Taken from the Herald Sun by Andrew Bolt:
ON WEDNESDAY I asked Age art critic Robert Nelson seven questions about why he let Art Monthly Australia print photographs of his naked young daughter.
Nelson had given the pictures to the magazine to defend artist Bill Henson, who'd been widely attacked for photographing a naked 13-year-old.
Yesterday I had a shock. I learned Nelson had once written that the more explicit of those pictures of his daughter Olympia, taken when she was about four, was an exploration of her "eroticism".
Even the dummy she'd sucked, he'd said in 2000, was "potentially the most diabolically sexual" image, a symbol of "the perversity of pleasure-sucking".
And one Art Monthly used - showing Olympia naked but for earrings and necklace, lying with back arched, arms behind her head, and face sultry - was meant to "challenge the taboos against the recognition of child sensuality".
Of course, Nelson, also a Monash University Associate Dean, does not condone pedophilia for one second.
But to learn what he's trying to achieve, I repeat the seven questions I asked, his reply and my comment:
One: The argument never was whether looking at a naked child was child abuse (as Nelson had claimed). It was whether taking suggestive pictures of naked children exploited them, and left others in more danger.
RN: Rubbish. (Nelson's wife) Polixeni Papapetrou's genre stands accused of stripping children of their innocence, which is tantamount to child abuse . . . Your reasoning is devious if you think you can now soften the accusation.
AB: "Looking at" is not the same as "taking pictures and exhibiting". You confuse the two, Robert, to do what you accuse me of - to "soften the accusation" against Henson, who was not merely "looking at" naked children.
Two: It's not girls from nice families like Olympia's that run most risk of abuse when we endorse sexy shots of children.
RN: So would you care to explain how Olympia's photograph exposes other children to risk?
AB: If we, bit by bit, create a society that says even four-year-olds may be lauded as sexual objects, then little girls run a greater danger of being the prey of men less refined than you.
We have taboos, stronger than cold reason, that restrain man's more brutal appetites, and one of those taboos is sex with little girls. Normalise that away and some girls will be hurt.
Three: Three years ago (Nelson) admitted Henson's work was "pornographic", showing "naked, pouting teenagers" . . . as a "passive target for the viewer's lust". Why now defend pornography you once said you hated, Robert?
RN: No contradiction . . . I can remain critical of Henson while supporting the principle that his work is art. Also, I have at no stage said that Henson's work is pornography and not art.
AB: Actually, you did call it pornographic, saying it had "an aesthetic of spying . . . as in all pornographic genres".
Once you thought Henson's pictures had "unpleasant moral overtones", leering at girls "too young for sex". Now you damn as uncouth a public that dares to say the very same thing.
And once you conceded Henson's work was both pornographic and artistic. Now you try to defend it by claiming there is a distinction.
Actually, Robert, you were right the first time. Art can be pornographic. You are insisting on a distinction, and excuse, that George Orwell famously debunked in Benefit of Clergy, pointing out that a great artist could produce morally rotten work, and it was cretinous to think that the form excused the content.
But back to Henson. Even you said his work was morally unpleasant. Yet now you use your daughter's naked body to protect it. Why?
Four: To defend Henson, Nelson . . . switched an argument about pornographic shots of a pubescent 13-year-old into one about a mum's picture of a child too young and demure for most to be thought sex bait. Why the whitewash, Robert?
RN: You contradict yourself in the very next paragraph where you're claiming that the pictures inside the journal reveal "a soft-porn pose".
AB: Reread my words. I made a distinction between the "demure" Art Monthly cover shot you talk mostly about, and the Playboy-style picture inside the magazine, which you don't.
You imply the cover shot is a proxy for the peeping Henson picture of a bare-breasted 13-year-old. In fact, it is almost nothing like.
Five: Nelson focuses his defence on the cover shot of Olympia - one even newspapers feel is safe enough to publish. But inside the magazine is one closer to the issues raised by Henson . . . that has Olympia in necklace and earrings, splayed naked on her arched back . . .
Robert, now that your daughter is developing breasts like one of Henson's models, will you have her pose like that again? If not, haven't you wilfully ignored a critical difference between Henson's pictures and that cover shot of your wife's?
RN: Polixeni is the artist, not I. If Polixeni and Olympia want to do naked photographs at this age, I will most certainly not intercede to prevent it. This is their inalienable moral right.
AB: You deflect the question rather than answer it. And you throw in a red herring - a ludicrous "inalienable moral right" to show a daughter's bared breasts to a salivating public.
So let me add a no-escape clause: Now that your daughter is developing breasts like Henson's model, will you and/or your wife have her pose naked - on her back, chest thrust out, in a soft-porn pose - just as she did for your wife when she was four? Why not?
Six: Nelson presented Olympia at the press conference as a girl mature enough to consent to or even suggest the nude pictures taken of her. (But) Nelson admits not all the photos were her idea, and I doubt any would have occurred to her without prompting. My suspicion was strengthened by the way Nelson prompted some of Olympia's answers . . . Robert, how much was she coached?
RN: Our house was besieged by reporters . . . and I spontaneously decided to put on my brightest shirt and speak directly . . .
Andrew, I should get a new job as a coach if I can achieve Olympia's performance in the space of 15 minutes while putting my shoes on and jotting down a few notes of my own.
AB: By "coaching" I clearly did not mean just a pre-press conference prepping, but everything from first suggesting the pictures to her, to prompting her answers even as the TV cameras ran.
Seven: And even if a six-year-old suggests nude shots, who is responsible for what happens next? The child, or the parent?
RN: The parent. We take full responsibility.
AB: Then why make such an issue of Olympia's consent?
Pedophiles often exploit just this excuse: "It was her idea." Robert, as a good parent, aren't you horrified to give this line of argument any weight?
RN: The fact that Olympia instigated some of the images was never used as the unique reason to produce or display the images . . . Why do you twist things so deviously in such an aggressive campaign against an artistic family?
AB: Not "the unique" reason. But one of them nonetheless.
Robert, my family is also artistic. So what? Do you think artists are exempt from a citizen's obligations to set a moral example? Can't you see we all have a responsibility not to legitimise art and arguments that in other hands may hurt girls like your daughter in ways too terrible to consider?
so everyone gets over this
