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.
沒有留言:
張貼留言