, said: "I can't imagine anything more terrible than police coming in and saying this photographer can't take pictures of her own children. It is something artists have always done." The feminist writer and art critic Germaine Greer also defended the pictures saying they could be misused, but then so could images of the Virgin Mary.

Alan Yentob, one of the BBC's most senior executives, added: "The implication of obscenity has only been made as a consequence of the vice squad going to the gallery in a lumbering way. Have they not got better things to do?"

But not everyone even among the liberal intelligentsia, was prepared to defend the photographs. Andreas Whittam Smith, president of the British board of Film Classification, was critical of their inclusion in the exhibition and critical of the Saatchi Gallery for not taking the pictures down following the police visit.

Mr Whittam Smith said: "People will try to argue this is another Lady Chatterley case, but it isn't. The Protection of Children Act is just that. It's there to protect children. The people from the Obscenity Squad at Scotland Yard are highly professional and in touch with public opinion. The fact that these pictures are taken by a mother and exhibited in a public gallery is a gift to paedophiles. It shows it as normal and official and validated.

Visitors to the gallery yesterday did not suffer any adverse reactions to the exhibition. Eric de Bruyn, 30, a fine art student said: "I feel English people always have a problem with nudity whether it's adult or children. There is nothing obscene about these photographs. I don't think they are adult masks the children are wearing. I see them just as cartoon masks." Simon Hodson, 28, a consultant, added: "It's totally far-fetched to call this pornographic material. If you ask any family with children they will all have snapshots of a similar nature."

Jenny Blyth, the curator at the Saatchi gallery, has said she was stunned when the police arrived. "There were a couple of images they wanted us to remove and if we did not remove then they would get a warrant and remove the exhibits themselves. I was so surprised I couldn't believe it. They said they were looking at the threat of prosecution."

Ms Gearon defended her images, saying they were completely innocent and were part of a two-year project of documenting her family. "My children are beautiful and these are beautiful, innocent pictures," she said. I am immensely proud of my exhibition. I do not accept that I have done anything wrong. When people ask if I am sexually exploiting my children I honestly don't know what to say. It simply isn't true."

Edward Booth-Clibborn, the publisher of a book on which the exhibition is based, said police had told him to pull all copies from book stores. "They warned me that the book... was in contravention of the obscenity acts," he said. "This is not child pornography. These are brilliant works of art."

The exhibition, which has been mounted in association with The Independent on Sunday, runs at the Saatchi Gallery for a further two weeks.

2001年3月11日 星期日

Art world defends Saatchi child photos

By Cole Moreton
Sunday, 11 March 2001

The art world responded in dismay yesterday to news that police had raided the Saatchi Gallery in London and threatened to close down an exhibition that includes photographs of naked children.

The art world responded in dismay yesterday to news that police had raided the Saatchi Gallery in London and threatened to close down an exhibition that includes photographs of naked children.

"I'm all in favour of the police becoming art critics as long as criminals can become magistrates," said Jake Chapman, whose partnership with his brother Dinos has taken the modern art world by storm in recent years. "Art criticism should not be based on the Obscenity Act, which is as melodramatic as its name implies."

Scotland Yard's obscene publications unit has told the gallery to remove pictures by the American artist Tierney Gearon before it next opens on Thursday or face charges. The Crown Prosecution Service believes images of the photographer's children naked on a beach and urinating into snow may contravene child protection legislation.

The gallery does not intend to remove them. Last night artists and critics were unanimous in their condemnation of the raid, and warned that it could create a dangerous precedent that threatened artistic freedoms.

"I am sure they are completely innocent pictures," said Alan Yentob, the BBC's director of drama. "The implication of obscenity has only been made as a consequence of the vice squad going to the gallery in a lumbering way. Have they not got better things to do?"

Photographers had always been fascinated by the innocence of youth, he said. "I was very surprised that that such action should take place in a sophisticated city like London."

David Grobb of Eyestorm, an art dealer specialising in popular editions of work by contemporary artists such as Damien Hirst, agreed that the pictures were "pretty innocent. I'd have thought paedophiles would get more turned on by naturist magazines".

The images came across as "a celebration of family life", said Paul Wombell, director of the Photographers' Gallery in London. "A lot of parents take photographs of their children at this kind of age on holiday and they rarely have clothes on."

Jon Norton, the artist, banker and husband of Mo Mowlam, said: "In society, we need to have the greatest freedom of expression of art. And therefore art should never be constrained, however shocking or disturbing it is to society."

The critic Germaine Greer said the pictures did not represent "anything that other people don't do". They could be misused, she said, but then so could images of the Virgin Mary. "The annoying thing is that all the people who think they are not going to like it will go along to the gallery and make a nuisance of themselves - and the rest of the people who might understand it will probably stay away."

Karen Wright, editor of the magazine Modern Painters, said the CPS would be setting a "dangerous precedent" if it chose to pursue a case. "The masks used in some of the photos transform them into something quite eye-catching and eerie, but I don't think they are obscene or titillating."

Jake Chapman warned against an over-reaction to the actions of "a group of unsophisticated, superstitious police officers. They encourage avant-garde protestations and make it more pleasurable to make more crude art."

Naked nonsense

Sunday, 11 March 2001

Acting (it would appear) on the promptings of a Murdoch-owned tabloid newspaper, officers of Scotland Yard's Obscene Publications Unit have visited London's Saatchi Gallery and warned that they will return to seize pictures from the current exhibition, "I am a Camera" (sponsored, incidentally, by The Independent on Sunday), unless some offending photographs are removed. Meanwhile, other police from North Wales have asked the BBC for a videotape of "winker" Anne Robinson's appearance on Room 101 following complaints of anti-Welsh racism. What a joy to know that our boys in blue have so much time on their hands.

Acting (it would appear) on the promptings of a Murdoch-owned tabloid newspaper, officers of Scotland Yard's Obscene Publications Unit have visited London's Saatchi Gallery and warned that they will return to seize pictures from the current exhibition, "I am a Camera" (sponsored, incidentally, by The Independent on Sunday), unless some offending photographs are removed. Meanwhile, other police from North Wales have asked the BBC for a videotape of "winker" Anne Robinson's appearance on Room 101 following complaints of anti-Welsh racism. What a joy to know that our boys in blue have so much time on their hands.

Only they haven't, of course. Like all the public services, the police are hard-pressed trying to follow their worthwhile duties, without time- and resource-wasting exercises such as these. The photographs in question are the work of the American photographer Tierney Gearon, and depict her children, naked, wearing masks and urinating on snow. Reprinted several times in broadsheet newspapers and glossy magazines, they are undoubtedly provocative; to some they are disturbing. That is the point of them. It is doubtless why Charles Saatchi bought them, and why his gallery displays them.

But these photos are in a different league from the illegal and non-consensual violent images of children available on the internet. To compare them is not only to insult the artist and her children - it is to devalue the damage done to children by real paedophiles. The gallery's curator, Jenny Blyth, remarked, "They [the photographs] are funny and delightful. Tierney Gearon is totally devoted to her children. They are snapshots of children at play. They are not depraved in any way."

Of course, there is a fine line between art, pornography and an innocent depiction of reality. It would be disingenuous to pretend otherwise. It is a line of which Norman Tebbit was well aware when he compared Rupert Murdoch's Page Three girls to the nude paintings of Rubens. We must be vigilant about the blurring of that line. But this stand against the photographs in the Saatchi Gallery - or against Ms Robinson's remarks on the Welsh - makes the law look an ass.

2001年3月10日 星期六

CPS to consider charges over naked children in photographic exhibition

By Jade Garrett and Elaine Cole
Saturday, 10 March 2001

The Crown Prosecution Service is considering whether to take action against the Saatchi Gallery over an American photographer's exhibition containing naked pictures of her children

The Crown Prosecution Service is considering whether to take action against the Saatchi Gallery over an American photographer's exhibition containing naked pictures of her children

Police told the gallery that the photographs of Tierney Gearon's children naked on the beach and urinating into the snow on a skiing holiday may contravene child protectionlegislation.

Jenny Blyth, the curator of the gallery, confirmed that police had visited the I am a Camera exhibition and interviewed her and Gearon. "The police said they were acting on what they described as 'widespread' complaints about the exhibition, which the police felt contravened the Child Protection Act," she said. She claimed the police had told her to remove the pictures by next Thursday or they would return with a warrant.

A spokeswoman for the Metropolitan Police said officers had made two visits to the gallery, but denied ordering that the pictures be removed. "We were concerned about the nature of some of the photos," she said. "We have not ordered their removal as we have no power to do that unless a law has been contravened, but we have sent a report to the Crown Prosecution Service for a decision on whether to prosecute."

Ms Blyth said that the gallery would continue to exhibit Gearon's pictures, which have been widely published in magazines and national newspapers. "The two pictures that the police have commented upon are harmless photographs of her children disporting themselves on holiday," she said. "They lack any prurient interest and are neither lewd, nor sexually provocative." She said that any prosecution would be a breach of an undertaking given to Parliament when the Children Act was passed.

I am a Camera, which is sponsored by The Independent on Sunday, has been at the Saatchi Gallery since the middle of January and has attracted up to 3,000 visitors at the weekends. The gallery has extended its run because of high public demand.