Art for Arts Sake

It's been quite some time since I last blogged, been busy moving back to the UK etc and then I'd left blogging alone for so long that I knew it would have to be something quite extraordinary to get be off again. And this is it...

I regularly check in to Yahoo for emails and to read the news of what is happening in Aus. How appalled I was to read that an artists exhibition has been closed down to those damn do-gooders again. In case you are wondering to what I'm referring to, do a search for the photographer Bill Henson.

As an amateur photographer and a lover of arts I was shocked to hear close minded people say that his new exhibition was pornographic. I can only say that these people are ignorant and uneducated. Perhaps to allay their fears we should also throw a cover over the Venus de Milo and any other naked forms whether they be in sculpture or on canvas.

While I do not like some of the new modern art, I do appreciate art and dread to think what will happen now. No artist is safe. However, a sculpture or a painter does not face quite the same wrath of the misinformed public at large as a photographer does these days. People live in fear that someone might photograph their kids in the park and that a paedophile will abuse that image. Yet these same parents are more than happy to let their beloved children roam the streets clad in the tiniest of skirts and caked in make up. Honestly, which do you think a paedophile is going to lust after?
And just how many paedophiles are there out there? It is a minority. But that is enough to close down a perfectly fine exhibition of tasteful nude photographs.

If we now live in a world where we are not allowed to enjoy or even produce art for fear of being labelled as something we are not, then please stop the world, I want to get off!