ror’s research blog

I saw the recent doco about curator Sam Wagstaff and his relationship with Mapplethorpe and Patti Smith, that was Black White and Grey, this weekend, after which all conversation led to the recent police search and confiscation of art works by leading Australian photographer Bill Henson, prior to their exhibition at Roslyn Oxley Gallery, and as a result of community outrage over promotional materials for the show including his shots of partially naked “12 and 13 year old girls”. ( The media at the moment seem only interested in the girls).

Henson enrolled in art school at 17, and had his first museum show at the National Gallery of Victoria two years later; he has been (I didn’t know this until my searches tonight) photographing nude adolescents since those early adolescent years of his own. Viewers bring all kinds of partial literacies and longings to his politically ambiguous chiaroscuro portraiture: it is Baroque, theatrical, dark, cinematic, contemporary in terms of its drawing on advertising tropes, and vulnerably lacking in contextual references of any kind except for formal resemblances to other media. His work with adolescent subjects is undertheorised, much celebrated, highly collectible and internationally collected, and makes possible and common a discomforting kind of projection from the viewer as one of many means of engagement.

It really is fascinating how unnecessary some major public figures seem to think it is to feign even some interest in or knowledge of what art might be or might achieve here. Defenses of Henson’s practice by the art establishment have done little to shed light on these questions, detailing only commercial and public institutional esteem through sales and previous exhibitions at major national and international venues:

Roslyn Oxley Gallery’s official media release:

“…Bill Henson is one of Australia’s leading contemporary artists and is internationally respected. His works are held in every leading art institution in Australia and are included in the collections of a number of the world’s most prestigious art museums. The Art Gallery of New South Wales and the National Gallery of Victoria have both recently held a retrospective of 30 years of the artist’s work.

Judy Annear, Senior Curator of Photography at the Art Gallery of NSW (discussing the AGNSW’s major Henson retrospective):

“…It included themes present in his work since the 1970s: landscapes, objects, people young and old. The show attracted 65,000 over three months in Sydney: a remarkable number for a photography exhibition. It later travelled to the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne, where a further 50,000 saw Henson’s work. No complaints were received by the Art Gallery of NSW for the duration of the Sydney show. The retrospective was accompanied by a large, beautifully produced monograph, which meant that almost everything Henson had ever done could be reproduced. Between the show and the book, there were no punches pulled. There was never a question of censorship, of excluding any of Henson’s photographs. I saw Henson’s new show at Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery before it had a chance to open. It is a beautiful exhibition, and probably the most calm of any of Henson’s work through his long career.” [...] They’re beautiful. They’re very, very still. They’re very formal, they’re very classical. They’re a bit like looking at an Ancient Greek Attic vase.^[3]

This would likely have been the nature and style of museological criticality permitted Annear in her representation of her institution’s engagement with Henson, which is precisely my point. The extent to which the public might be uncomfortable looking at the work is the extent to which a museum here in this country might be uncomfortable speaking about its social or political impact. Unsurprising then, that New South Wales Law Society president Hugh Macon, who believes the case against Henson will be difficult to prove, summarises the case in this critical environment, in the following way: “The Crimes Act requires two things – an intention and an act,” he said. “The Act is usually fairly easily established but if the intention is to produce a work of art and solely to produce a work of art, then I can not see how a crime has been committed.” (i.e. Still no mention of what this seemingly exclusive regime of art might be or involve.)

The NSW Minister for the Arts Frank Sartor:

“…saw the images – some of which may have been taken up to a decade ago – yesterday and said they crossed the line. ‘I have been shown some of the images and I don’t like them,” he said.’

John McDonald, the art critic for the Sydney Morning Herald, has stated:

” there is nothing sexual about the photos.”

Art market analyst Michael Reid:

“The question is: ‘Was there consent?’ which I can’t answer, and ‘Has the image been sexualized?’ In my opinion, it wasn’t.^[2]

To ask whether the images are sexualised is also I would argue, partly, equally, to ask: in what way might anxieties be projected on to Henson’s work, given the ways in which it is rendered formally? Further, the argument about whether something is or is not art is a great question about formalism that is only ever asked as a moral question by an unwilling or paranoid consumer, in order to render any possible conversation about the politics of a particlar aesthetic meaningless, and aesthetics itself always outside of immediate concern.

What might be usefully queried, yes, is the not yet discussed relationship between Henson and the adolescent sitter during the shoot, their familiarity, child and parent, with Henson’s practice, ‘critical’ or otherwise, their awareness of possible future uses of the images. That is, Henson’s own articulations of, and performance within, the politics of sitting, even if that ‘politics’ is called by some other name. This notion of consent as an affective experience is difficult to prove, particularly without asking (!);the press in the weekend supplements will eventually engage with the possible subjectivities of the adolescents in this way.

What is profoundly at stake is the ability of this seemingly burgeoning concerned public to hold in its eye and consciousness the naked bodies of its children, to acknowledge sexuality, to think about the ways in which they might do that: look, recognise, think, and deal, and deal in both concepts and images. Most of these public comments both recognise and represent an alarming fear of doing that, and outlining that that might be at stake.

In Henson’s own words:

One thing that I’m very much aware of and have always found of critical importance is sensing the distance between oneself and the subject. I think that creating something which is intensely intimate without being at all familiar is sort of central to how photography works. When you’re lying on the floor at night with the lights out, listening to Mozart, it is an intensely intimate experience, but it is not in any way familiar.

Photography to me is about finding that intensely intimate element without any presumption of familiarity. That really is about distance or, if you like, the gap between yourself and the subject; and how you charge and electrify that gap. I suppose it has to be at once an unbridgeable gulf and, at the same time, something which has such a tender, proximate breathing presence, that it almost feels as though it’s not separate from oneself.

I imagine there must be some great critical academic writing on Henson somewhere, though there doesn’t seem to be much online. For those non-art people wanting a general art historical introduction you might not do better than this Education Kit on the artist published by the National Gallery of Victoria. In the meantime, I’ve been thinking a lot about Germaine Greer’s recent work , wondering where are her polemics when they seem needed (even if only to radically boost the word count of this debate), and have been trying to think of recognisable or popular Australian artworks featuring naked children or adolescents. Drawing total blanks tonight. And no, May Gibbs and Anne Geddes do not count. Or, I mean, are a whole other conversation entire.