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Just saw this in the Seattle Times, in a story by Matthew Kangas on the Akio Takamori exhibition at the Henry (do go):
Parents will need to decide if this exhibit is appropriate for their children: Two color prints of nude babies and toddlers by Barbara Jo Revelle and Nan Goldin depict genitalia, and Edward Weston’s 1925 photograph of his young son, Neil, shows a nude torso.
Not a torso!
Here’s that dangerous image:
Oh noes! No doubt this will lead to hordes of NAMBLA members flooding this art exhibit and publicly masturbating to naked torsos! The children! Think of the children (except if you're one of those NAMBLA members)!
Some artist should make an artwork called "shit Torah" and spread his own shit on the Torah and hang it on the wall next to naked children photos tastefully done. Piss christ is the best artwork ever and religious conservatives tried to outlaw it. Every religion tries to prevent the public from seeing true art. Real art always makes religious people mad.
Damn, "R is S" bugs me. He defeats himself every time he posts.
I'm a Henry member and an art lover, but even I've got to admit that show gave me the creeps a little.
Takamori basically contributed pottery sculptures of two laughing monks, and positioned them in the midst of his own selection of about 20 pieces in the Henry's permanent collection.
One as I recall is of a male infant peeing into the camera - right in the face of one monk.
Then there's a golden shower photo involving two little girls, the one giving the shower semi clothed, the one receiving entirely nude.
The placement seems to celebrate them as examples of child's play or something - cute things kids do - and tries to suggest we as adults should find this kind of stuff unproblematically fun too.
Maybe in a more innocent age we could have...but it makes me question what Takamori thinks he's up to these days.
I don't think he intended the discomfort I felt.
I think he probably did.
I think the question is, why do feel this is a sexual image?
Pissing on the face of a christian monk is hilarious! Piss Monk as a sequel to piss christ. Warm baby shit dripping off a Torah would go beautifully with this art. The smell of baby shit would create a "tactile" environment and you could have a photo of a naked man holding the naked baby while it is shitting all over a "sacred" Torah. Religious people are preventing Americans from seeing some great art. Art is supposed to provoke.
Religious people think everything is sexual. I like the "Warm Shit Torah" idea BECAUSE some patrons would be offended and claim it is somehow sexual.
I think he didn't.
I was there for the opening, and saw him.
Even the Henry's chief curator seemed a little weirded out by it all - in the intro lecture, she said she'd had long discussions with him about how it might be misinterpreted or something like that.
True, one thing art can do is provoke - and I for example think they way the movie Me and You and Everyone We Know provokes around this kind of issue is great - but that's not all it can do.
Here, it seems to want to simply celebrate something that's not so simply anymore.
Oh, and actually I don't think you should worry about taking your kids to the show.
What you should worry about is taking weird uncle Ernie to it.
And worry that other weird uncle Ernie's might be there oggling the kids you take.
That's what's sexual about it.
I'd take my kids to see "Warm shit on a Torah". We could talk about why some overly religious people would be offended by it, and then talk about how we all wipe our ass. After all Native Americans thought trees were sacred and whined when we made trees into paper to wipe our asses with. Americans are smarter than that and know that pissing and wiping our ass on things other people care about is what real art is about. If it doesn't provoke, then it's not art.
Religion is Stupid = Religion Sucks = Anne = Parent
Enough dude. We now understand that you like feces art. A LOT.
A nude torso? Naked children? What's so offensive? Is this more titillating than anything/everything one sees at the beach?
A child pissing on a monk's face, piss christ, warm shit Torah, or the recent Elephant dung religious artwork all explore our love/revulsion of our own excrement. Art is meant to provoke. Mark, what is it about feces that disturbs you? Making art with feces and urine is as valid as any other medium. The artwork must be working if it disturbs you?
A troll with a shit fetish -- now I've seen everything.
Isn't the point of the show to provoke debate about the role of child-based imagery in a society that's terrified of being branded paedophilic? In the wake of Wacko Jacko (and the rest...the media circus around paedophilia...not to say it's unwarranted when it comes to Catholic Priests....) the statement: "Everybody loves children" is no longer innocent. It's no longer unambiguous. How do we love our children? Judging from the comments here, I'd say the artist succeeded in pushing that debate, so it's a good piece. An intelligent piece. Whether the journalist who wrote "you may want to consider whether this show is suitable for your children", knew he was participating in the debate, is another question.
ps...I know it was taken in 1925, by one of the most acclaimed photographers in the history of the medium, who was interested in classical forms. It's dangerous to start applying contemporary mores to classical pieces. Michaelangelo's "David", for example? We saw how well Marge Simpson did, trying to get a fig-leaf put over his cock....
Yeah, well that's just the thing - I don't know that that's the point of the show.
After reviewing Takamori's interview in the Henry newsletter, I think it's more that we should accept and surrender to the wisdom and innocence of our inner pedophile - even if he frightens us a little.
That's what creeps me out.
Although actually, it's in line with an older, more mainstream purpose for art than provoking debate: to function as high-class porn for a coterie audience.
Think Caravagio, for example.
High-class porn for a coterie audience has long been the purpose of this kind of art. This same crowd goes apoplectic about piss christ, elephant shit art and Maplethorp's bullwhips. Bring your kids to the Henry show and surrender to the wisdom and innocence of our inner pedophile and shit lover.
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Parents need to be careful about exposing their kids to them nude torsos.
My kid saw some of them nude torsos on buildings when we were in Paris two years ago. Now all he does all day is download pre-Raphaelite porn on the Internets.