Bill Henson: my impressions

The speech last night was excellent. Listening to Bill Henson discuss various cultural references, I looked around at a variety of young, blank, faces and I felt how true some of his statements were. we do need to expose our children to art, to history, to culture. art is the expression of history and the cumulation of our civilization. I was struck by Henson’s self effacing nature. watching him you would never know that someone so apparently shy was embroiled in such a shocking controversy that rocked the art world two years ago. It was interesting how little he cited his own work, preferring to discuss literature, composers and classic painters.

Bill Henson responds live in Melbourne

Our zeal to protect innocence should not come at the cost of violating artistic experience.   If we believe that art is a high form of education, that its basis is moral and its goal truth, then we should resist the impulse that would deny the artist the right to deal with what may sometimes be ambiguous, complex and disturbing.

Artfire, Discovered Artists and Etsy.. oh my!

Arched – 7×5 oils on canvas by Jennie Rosenbaum I’ve been working hard on updating my new pro account at artfire . adding new artworks , updating a blog there with tips, feeding the new stuff to twitter and then wash, rinsing and repeating. some of my descriptions have become a little stale so I am revamping some of them and trying to make these pieces pop.

Building Blocks in Michigan ‘Not a sex act’

I can’t help but think that if they move the piece the people who think that it’s a sexual piece will feel vindicated. even others will be wondering if there is something wrong. giving in to the great unwashed often makes them believe that they were right all along. this ends up being counter productive for the arts. take a look a the alt tag for this piece in the article- it;s titled and named “obscene_art.jpg” -does that tell you something?

Unscheduled nudity and vomiting- visitors react to Abramovic at MoMA

The Artist is Present has now finished it’s run at MoMA. this piece has been laced with controversy from the beginning and has fascinated the public and the web. what is particularly interesting is the implied permission for audience participation that has led to behavior both interesting, sad and strange. it is extremely sad that some visitors felt the need to grope the nude figures on display, it’s strange that someone voiced his lack of appreciation by vomiting and it’s very interesting that a woman was so moved by the exhibition that she chose to do her pace to face participation in the nude. …

no Pride in censoring nude art

When an artist is well known for their sexually explicit works it often becomes hard for them to gain acceptance for their non sexual art. combine that with the fact that the artist is (gasp) gay and there is a ticking time bomb waiting for a ‘misunderstanding’ like this. it’s unfortunate that it is so hard to straddle both sides of the fence in this respect. usually you have to be either one or the other.

no nude by kishin photo shoot under fire

Kishin Shinoyama is an iconic Japanese nude photographer. his work has gone a long way towards changing the attitudes towards nude art in Japan over the years and has certainly developed a following, I have found the unusual shapes he creates and interesting lighting rather fascinating. the photobook images were photographed in a range of locations, railway tracks, and most notably a cemetary. what is interesting about the charges here is that this case began in late 2009 for a book that was published i January and a shoot that took place in 2008.

world record set by Picasso’s Nude, Green Leaves and Bust

I think it is interesting that nudes consistently set records in sales at auction . it says something about the high end world of art collecting. a lot of speculation has been made about this work and this auction over the past few days, I often wonder if the hype over an auction becomes a self fulfilling prophecy where the bidders seek to live up to the hype and create the records that have been the subject of speculation.