Graham Ovenden

[Xenophon PCDGS]

I must confess to have never heard of this man, prior to this week. The matter of the happenings this week coupled with the news that an esteemed art establishment as the Tate Gallery has some of his "works" caused me to "Google" his name. I was sickened by the pictures of naked pre-pubescent images of young girls that this revealed and wondered how the Tate Gallery could ever justify such images.

Has anyone else any views on this matter.

 

[Clip]

Out of interest, do you register the same digust for paintings of years gone by of naked kids too? Or stutues of little cherubs and their tinkles on disply, some even peeing out of them?

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Out of interest, do you register the same disgust for paintings of years gone by of naked kids too? Or stutues of little cherubs and their tinkles on display, some even peeing out of them?

Mindful of the world-wide cases involving a multiplicity of images of very young girls that were found on certain computers where prosecutions have been successfully obtained, I see what Graham Ovenden tried to portray as art when it was just a cover for his more nefarious objectives. The Tate Gallery as now withdrawn the online gallery images as a result of this case in question. I have grandchildren of my own, which I presume that you do not have and view this matter in terms of the disgust that you have stated in your posting for someone who may have wished to use other children of the same ages as my grandchildren in such a disgusting manner.

Cherubs are not human children (lack of wings, etc and also I am unsure what you mean by "stutues") or in anyway remotely the same as those images that I was so unfortunate to view and I have been resident on this planet for very many years now and have never seen such grotesque "artists personal gratifications" such as these portrayed as "art".

Do you think that if the court hears of a comparison to cherubs that this will sway any jury ?

 

[Clip]

Hey, I was just asking a question. Whether I have kids,grandkids doesnt really come into it and whether or not I am disgusted at said gallery doenst either as I have made no comment from my own perspective.

I noticed you have only picked up really on my cherubs and staute issue and not about pictures that have over the years contained naked children. Is the painted form of a naked child - which must have been modelled on a real child, so much different to a picture taken in these days, for arts sake?

 

[Harlesden]

If it isn't already, it should be made a criminal offence - punishable by a minimum 5 years imprisonment - for images depicting persons under the age of 18 which display genitalia and/or female breasts to be placed in the public domain i.e. on the web.
Ignorance is no defence in the eyes of the law so anyone found downloading such images should be treated in exactly the same way as the person who placed the images on the web.
Images defined as photographs, paintings or drawings.
The minimum 5 years ensures that the conviction can never be "spent"

 

[Clip]

If it isn't already, it should be made a criminal offence - punishable by a minimum 5 years imprisonment - for images depicting persons under the age of 18 which display genitalia and/or female breasts to be placed in the public domain i.e. on the web.
Images defined as photographs, paintings or drawings.
The minimum 5 years ensures that the conviction can never be "spent"

Bang goes over 1000 years of art then.

 

[D841 Roebuck]

If it isn't already, it should be made a criminal offence - punishable by a minimum 5 years imprisonment - for images depicting persons under the age of 18 which display genitalia and/or female breasts to be placed in the public domain i.e. on the web.
Ignorance is no defence in the eyes of the law so anyone found downloading such images should be treated in exactly the same way as the person who placed the images on the web.
Images defined as photographs, paintings or drawings.
The minimum 5 years ensures that the conviction can never be "spent"

How would you define "genitalia" here? Presumably penises, scrotums and labia would be banned, but what about pubic hair?

 

[Geezertronic]

Bang goes over 1000 years of art then.

Or another way of looking at it is that bang goes 1000 years of paedophilic material that has been presented in the name of "art"

 

[Clip]

Or another way of looking at it is that bang goes 1000 years of paedophilic material that has been presented in the name of "art"

Could well be. But back then when there was no such word as paedophilia and doing kids was all the norm(until quite recently I believe) so what they have depicted in pictures is either purely through innocence or through normality of the times they were in.

Pretty certain its only over the couple hundreed years that thinking has changed towards children. Just like how it has changed, rather quicker, to how disabled children are viewed and cared for.

 

[Oswyntail]

Fascinating question, to which, iMHO, the only real answer is that each case has to be judged on its merits. And that is not saying that a defence of "It's art, innit" is legitimate. I note Harlesden's "banned" list does not include rear views, and I can think of several highly erotically charged pictures where all the flesh that is on view is a bare shoulder. Come to that, would a picture of a fully-clad 10 year old lad pouting provocatively and fondling his crotch a la Michael Jackson be acceptable?
Why stop at sex? Murder is illegal, so do we ban pictures like "The Death of Marat" (OMG - naked dead flesh!). And please don't try to look at Hieronymous Bosch's "Garden of Earthly Delights" too closely without being corrupted and depraved.

 

[Bungle73]

If it isn't already, it should be made a criminal offence - punishable by a minimum 5 years imprisonment - for images depicting persons under the age of 18 which display genitalia and/or female breasts to be placed in the public domain i.e. on the web.
Ignorance is no defence in the eyes of the law so anyone found downloading such images should be treated in exactly the same way as the person who placed the images on the web.
Images defined as photographs, paintings or drawings.
The minimum 5 years ensures that the conviction can never be "spent"

Cobblers.

It's not the amount "paedophilia" that's the shocking these days, as that's always gone on, it's the people who see paedophilia and paedophiles everywhere, even where it doesn't exist.

 

[LE Greys]

Fascinating question, to which, iMHO, the only real answer is that each case has to be judged on its merits. And that is not saying that a defence of "It's art, innit" is legitimate. I note Harlesden's "banned" list does not include rear views, and I can think of several highly erotically charged pictures where all the flesh that is on view is a bare shoulder. Come to that, would a picture of a fully-clad 10 year old lad pouting provocatively and fondling his crotch a la Michael Jackson be acceptable?
Why stop at sex? Murder is illegal, so do we ban pictures like "The Death of Marat" (OMG - naked dead flesh!). And please don't try to look at Hieronymous Bosch's "Garden of Earthly Delights" too closely without being corrupted and depraved.

This whole thing is somewhat debatable anyway. A distant relation of mine was John Atkinson-Grimshaw, and a lot of his paintings are somewhat fantastical images of naked women, albeit with wings and apparently fully-adult. My great aunt, a perfectly-respectable lady in her eighties, has some of them up around her house. Now, this was considered completely normal, even in the supposedly-repressed Victorian times that he lived in. However, I found the paintings distinctly fascinating in my teenage years. Did my distant relation have ulterior motives for these paintings? I cannot possibly say.

The past is a foreign country, as somebody once said. We cannot really judge it by the standards of our times. We can make comments on it and possibly on the psychology of its artists, but they were not living in our times and I don't think we really have a right to judge them as if they were.

 

[Oswyntail]

.... A distant relation of mine was John Atkinson-Grimshaw....

Thanks for that link. I have loved your relatives night scenes for ages, and finding so many others has made my day.

 

[Arglwydd Golau]

Thanks for that link. I have loved your relatives night scenes for ages, and finding so many others has made my day.

Yes.....and made mine too! I shall add to my favourites and study at leisure. I have seen some of these paintings before and liked them, but as it's not something I know very much about I can never remember the names of artists.
Many thanks

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

There has been a subtle recent move away on this thread from naked pre-pubescent girls to naked adult female images. A great deal of difference exists between these two modes, as Graham Ovenden was painting children of a certain age and it was his cynical adult manipulation of his position as an artist to commit the offences that he has been charged with.

Is anyone on this thread truly saying that they can see no differences between those two female age groups ?

 

[D841 Roebuck]

The thread drift seems to have occurred because of Harlesden's intervention, which widened the argument to include anyone under 18, who may or may not have reached puberty.

To return to Ovenden, he clearly regarded young girls in an inappropriate, sexual manner, and will presumably be punished for his crimes. In that context, the Tate are absolutely correct to remove them from display (and probably should have done so years ago, particularly in view of the comments he made in an interview in 2000, and the titles of some of his works.)

However this does not necessarily mean that all images - paintings or photographs - of naked children are sexual in content. The cherubs have been mentioned - and what about the photo of the young girl from the Vietnam War who had her clothes burnt off? That's a powerful and horrific image, but in no way sexual, despite her nudity.

 

[bnm]

If it isn't already, it should be made a criminal offence - punishable by a minimum 5 years imprisonment - for images depicting persons under the age of 18 which display genitalia and/or female breasts to be placed in the public domain i.e. on the web.

So, 5 years imprisonment for all those writers and publishers of books on puberty and growing up. 5 years imprisonment for Dr Robert Winston for daring to broadcast on television images of the stages of human development? 5 years imprisonment for all those naturists who publish material about their hobby?

What an absolutely bonkers idea Harlesden. Prudish beyond belief and happy to criminalise large sections of society for doing absolutely nothing wrong.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

So, 5 years imprisonment for all those writers and publishers of books on puberty and growing up. 5 years imprisonment for Dr Robert Winston for daring to broadcast on television images of the stages of human development? 5 years imprisonment for all those naturists who publish material about their hobby?

Posed naked pictures of the girls in question, noting the ages that they are, are not at all what I would describe as a hobby. I would venture an opinion that aesthetic and learned studies on puberty were not in the mind of Graham Ovenden when these images were constructed by him.

There surely will be those who will claim that only "literary excellence" was the reason why the Marquis de Sade wrote his literary offerings.

 

[bnm]

I was making a wider point about the dangers of criminalising sections of society because of the actions of a small minority.

Existing laws protect children from exploitation such as shown in the Graham Ovenden case. That he has been found guilty of offences of indecency with a child and indecent assault on a child proves the existing laws work. There is absolutely no need for legislation along the lines that Harlesden was suggesting.

I wasn't making a comparison with Graham Ovenden when I mentioned the naturist hobby. That is taking my words out of context, possibly to suit your own agenda Paul or possibly to paint me in a bad light. I was pointing out that naturists would be criminalised if they continue to publish material on their lifestyle choice, if Harlesden's idea for legislation made it on to the statute book.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

I wasn't making a comparison with Graham Ovenden when I mentioned the naturist hobby. That is taking my words out of context, possibly to suit your own agenda Paul or possibly to paint me in a bad light.

There is absolutely no way, at my advanced age and a long experience of life and most certainly being mindful of the rules of this website, would I ever consider deliberately to make a posting to "paint any other forum member in a bad light" as I appreciate that there can be forum members who have their own views, which other forum members should have the cognitive understanding to understand the right of other forum members that such views to be held. I trust that you will accept my personal understanding of the matter that you have stated in your quote above.

 

[ANorthernGuard]

Just seen some of his work, Sorry but some of those images were just not right, they had sexual overtones which to be frank is disgusting.