Graham Ovenden's art is controversial, but its destruction is a scandal

So, it isn’t only the hammer-wielding nutters of Isis who destroy ‘immoral art’. So do we, in supposedly civilised Britain. A judge’s order that the artworks of convicted child abuser Graham Ovenden be destroyed, on the basis that they do not reach our ‘standards of propriety’, is an act of medievalism to match any of the statue-smashing antics of the Islamic State in recent months.

At Hammersmith Magistrates Court, District Judge Elizabeth Roscoe advertised her philistinism for all to see. She said she was not concerned with the ‘historical importance or value’ of Ovenden’s works. ‘I am no judge of art or artistic merit, nor am I qualified to assess the historical age or value of some of the images,’ she said, unwittingly exposing the incredible folly, the borderline tyranny, of allowing one, subjective judge to decide the fate of decades-old works of art. She said she was judging the art merely on the basis of the ‘recognised standards of propriety which exist today’. And on this basis, Ovenden’s works, which include images of naked or half-naked children, are ‘indecent’ and must be destroyed, she said, like a 21st century Torquemada demanding the burning of corrupting images.

There is so much wrong with this case that it’s hard to know where to start. Firstly, imagine if all old art was judged by ‘today’s standards of propriety’. Would anything survive? Those ancient statues with pre-pubescent penises? Smash them. Nabokov’s Lolita? Burn it. What arrogant presentism to judge works created decades ago – in the case of Ovenden’s own paintings, or 150 years ago, in the case of his collection of photos by the French writer Pierre Louys, which the judge also said should be scrubbed from history – by what we now think is right and proper. Inconvenient images or words are to be thrown into the furnaces, so that no one may ever glance upon them again.

Then there’s the criteria upon which Ovenden’s work was judged: not according to its artistic merit but on whether it contains the right moral message, in this case about children. In 2015 we have a judge effectively saying ‘I don’t care if it’s art, destroy it’. But what about those who do care that it’s art? Who do care that, regardless of his foul personal behaviour in the seventies and eighties, Ovenden remains a painter of significant standing? Who do care about keeping in existence photos taken by Louys, who was made an Officer of the Legion d’honneur for his services to French literature and is thus a significant historical figure? We don’t count, apparently, not in the face of one person’s subjective, non-artistic, wilfully philistine decision that all those works are wicked and must therefore be pulped, erased, removed from reality and history.

And finally there’s the return of the idea of evil. What is really being said here is that Ovenden’s work has a feeling of menace to it. Even works of his that once were considered great enough to form part of the Tate’s public collection are being rethought: the Tate removed 34 of his works from public view when he was convicted of child abuse in 2013. Why? What changed? Not the artworks, but the character of the artist. We seem incapable of distinguishing artist from artwork. He is wicked, and thus his art must be wicked, too. It must be polluted, and therefore it might also pollute the rest of us. Remove it, hide it, destroy it. Such a mad war on inanimate objects, on mere imagery, ill befits the 21st century. From the Vatican’s Index of Evil Books to Ireland’s Commission on Evil Literature, it was traditionally intolerant regimes that destroyed allegedly wicked words or art – now, in 2015, Britain has just done it.

This is the latest, ugliest episode in the paedophile panic. Not content with destroying the careers and lives of ageing light entertainers, not content with spreading utterly unfounded gossip about dead politicians, not content with educating a whole new generation of kids to fear adults, now we destroy artworks made by convicted child abusers. How long before mobs break into art galleries and burn offensive, child-depicting art? It’s got to a point where such behaviour would not be surprising, such is the feverish, witch-hunting atmosphere wrought by our demented hunt for child-abusing monsters. But right now, can we please turn this judge’s unilateral, philistine decision to destroy allegedly evil works of art into the epic public scandal it deserves to be.

TaggedElizabeth Roscoe, Graham Ovenden, ISIS, Lolita

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Callipygian

Another thought: a relative by marriage that I’ve never liked wore a t-shirt she’d bought on holiday in Cuba, while visiting me, just after the atrocities of 9/11. It was the (in)famous Che Guevara image. He was a cold-blooded murderer and one of the worst of men. As you can imagine, I do not like her.

Is it OK to wear a Che shirt just to be cool? Is that ‘art’?

My husband bought a Cuban cigar in London while we lived there (some years ago: we are now back in America).

I said: How can you enjoy that, while innocent dissidents live tormented in jails, deliberately bunked in with insane people?

He refused — and I love him — to smoke the cigars. He destroyed them.

Leftism does far more harm than good, from Detroit to Novgorod. When will we finally put this evil down?
Callipygian

I’m of two minds on this one. I won’t listen to Cat Stevens any more. Guess why.
chforsyth

“Nabokov’s ‘Lolita’? Burn it. ”

That would be a good example of why it’s a bad idea to judge art or literature without considering its content, context or artistic merit. If you’ve actually read it, you’ll know that “Lolita” is, in fact, a cautionary tale of the destructive effects of a particular obsession.
James May Not

>Pedophile panic
I’ll agree that destroying the art is absurd to the extreme, but–come on now.
jeremy Morfey

In my record collection, I have an original copy of the 1973 album ‘Tubular Bells’ by Mike Oldfield. This was the record that launched the career of one Richard Branson, along with his Virgin empire.

Before the logo of the brash painted lady we know today, the picture used for the record label depicted an erotic image of a girl in her mid teens, portrayed as siamese twins with two heads, her legs splayed open to create the ‘V’ of Virgin, and her genitalia clearly showing.

Do I take it that the judge now intends to raid the record collections of all those who have not thrown the album into the fire in a fit of popular self-righteousness?
Bruce Wagner

Perhaps the discussion would also benefit from focusing on the specific facts, which the mainstream media has not seemed interested in disseminating. As of this comment, this is what I know of what the judge marked for destruction:

1. Antiquarian photographs (early 1900s) from the collection of Pierre Louys, an important literary figure in French arts and letters. The judge proposes to destroy this work, the only historical record of it in existence. Some of the work dates back to 1865.

2. Antiquarian photographs by Charles Schenk (1910s). The same work (fortunately) is in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in their library, and can be accessed by the public. The judge has thus proposed to destroy copies that exist elsewhere.

3. Antiquarian photographs by Guglielmo von Plüschow and Wilhelm von Gloeden. Copies of most, if not all of these photographs, exist in other collections, and many, if not most, have been published in books published or sold in Europe and the U.K. (Some of the von Plüschow’s work of the same kind collected by Ovenden were shown at the Tate Gallery in 2002 as part of the show entitled, “The Victorian Nude.”)

4. Photographs by Ovenden. The judge did not order destroyed all photographs by Ovenden by any means. Among the photographs she did place for destruction, however, was a photograph defended by the model in that work in 1992 in United States federal court (the model was then 18) and again in the late 90s on a Channel 4 program, entitled “For the Sake of the Children.” (In the latter program, the model, then in her early 20s, actually defended ALL of Ovenden’s images of her.) The one that was successfully defended in 1992 is easily found on the Internet, because it was part of an anti-censorship show that traveled to various museums and art galleries throughout Europe. That image was also published in States of Grace, a monograph of Ovenden’s work published in America, and in a book based on the aforesaid anti-censorship show, published in Switzerland and distributed throughout Europe, including on Amazon’s UK website.

Not incidentally, of all the charges of which Ovenden was convicted, only two of those charges involved alleged contact with a single minor, who claimed that (a) Ovenden once asked her to wash his “John Thomas” with a washcloth when she was in the bath with him, and (b) Ovenden once approached her from behind and put his hands around her to touch her breasts while she was dressed. All the other charges of “child abuse,” without exception, were convictions for simply taking “indecent” photographs, including the photographs mentioned under #4 above.

5. Of Ovenden’s art, the judge set for destruction only one painting and 3 drawings, all of them from the 1960s. Ovenden did not defend the work, but simply told the judge he was fine with their destruction as he didn’t feel the work was his best in any event. Ovenden did not take that position with a bookplate he created, a drawing of a naked young girl with her arms and legs outstretched, based on Leonardo’s Vitruvian Man. The police were adamant that this be destroyed, but after hearing argument from Ovenden, the judge declined to order destruction.
Jambo25

Caravaggio and Gesualdo were murderers and Caravaggio was possibly a cruising gay guy who liked various nasty forms of rough trade. Eric Gill’s behaviour towards his children was vile. Dali was a supporter of Franco as was Joaquin Rodrigo. The Italian Futurists were militarist and Fascist in great part. It would be possible to go on but I think the point’s made. Bad people can create good art, music and literature.
- JasonSutton
  
  Not only his children, Gill’s dog too! Always thought it was ironic that his statue of a small, naked child was at the centre of Broadcasting House.
  - Jambo25
    
    Yes. Poor dog.
- Callipygian
  
  Picasso was no prince, either.
  - Jambo25
    
    Exactly, but he was a genius. I recently saw a couple of his paintings in the Monastery at Montserrat. Works of realist, naturalist genius by a 14-15 year old.
    - Callipygian
      
      He was technically skilled. I’ve never been impressed by his artistic vision. I always preferred Matisse, and he’s not nearly as good as Caravaggio in my opinion. Or many others, such as Holbein.
Ade

That’s Eric Gill done for, then – strip out Westminster Cathedral…
edithgrove

Roscoe appears to have crackpot tendencies, so perhaps wiser judges may step in.
carl jacobs

Hrmmmm. Let’s see, now. A particular individual is convicted of sexually molesting little girls. Said individual has also painted several pictures of naked little girls is sexually explicit poses. Some of those girls he molested. A blind man could see that he has made manifest his sexual perversion in his work. So a judge orders this work destroyed. And most everyone of reasonable common sense agrees.

But the “artistic community” evidently believes that any gaseous emission by anyone it deems an artist is existentially significant. It declares that the very concept of art is under attack by philistines and fascists. Is the judge trying to outlaw a type of art? No. Is the judge trying to shape the future of artistic expression? No. What then has this judge done? She has simply declared in this individual case that this particular artist can’t display his sexual perversion on canvas with paint and have it protected by law.

Because of this very reasonable decision, we are told the whole of western civilization is under attack. The artist it seems must be radically free to express what he wants. Even if it means protecting the display of sexualized children by the sexual predator who molested the very girls he painted. And the “artistic community” wonders why it isn’t taken seriously outside its own little cloister. Perhaps because it is insular and narcissistic and incapable of separating the good of western civilization from its own selfish pursuits.
edithgrove

It brings to mind the charges brought by Jesse Helms against the Cincinnati Museum in about 1990 for displaying Mapplethorpe’s images, at least one of a child. The museum won.
- Callipygian
  
  I’m with Jesse Helms on that one. Art is no excuse for depravity. Indeed, I believe that true art rejects it.
  - edithgrove
    
    In the Cincinnati Museum case it was decided the depravity was in the eye of the beholder.
    - Callipygian
      
      I’m sure it is. Doesn’t mean it’s not there.
edithgrove

Roscoe said “I have very little doubt that sexual gratification is, at the very least, part of Mr Ovenden’s reasons for making these images.” What would she make of Courbet’s ‘Origin of the World’. It’s beyond sad and a national scandal, the Committee for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice is alive and well in Hammersmith. Thank you Brendan O’Niell for writing about this.
carl jacobs

delete pls
Lensman2

The philistinism and brutality of Isis is alive and well in Hammersmith.

Shame on you District Judge Elizabeth Roscoe – may your name be remembered alongside that of Daesh and Joseph Goebbels. I’d hate to see what you’d do if a Caravagio fell into your hands. Like Daesh and Goebbels you’re a philistine and proud of the fact.

If you, rather than just seeing naked children in the paintings of Ovenden you see ‘Sex’ then that’s because that is what you’re looking for, and therefore more shame on you. Like all prudes you see filth everywhere because that is the only thing you’re interested in seeing.

Children and their bodies are not ‘improper’. Anyone who confuses the depiction of naked, part naked or nude children with ‘paedophilia’ or pornography has lost the plot – images of naked children are not ‘paedophile images’ they are just images of children who are naked.

Are images of naked adults all ‘pornography’? Is the work of Ingres, Titian, Rubens ‘pornography’?

Nowadays, amidst photos and footage of murders, bombings, beheadings, people being burned alive, drowned children, the most shocking images, the only images we can’t allow ourselves to see, seem to be those of naked or partly naked children.

If you think that the image of a naked child is obscene then presumably you think a naked child in real life must be doubly obscene. Can that be right?

If every time you see a child, or an image of a child, your first thought is imagining what a paedo would be thinking – then maybe that really means that your ‘inner paedo’ has actually taken over.

Can it be right that those commenters below who support this judgment
feel more comfortable looking at someone being beheaded than a partly
naked child!? Such people are out-paedo-ing the paedophiles – getting
more frothed up about such images than a paedophile would.

I’m a paedophile and can I tell you that Ovenden’s paintings don’t ‘turn me on’ any more than, say, a Cranach nude might turn on a teleiophile – however Ovenden’s paintings seem to gotten some of the commenters here into a real froth of excitement.

This is an obscene judgment, fitting for a society that has lost its grip on childhood and has invented an idea of the paedophile as a way of turning away from its own culpability for how it treats its children – depriving them of freedom and independence, handing public space over to the car and sequestering children indoors in front of screens, depriving them of a REAL education so that instead they can learn to be good obedient workers and consumers.

It’s no coincidence that those societies which are the most neurotic and obsessed about ‘paedophilia’ are also those societies who most hate their children and give them the lousiest childhoods. The UK hates depictions of children, hates children and is suspicious of anyone who likes children whose motive isn’t one of the perpetration of their genes.
- carl jacobs
  
  Paedophiles & Artists for Ovenden. Who can overcome such a powerful coalition?
  - Lensman2
    
    >”Paedophiles & Artists for Ovenden. Who can overcome such a powerful coalition?”
    
    Well, sadly the philistines and neo-fascists are making a good job of it at the moment…
    
    What’s next? Burn all copies of Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan?
    - carl jacobs
      
      Not to appear ungracious but … if you are what you say you are, then shouldn’t you be in prison?
      - https://consentinghumans.wordpress.com/ leonard sisyphus mann
        
        You do realise that it’s not yet illegal to be a paedophile?
        
        carl jacobs
        
        leonard sisyphus mann
        
        You do realise that it’s not yet illegal to be a paedophile?
        
        About that. A couple of things.
        
        1. I have kids. So let’s just say that if you ever had been convicted of molesting a child, and I got to determine the sentence, you’d still be in prison. It wouldn’t even matter when the offense was committed. You’d still be in prison.
        
        2. You are the one who decided to come onto this public weblog and blurt out “I’m a paedophile.” Now, as much as I appreciate the fact that by doing so you submarined every pretentious puffed-up self-important avant derriere garde artiste on this thread, that declaration still has consequences. I suppose you could assert “I’ve never done anything.” But can I really believe that? And if you have done something, then see item 1 above.
        
        https://consentinghumans.wordpress.com/ leonard sisyphus mann
        
        where did all that ignorant bile come from!?
        What on earth gives you the authority to assume that I’ve ever broken the law!?
        
        >” I suppose you could assert “I’ve never done anything.” But can I really believe that?”
        
        I assume you’re heterosexual.
        
        I assume that you’ll claim that you’ve so far managed to resist your urges to rape women and to pimp your wife out and put spy-cams in the woman’s changing rooms at your local gym.
        
        “But can I really believe that?”
        
        I’ve read about people like you in the gutter press – the Yorkshire Ripper, gropers at clubs, violent abusive husbands – there’s plenty of evidence of the nature of your sick proclivities in the press…
        
        I have a girlfriend (and, yes, she’s my age – go try and work that one out) – “let’s just say that if you ever had been convicted of [raping my girlfriend], and I was given authority to determine the sentence, you’d still be in prison. It wouldn’t even matter when the offense was committed. You’d still be in prison.”
        
        See, how nasty and ignorant your comment feels when directed at YOU. It seems that this is not an issue you can think about or discuss without having recourse to being nasty, vindictive and throwing out groundless accusations.
        
        I presume that if you’d had a cogent and rational response to my comments you’d have given them – instead you have chosen to make ad hominem insinuations.
        
        I’m happy to discuss this issue with you or anyone else, and I’m happy to share my knowledge and experience of what it means to be a celibate paedophile in this society, so long as we stay on issue. If that is too much of a challenge for you then please don’t feel that making nasty assumptions is a substitute for reasoned debate.
Alice

Tell me judge Roscoe how this differs from the bonfire on 27 July 1942 at the Galerie Du Jeu De Paume in Paris, where the Nazi’s destroyed work by Picasso Dali Klee and others.

Judge Roscoe is duty bound by the crown to decide upon the status of the work according to the law, using a crude mechanistic framework similar to the way the Nazi’s compartmentalised works by Dada Kokoschka Kandinsky and many others, at the exhibition of Degenerate Art in Munich in 1937. The exhibition space was partitioned according to category’s such as; art that offends religion, art that insults German women, and nature as seen by ‘sick minds’. They interpreted the work according to thier own prejudices and worldview. Seemingly objective, the whole stunt was in fact a highly subjective and poisonous exercise – as O’Neill indicates is happening with Ovenden’s work.

Since we are talking about subjective and objective.. Take the fate of New Objectivity artist Elfriede Lohse-Wachtler.. Her work was banned by the Nazi’s, and some of it destroyed. She refused sterilization, and was ultimately murdered in a psychiatric institution under the Nazi’s forced euthanasia program, Action T4. Is this so very far removed from the purge against all forms of paedophilia and suspected paedophilia which started in America, and has been going on more or less for the past 30 to 40 years.

Here we have one of our educated professional sisters in judge Roscoe, taking a leaf out of the Nazi’s book. Not only is this an act of intellectual barbarism, but also of supreme idiocy. I mean, even if they destroy works by Pierre Louys and Ovenden, two internationally recognised figures, are they also going to expunge all copies that exist in art books and on the internet? Are they going to mobilise the Portsmouth pitchfork brigade to break down some doors and do a graphic cleansing exercise of homes and digital devices nationwide? What about articles in journals and online text referencing the works, secondary works of art criticism in print audio and other media – are they going to get the Gerry Adams treatment, you know, maybe some masking tape and an actor to do a voice-over for auntie. Are CEOP and SOCA going to be rebranded the new Brownshirts and Blackshirts, commissioned to pour over every hint of cultural unorthodoxy? Are we going to see all our liberties of expression nudged reconditioned and redirected out of us Behavioural Insight Team style? Are our very souls going to bow at the feet of the client advisor, the risk assessment edict, the mental health ediface, the soft-NLP and passive aggression in your workplace? Are you, we, just going to submit to all this, without protest? I know.. you want to belong.. it’s bad for your CV.. Liberty is sometimes not a good look, except when it’s a popular trendy cause. See! I’m a feminist too! got the T-Shirt!

This is not simply about destruction of art works, it is symbolic of much more than that.

How long before David Cameron ‘strengthens’ existing child protection law to include art or sub-culture discussion forums, where individuals can be retrospectively investigated and prosecuted for every word for every heresy they have typed. Where current laws on decency and obscenity are stiffened yet further in the name of protecting kids, criminalising new categories of people. How long before someone such as myself is classified as mentally unfit or a ‘dangerous individual’ (to reference Foucault’s prescient essay) and the police knock on my door and remove my print of Klimt’s Mada Primavesi from the wall because it ‘incites community and parental anxiety’ and requires the ubiquitous risk assessment be conducted simply because my aesthetic doesn’t meet with state or popular approval. Is this fascism far-fetched? Perhaps, after all, why try such overt confrontation when there’s always the back-door route..

There is a whiff of the Michael Jackson about the Ovenden affair. My recollection is that many children who sat for Ovenden, spoke well of him and testified on his behalf during his trial. It is also clear that the police where on his case for a very long time, as this goes back decades since they started looking into him.

As Ovenden say’s the whole thing is a “farce”, in fact it’s an obscenity, it is regressive state-sanctioned iconoclasm. And no one says a thing, just a few of the libertarian usual-suspects like Furedi and O’Neill. Not a report on the BBC. The silence deafening as North Korea, the few who would have any reservation, just too scared to put thier noggin above the parapet lest it get chopped off Queen of Hearts style. Sentence first folks.. questions later..

Let’s be clear here, we are not simply talking about confiscation, but total destruction. And just think, without Klimt – we might not have Charles Rennie Mackintosh. I don’t want to see creative expression go up in smoke so needlessly and cheaply the way Britain’s most significant modernist building did, the art school in my birth city of Glasgow. If the greatest personal expressions are censored and reduced to dust, then what is the point of anything.
earsandeyes

I think the French Government should step forward (mind even they may find it too controversial to do so) and claim the Pierre Louys for the Bibliotheque Nationale’s collection. This is where the largest holdings of his photographs are. I am sure this would be the best solution for all.

I would like to point out that the historical context should always be observed when making judgements by what is (or is not), deemed acceptable by Society’s current standards. Also take note that when the authorities refer to indecent behaviour with a child, does not necessarily relate to hands on offences’, but imagery, mostly nudity, showing external genitalia, not sexual acts.
willoyen

as somebody wrote in the Guardian a couple of years ago on the NY Balthus exhibition ‘ If
current trends continue, in just a few years all of contemporary culture will
be nothing but an unending stream of cat pictures.’
jeremy Morfey

So who’s next in this programme of censorship? Paul Gaughin? Lewis Carroll? David Hamilton? Charles Aznavour? Even dear old Oliver Postgate and Peter Firmin used Firmin’s daughter, also called Emily, who bore quite a resemblance to Emily Ovenden, to introduce their most famous creation Bagpuss for the price of a bag of sweets.

We really do need to have a sensible debate, rather than leaving it to prejudiced judges. Were any of the girls depicted in the artworks of these suspect (or even actual) paedophiles harmed by the encounter. If they weren’t, then there is no case to answer.

All that is revealed by this art is that little girls are delightful. It says nothing to justify allowing the urges and bad intentions of some people to violate them in any way, other than that shrilly shouted by feminists that all admiration of girls is demeaning, patronising, sexist and should be stamped out. I argue that it is partly because little girls are delightful that they should be spared any abuse, and protected from it. The judge’s Order is, as the author suggests, a modern form of iconoclasm as nasty as anything coming out of the Reformation puritans or Islamic State.

I argue that images that depict and glorify the abuse and degradation of our fellow creature is just as offensive – not least those very beheading videos coming out of the iconoclast Islamic State. Yet who am I to order their total annhilation? Isn’t Christ’s suffering on the Cross one of the most potent images of abuse that has inspired countless generations of Christians to endure their own suffering without vengeance as a symbol of their faith and the bringer of lasting peace?

Some may consider them to be in poor taste. Since when though has any art been accused by some of being in poor taste, or even offensive? Many artists deliberately go out of their way to provoke strong reactions.
- Lensman2
  
  >”All that is revealed by this art is that little girls are delightful.”
  
  Yes, this has been completely lost in all the hysteria – children are beautiful and charming – why is their depiction considered the last taboo?
  - Nanna
    
    Trust me, you would NOT have wanted this artist to photograph your daughter, unsupervised anyway
    - https://consentinghumans.wordpress.com/ leonard sisyphus mann
      
      Ohh, do you know Graham well?
      - Nanna
        
        Yes.
        
        Alice
        
        Someone in Guardian comments claims personal knowledge of Ovenden too.. but presents zero evidence to substantiate this.
        
        Nanna
        
        Lots of people know him, unsurprisingly. Should we have kept documentary evidence?
        
        https://consentinghumans.wordpress.com/ leonard sisyphus mann
        
        …pants on fire?
        
        Nanna
        
        No, standard body temperature.
carl jacobs

Ah, the mystical sacred world of art. Somehow the application of paint to canvas is supposed to redeem any image. If these were photographs, they would be destroyed. But because the “artistic community” has decided that these paintings have mystical “artistic value” we simple plebeians are supposed to defer to their judgment. Where is the community more isolated and insular than the community of artists? Why should they be deferred to? I no more trust their moral judgment than their artistic judgment.

The destruction of the paintings is the destruction of the legacy of the artist. His creation has been destroyed. His life work is overturned, and rendered meaningless. In a sense, he has been erased. That is a severe punishment for an artist, and I suspect the true motive for this reaction. The artist as Redeemer and Revelater stands above the mortal crowd. Who among that crowd is fit to judge the revelation of the artistic divine? Who dares smite his own Mediator in such a manner?
- http://jimcannotfixthis.blogspot.co.uk/ Moor Larkin
  
  Think it’s more to do with placing humanity in the hands of a lawyer myself. Not so long ago the News of the World would be telling us every Sunday that the judges were all queer, child molestors or obsessed with corporal punishment. On the other hand, maybe it’s the bible. Let he who is without sin burn the first book.
Tony Lyons

It’s all wrong, wrong, wrong
http://jimcannotfixthis.blogspot.co.uk/ Moor Larkin

A man counts for naught when set against the monumental grandeur of the law.

“Before the law, there stands a guard. A man comes from the country,
begging admittance to the law. But the guard cannot admit him. May he
hope to enter at a later time? That is possible, said the guard. The man
tries to peer through the entrance. He’d been taught that the law was
to be accessible to every man. “Do not attempt to enter without my
permission”, says the guard. I am very powerful. Yet I am the least of
all the guards. From hall to hall, door after door, each guard is more
powerful than the last. By the guard’s permission, the man sits by the
side of the door, and there he waits. For years, he waits. Everything he
has, he gives away in the hope of bribing the guard, who never fails to
say to him “I take what you give me only so that you will not feel that
you left something undone.” Keeping his watch during the long years,
the man has come to know even the fleas on the guard’s fur collar.
Growing childish in old age, he begs the fleas to persuade the guard to
change his mind and allow him to enter. His sight has dimmed, but in the
darkness he perceives a radiance streaming immortally from the door of
the law. And now, before he dies, all he’s experienced condenses into
one question, a question he’s never asked. He beckons the guard. Says
the guard, “You are insatiable! What is it now?” Says the man, “Every
man strives to attain the law. How is it then that in all these years,
no one else has ever come here, seeking admittance?” His hearing has
failed, so the guard yells into his ear. “Nobody else but you could ever
have obtained admittance. No one else could enter this door! This door
was intended only for you! And now, I’m going to close it.”
Dogsnob

Please don’t ban Gill Sans.
Mc

The judge is a buffoon who has the same mindset as totalitarians
- Callipygian
  
  Perhaps she also despises molesters of children. I don’t know the facts of the case, but she’s probably a more honourable person than he is. Maybe not, but I have better things to do…
  - Mc
    
    You’re engaging a logical fallacy: just because the accused was found guilty does not mean that the judge’s order to destroy artwork is defensible
    - Callipygian
      
      I didn’t make that syllogism: you did.
      - Mc
        
        The judge’s rationale is conveniently muddled, simply because she’s having a hissy fit: she is apparently conflating the accused’s crime with his art. Even more tenuously , she is conflating Louys’ photos with Ovenden’s offense, simply because Ovenden happens to possess the photos. According to my knowledge, the accused’s own art and the Louys photos he possess have no connection to the offenses he was found guilty of. The judge has decided that because the accused has been found guilty of paedophilia, his risqué art and the photos by a Frenchman which he possesses should be destroyed. This is on the basis that she has decided according to her own measures that it contravenes “recognised standards of propriety which exist today’.
        
        To put it another way, this judge knows that she would never have been able to order the paintings and photos to be destroyed, if the accused had never appeared in her court, in the same way that she would not be able to order the destruction of recent and historic nude paintings that contravene “recognised standards of propriety which exist today’.
        
        For example, according to the judge’s logic, Lucian Freud’s painting of his nude 14 year of daughter is a ripe candidate for destruction. Even more so are the works of Eric Gill, who was a self-confessed perpetrator of incest. So if Ovenden possessed the work of Freud, Gill, Lewis Carroll, or a Renaissance depiction of cherubs, the judge would’ve ordered the destruction of those works as well. Except of course, the big guns of the art work would’ve blocked the destruction of an Old Master or a Lucian Freud, but don’t care too much for an Ovenden. A further indication of the judge’s impotently stupidity rage is that she hasn’t issued an Interpol warrant demanding the global seizure and destruction of Ovenden and Louys art. Nor has she demanded the removal of Ovenden and Louys images from the Internet.
        
        Callipygian
        
        Hmm. Well, I cannot see the civilized basis for a man — any man, or indeed woman of the modern era — painting their nude adolescent offspring. What is their impetus as artists? Who are their audience? Is there nothing else, no one else, to take their interest? As an artist myself, I do think artists are a part of their culture and responsible to it.
        
        At the same time, I agree with you in the sense that I think the law gives its sentence and she should apply it as she would to anyone else — not make up special penalties to torment him by, simply because he happens to be an artist.
        
        Mc
        
        While I wouldn’t want to paint nude children, it may well be that there is no intended sexual element to some artists’ work and simply a wish to express the innocence of a child. Some artists have no interest or talent for painting landscapes and still lives either.
        
        For example, I may find an adult male nude visually striking but have no sexual attraction to the image. Or I may find a child’s face to be beautiful, but have no sexual attraction to the child. Like many things, it can be difficult to understand someone else’s thinking or motivations.
        
        Callipygian
        
        It certainly can.
lorriman

There’s only one image in that link, that I can see, and it’s a commonplace sexual pose. That it’s got a child in it suggests that the judgement of the judge is correct. It’s not so much that it’s indecent but that it’s child porn. She should have called it child porn and we wouldn’t be having this debate.
- Lensman2
  
  no – in millions of families everyday – a child will, when getting dressed or ready for bed, at some point wear a top but no knickers. There is nothing more ordinary and mundane than what is depicted in that painting.
  
  The only persons adding ‘sex’ to it are those for whom a naked child is the ultimate obscenity.
  
  I’m a paedophile and the painting linked to is not at all sexy for me. Clearly you are more of a paedo than me.
  - lorriman
    
    “I’m a paedophile and the painting linked to is not at all sexy for me. Clearly you are more of a paedo than me.”
    
    Presumption alert. Neither is it for me since I am not a paedo. But it is a commonplace sexual pose in pornography for the purposes of tantilisation. But in this instance with a child as the subject. That makes it child porn.
    
    “s. There is nothing more ordinary and mundane than what is depicted in that painting.”
    
    BS.
    
    I think the ordinary viewer can see that that is not the case in that picture. Since you claim to be a paedeo, I would suggest that the picture simply doesn’t reach, for you personally, the threshold of what you would consider sexually interesting.
    - https://consentinghumans.wordpress.com/ leonard sisyphus mann
      
      >”But it is a commonplace sexual pose in pornography for the purposes of tantilisation”
      
      Look at the image again – she is simply stood up, back facing the viewer – if she were wearing trousers there would be nothing at all suggestive in her pose or posture.
      
      Even if she were in a more stereotypical porn pose, so what? If she were licking a lollipop say – who would be ascribing sexuality to that gesture – a common gesture of children? Certainly not me (and, yes, I am a paedo) but I don’t doubt you would.
      
      If licking a lolipop according to your opinion is a sexual act then really it’s fascinating that it’s you, the muggles, the antis and the haters who are the ones sexualising children and not us paedophiles – who, not surprisingly, have a more realistic idea of child sexuality.
      
      In effect your comments seem to be involved in an attempt to ‘adultify’ child sexuality.
      
      The fact remains that I, a paedophile, don’t see anything ‘sexy’ in the said image, but you do. I find that really very interesting for all sorts of reasons – you seem to be much more ‘hair-trigger’ when it comes to spotting ‘sexiness’ in children than myself – maybe you have an explanation for that, because the only one I can think of is one that I’m sure wouldn’t please you.
      
      >”Since you claim to be a paedeo, I would suggest that the picture simply
      doesn’t reach, for you personally, the threshold of what you would
      consider sexually interesting.”
      
      That’s possible – but it’s more that I don’t see ‘sexuality’ in these girls, only ‘nudity’ – it seems it’s only in depictions of children that simple ‘nakedness’ is taken to equal ‘sexiness’, well, by ‘right-thinking’ people anyway. Doesn’t that suggest that people who think and feel in this way are a bit, well, ‘sick’ – have something seriously wrong in their perceptions of children?
      
      But the picture seems to have reached YOUR threshold – it’s certainly registered some blip in your ‘sexiness radar’!
      
      The hysterical anti-paedophilia of tabloid culture is really very odd: you have so
      deeply entered what you imagine to be the paedophile mindset that you
      seem to have pretty much ‘gone native’ and for you children are as minefields of
      inadvertent, powerful, dangerous sexuality.
      
      The only thing is that what you imagine
      a paedophile to think and feel and want is pretty much completely wrong
      – popular culture’s ideas about the paedophile are as
      grotesque and idiotic and 180° wrong as was the idea a few decades ago that the typical homosexual
      was a promiscuous, effeminate, mincing queen.
- https://holocaust21.wordpress.com/ holocaust21
  
  You have now viewed a child porn image. That means you are a child pornographer & thus a paedophile. So it is completely hypocritical for you to point the finger at someone else, when you are in denial over your own crimes (and paedophilic urges).
  - lorriman
    
    And the same goes for the judge. Bang ‘er up.
    
    Don’t be ridiculous.
Patrick G Cox

It seems we are about to see a return of the Iconclasts of the 17th Century. The ‘I don’t aprove of it, therefore it must be destroyed’ mindset is unfortunately never far from the surface and has many guises.
- Theodore Ellinas
  
  Unless of course you take the creation of “man” as an artwork of God’s.
- Mc
  
  It is exactly the same mindset & logic of “I disagree with you, therefore you should be banned / jailed / murdered”
hippiepooter

Are any of those Ovenden paintings of landscapes or flowers? No, I didn’t think so. They are being destroyed because they are paedophilic images. When they were first displayed the police were going to prosecute because to the common sense eye they were patently legitimising paedophilia. Thirty years later our trusty Old Bill were completely vindicated. Does Brendan O’Neill only wish to preserve paedophilic images committed to canvass, or would he extend it to photography and film as well? Do tell. I would like a bit more to go on to exercise my common sense.
- Theodore Ellinas
  
  Is the one abve a “paedophilic ” image? Just asking.
  - hippiepooter
    
    Very hard to judge Theodore. I find it somewhat dodgy, but if I didn’t know her pater was a raving nonce, would I do so? Impossible to answer. Is it one of the paintings her learned Judge is setting a match to?
  - MikeF
    
    To someone with paedophile tendencies any image of a child might be sexually exciting. But I can’t see how that image could be so to anyone else. The image you find by following the hyperlink ‘be destroyed’ in the first paragraph above seems rather more overtly sexualised.
    - Lensman2
      
      I’m a paedophile – I don’t find Ovenden’s painting ‘sexually exciting’.
      
      MikeF, you clearly know nothing about paedophiles – you’re just making stuff up out of your imagination.
      
      If you think the image linked to is sexual – then you’re more of a paedo than I am.
      - MikeF
        
        I said ‘might’. The fact that the individual who painted the image is a paedophile obviously makes you wonder if there is something about it that might appeal to someone with such proclivities – the face looks perhaps slightly more mature than it ought to be. But if I did not know who the painter was then I would probably regard the image as entirely innocent.
        
        https://holocaust21.wordpress.com/ holocaust21
        
        Proving the point that Jurors tend to find any image “indecent” in court as they are basically told that the dude possessing it is a “probable paedophile”.
        
        I do suspect many people who hate indecent images are either sexually jealous feminists or closet paedophiles themselves who are desperately trying to hide their paedophilia (from the sexually jealous feminists who hold all the power).
        
        MistyWeaveFishLosh
        
        But you are a paedophile who advocates adults having sex with children, is fine.
        
        https://consentinghumans.wordpress.com/ leonard sisyphus mann
        
        >”But you are a paedophile who advocates adults having sex with children, is fine”
        
        ….and your point is?
        
        MistyWeaveFishLosh
        
        You are a danger to children.
        
        https://consentinghumans.wordpress.com/ leonard sisyphus mann
        
        Really!? If you drive a car there is more chance of you killing or injuring a child than there is of me touching a child improperly.
        
        MistyWeaveFishLosh
        
        That demonstrates your sick thinking, get some help.
        
        https://consentinghumans.wordpress.com/ leonard sisyphus mann
        
        Ohh – so you DO drive!
        
        Your complacent attitude to the huge risk you pose to children is very worrying – I suggest you ‘get some help’ and learn to drive sensibly and responsibly, not like someone who learnt to drive by playing Grand Theft Auto.
        
        Real Life is not some drug-fuelled computer game!
        
        MistyWeaveFishLosh
        
        Pathetically trying to deflect from your child sex abuse is good view, is the mark of a paedophile who does not understand their issues.
        
        https://consentinghumans.wordpress.com/ leonard sisyphus mann
        
        no – it’s just that the risk YOU pose to children is one that society considers as ‘normal’ and ‘acceptable’ – the children that die and are injured by car are considered as ‘regrettable but necessary collateral damage’.
        
        A child is killed or injured on UK roads on average once every ten minutes, in 2011, 2,412 children under the age of 16 were killed or seriously injured on the roads.
        
        As a celibate paedophile who doesn’t drive I, unlike you, present no risk to children.
        
        PS – I don’t think ‘child sex abuse is good’ –
        but nor do I think all sensual interactions between a child and an adult are necessarily ‘abuse’.
        
        MistyWeaveFishLosh
        
        Wacko!
        
        Going on about driving and comparing it to Child Sex Abuse.
        
        Get some help.
        
        MistyWeaveFishLosh
        
        You are a danger to children.
        
        Lensman2
        
        I honestly think that no paedophile is going to get particularly sexually worked up over an Ovenden painting – they’re really not ‘sexy’ in that way – people seem to think that the slightest glimpse of a child sends us into paroxysms – ‘nudity’ does not equal ‘sexiness’ – not with adults nor with children.
    - Ronald Heatherington
      
      Yeah, to clarify, I meant the one with the girl walking out of the sea, or whatever it was. Deeply sexual.
  - lorriman
    
    No, but the one linked to sure is.
  - Ronald Heatherington
    
    It’s clearly sexy, and anyone who cannot see the sexuality in that girl is either brainwashed or lying!
    - Theodore Ellinas
      
      I think we should look to you for guidance as to what everything “IS” oh great one.
- Gilbert White
  
  His brother painted copulating bunnies though.
- Lensman2
  
  >” they are paedophilic images”
  
  What? Are you saying that his paintings depict paedophiles?
  
  If images of naked children are ‘paedophilic images’ – doesn’t that mean that an actual naked child, say one taking a bath, must be a paedophile?
Peter Bridgman

Brendan calls the destruction of the paintings ‘an act of medievalism.’ By far the greatest wholesale destruction of artworks in Europe, and certainly in England, occurred in the Early Modern period, not the Medieval. Brendan should read Duffy’s Stripping of the Altars.’
cartimandua

An actual child abuser made art about his proclivities.
yes that is obscene just as ISIS videos of tortures and murders are obscene.
- Theodore Ellinas
  
  There’s a certain touching honesty methinks.
- Mc
  
  We do know you are infamous for your logical fallacies. And of course, you’re proving Mr O’Neill’s point.
Peter Bridgman

Did Torquemada destroy any artworks? I expect Brendan means Savonarola.
Always_Worth_Saying

Ovenden is a weapons grade nonce whose pedophilia is self evident in his ‘art’. the police tried for years to prosecute him but he was very well protected. Can’t imagine why.
- Chas Grant
  
  Some protection, seeing as how the onasty ld perve was found guilty of six charges of indecency with a child and
  one charge of indecent assault against a child.
  - https://holocaust21.wordpress.com/ holocaust21
    
    Not nasty, he seemed like a thoroughly decent chap, to me. Any man convicted under a feminazi rape law is a martyr, in my eyes.
    - MistyWeaveFishLosh
      
      But you think Children having sex with adults is fine.
- bre616uk
  
  Ovenden’s trial was a travesty. He was set up by the police.
- Ronald Heatherington
  
  We are all SONS of Ovenden– as are you!
Always_Worth_Saying

and collected by Lord MacAlpine. make sure your eyes don’t roll or you’ll be off to jail.
Always_Worth_Saying

drawings of underage naked children. very ‘progressive’. I wonder which side of the argument Spectator contributor Jonathan King is on?
- Lensman2
  
  >”drawings of underage naked children”
  
  ‘underage’ for what?
  
  is there an age under which children are not allowed to be naked?
- Ronald Heatherington
  
  Or Stephen Fry, who had a “raucous” lunch with him?
Temporary ID

There’s a bloke who wrote a religious book in the 7th century and he consummated his marriage when his wife was nine or ten. Will the good lady judge ban his work?
- Theodore Ellinas
  
  Perhaps a Spanish judge might – after all the age of consent there is just 12.
  - Chas Grant
    
    They finally raised it to 16 this year…. better late than never!
    - https://holocaust21.wordpress.com/ holocaust21
      
      Actually any sensible person would accept that the age of consent is a stupid law made by stupid people. But then, upon seeing the destruction of life what with over 50,000 now classed as “subhuman” sex offenders in the UK, one would instead conclude that the age of consent is made by predatory, SEXUALLY JEALOUS, feminist puritans!
      
      Age of consent always used to be 12 or less just about everywhere. Time to lower it back to where it should be.
      - MistyWeaveFishLosh
        
        Still pushing your child sex agenda eh?
- Fern Fernsson
  
  That one could cost her her head, so no.
http://batman-news.com NigelScott

Why are Michael Jackson’s records still in the shops?
- fundamentallyflawed
  
  Because he settled out of court and was found guilty (momentarily) in the court of public opinion only
- hippiepooter
  
  Because they don’t promote paedophilia? I don’t believe we hear much Gary Glitter being played on the radio these days.
  - Theodore Ellinas
    
    c’mon c’mon
  - Mc
    
    Did Glitter’s records promote paedophilia?
  - Lensman2
    
    that’s because we’re a nation of ignorant philistines – how is playing a Glitter or a Jackson record promoting paedophilia anyway – are there coded messages in their lyrics or something?
- aspeckofboggart
  
  the records are American estate. UK got no chops there.
- Lensman2
  
  Because his music is great?
  
  and BTW how has it that liking children is now almost a crime in the UK?
  - http://www.twitter.com/comedysavage Evel Kareebel
    
    “liking children” =/= getting them drunk under false pretences on “jesus juice” and then having sex with them.
    
    Also, R Kelly is a paedophile. And Bill Cosby is a rapist. And roman Polanksi is a paedophile. And so was Eric Gill. Seems you only have to make one half decent piece of work and people will write off your flaws forever.
    - https://consentinghumans.wordpress.com/ leonard sisyphus mann
      
      Jackson’s music is still great, and will be listened to for ever because the music is what matters.
- Alice
  
  Because they sell. The brand was so strong that it could absorb a mountain of unfounded smears of which I believe he was innocent of. But where there is gold, there will be diggers.
sir_graphus

Weren’t most of Sappho’s works supposed to have been destroyed when they realised she was a woman?
- Theodore Ellinas
  
  No – unless it was Greeks. Maybe they were just lost.
Atlas

Only the beginning, this will get worse as the leftists and their islamist fellow travelers continue to strengthen their grip on British society.
- http://www.web-media.co.uk/ Rob Willox
  
  Why is it deemed always to be leftists when it is more likely to be the rightist religious lobby attempting to impose their own morality on the rest of us. If it wasn’t for some of those same ‘leftists’ we would be a lot worse off than we are even now!
  - MikeF
    
    Like the ones who wilfully ignored mass rape in Rotherham.
    - https://holocaust21.wordpress.com/ holocaust21
      
      Rotherham was not rape. It was “underage” consensual sex, for the most part.
      - MikeF
        
        “In just over a third of cases, children affected by sexual exploitation were previously known to services because of child protection and neglect. It is hard to describe the appalling nature of the abuse that child victims suffered. They were raped by multiple perpetrators, trafficked to other towns and cities in the north of England, abducted, beaten, and intimidated. There were examples of children who had been doused in petrol and threatened with being set alight, threatened with guns, made to witness brutally violent rapes and threatened they would be next if they told anyone. Girls as young as 11 were raped by large numbers of male perpetrators.”
        
        Extract from Executive Summary of the Independent Report into Child Sexual Exploitation in Rotherham by Professor Alexis Jay.
      - MistyWeaveFishLosh
        
        Only paedophiles would believe that…
  - Mc
    
    You mean like the leftists who want to ban people from giving talks at universities?Or the 20th century leftist governments who killed more people than Hitler, but who continue to be uncritically revered by many on the left?
  - https://holocaust21.wordpress.com/ holocaust21
    
    It is both “rightwing religious nuts” and “leftwing feminists” who are to blame. Though, I would argue, feminism came out of a more rightwing religious movement closely tied to the Church but in the 20th century it then blended with Marxism to create some bizarre man-hating politically correct ideology “legitimised” by its claims of “oh think of the poor!”. Of course, none of them really care about the poor – it’s just an excuse.
  - Ronald Heatherington
    
    Feminist victimology, therefore the paedo-hysteria, originated on the Left, so I really cannot understand how so many people seem to think it the religious institutions who are to blame for everything!
- Theodore Ellinas
  
  Islamist fellow travellers? Are you sure? And as for this judge ‘m sure she’ll be voting Tory.