Every Philistine critic gets to be an instant artist for a day!

Guileless, intelligent and nosey kid: "Papa, why are there so many Philistine control freaks in the world?"

Old Pops: "I don't know, but it was the winning idea from the recent 'non-ideas' summit!"




[Update on December 28 2009. Now here's the thang. What if I was wrong even a little bit about Henson and art schmart? What, me wrong? I've thought about this often and I don't think so per se. As far as I've seen and being a fan for around ten years, Bill Henson is great and does not connect with the criminal filth of Polanski. And yet, some of Bill's photos are um, a little er, creepy and not right. I'm sorry, but that model was fourteen. Dig?

For Polanski, the man who made Repulsion the name of one of his movies and his defining character trait, my view is that he should be in jail or hung. The fact is that the criminal always over-rides any vaunted ideas of er, alleged or authentic art. In the end I don't give a fuck about art over people. No really.

Hey, the wacky, madcap and zany mind-set that dominates much of the arty world such as it is, is well, often venal, decadent and void of any intellectual and moral compass. No really. I have met and known many er, artists and they are not always, but far too uniform and by the numbers two-faced, opportunist fake rebel leftards who largely despise conservative governments but not the massive capitalist tax-payer generated grants etc.

Yep, the art world is an often bankrupt, rotten, phony and worthless but wonderfully money-spinning dirty minded con. While many regular folks are utterly clueless and crude regards the merits of human artistic values and meaning. Sadly, "sophisticated" can mean the witless and repellent moral and mental inversions of Polanski's performing pervert pals.

What do you think? This is the best I can do with my limitations and for free.]

The great Tim Blair on the creepy and er, curious selectiveness of Bill Henson's largely laughable art is truth meme. Bill Henson.."school inspector.." Bwahahaha! Ugh..

"ART IS TRUTH. Tim Blair – Monday, August 02, 10 (02:49 am)

School inspector Bill Henson speaks, following a period of delicate silence:

‘’We should be wary of governments and interest groups who try to impose restrictions on the free exercise of the artistic imagination. Our zeal to protect innocence should not come at the cost of violating artistic experience.”

Wrong, Bill. Protecting innocence – your euphemism for “children” – is more important than any intrusion on “artistic experience”. Especially when that “artistic experience” involves photographing naked kids you’ve sought out in primary schools.

‘’If we believe that art is a high form of education, that its basis is moral and its goal truth, then we should resist the impulse that would deny the artist the right to deal with what may sometimes be ambiguous, complex and disturbing.’’
So Henson’s sexualised shots of unclothed pre-teens are “truth”. Sad for all the kids who never got to experience this. They’re living a “lie”.





“They’re disgusting. It’s the first time I’ve seen them and I find them absolutely revolting!”. Quite. No, that’s not Fluffy, our own medium size Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, speaking about his balls, but pasty Kev pronouncing from on high, but low brow, on the incredible work of internationally uber-respected and very successful Australian artist Bill Henson. A man whose work he seems to know precisely zero about. And regards the world of artistic expression, he appears to understand even less.

[Colonel Neville update: But hey, I could be entirely wrong. Is Billy boy a talented pervert? No really.]

Yes, it's the bleeding first time he's seen 'em, and quick as a flash, our Kev can form a stupid opinion even more clueless and weak minded than my Aunt Doris. And she's dead. So young people, and especially girls are revolting, eh? Annoying and a bore, but nauseating? The PM must have had a rather difficult pubescence then, hence the palour. Even my five year old son doesn't say girls are yukky anymore. Oh, I get it. It's the perceived angle. I'd bet it's his and not Bill's then.

[Colonel Neville update: Hmmm. I seem to notice my own run of logical fallacy here. My, my, how my views have changed. Now I don't care much about artistic pretentions however well produced. Maybe Bill Henson's photos of UNDERAGE girls are gee, really rather creepy and a bad, bad thing. No really. Sadly Kev turned out to be a treachorous phony creep though, but not a pervert.]

"Whatever the artistic view of the merits of that sort of stuff, frankly, I don't think there are any, just allow kids to be kids". Out own King Kevin.

Innit great that such a bunko PM can weigh in on what kind of art is er, art? How er, Socialist.

"A picture of Glorious Celebrity Comrade Cate Blanchett for your approval, Prime Minister!"

Channel 7 News: ”...pornography posing as art”.

[Colonel Neville: maybe art posing as art!, or pornography that's pornography though hardly. Again, I like the crowd and night shots very much but when I saw the under eighteen shots, er, no. No really.]

Yeah, whatever MSM boobs. The Police are charging Bill Henson, with er, alleged child pornography offences, due to his latest exhibition! I kid you not. Henson is one of my favourite photographer/artists, noted for outstanding, distilled, under-lit and virtual old Master honed, [new, old, timeless Master, whatever] and meticulously set-up shots of the night, city, street scape, the rural and the industrial etc. Often using the young, middle and old as models, his work is striking for possessing more nuance, ambiguity, depth and the elegiac than one can bear.

From artgallery nsw gov au: “Hensons works are held in all the major Australian galleries, including the art galleries of NSW, WA, SA, the National Gallery of Victoria and the National Gallery of Australia.

In international collections, Bill Henson’s work is held in the Guggenheim Museum in New York, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Denver Art Museum, the Houston Museum of Fine Art, 21c Museum, Louisville, the Montreal Museum of Fine Art, Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris, the DG Frank Collection in Frankfurt, and the Sammlung Volpinum and the Museum Moderne Kunst in Vienna”.

Phew! No wonder our pig ignorant PM and media haven’t heard of him. It wasn’t on a diplomatic memo or a cue card! And in a bizarro and hilarious twist, Van Thanh Rudd, the son of fluffy Kev's brother, [no, really], had his as per usual rudimentary Leftard student agitprop cum tedious and random graphic design, uncerimoniously removed from a 'government artspace!', cos' it's apparently offensive to among other's, the er, Chinese government?

Oh, the delicious irony. Consider for a moment even the phrase 'government artspace'...

Here's Van's straight from Socialist Parody Central take on Chavez, the dumb as a plank totalitarian, Che the child killer Guevara fan and murderous pal of Iranian gay murdering Prez, Ahmachimphead. To Van, nothing is ever glaringly phony enough, that he ever drops his out of date by several decades, rhetorical delusions, and is repulsed. Nope for Van the ham, it's all good, as long as you cloak everything in "right on!" and revolutionary juvenile loon drivel. This is his idea of intellectual and moral Quality Control. Er, no.

He is in short, ya bog standard, entirely unoriginal, radical and hysterical idiot. Van Thanh Rudd, as Mark Steyn has said, "lives in a fantasy life completely supported by the system he despises".

Ever heard of Logical Fallacy and empiricism, Van? Nope, guess not. But still, I don't want to stop him doing his thang, but with his own money. Because I would not want to compromise Van's er, integrity. Hey, kid's today, eh? But back to Bill.

“Bill Henson is an artist of ferocious integrity, a photographer of the human condition and an experimenter of remarkable skill and conviction”. Photobox.

Andrew Bolt is apparently on the side of those that see Bill Henson as an expensive pornographer and damns him rather completely, as do his commenters online. Now I usually agree and dig Bolt's stuff, dig? But while I may see his er, point, such point's actually have nothing to do with Henson. So I er, beg to disagree a little, mate. Especially with absurd strawman comparison/extrapolation's of rape and murder. Sheesh! Which kinda shows the extreme illogic of first accusing Bill of being a porno King and thus so it seems, anything can then be said about 'im.

"To the tumbril!" Er, Bill has not raped or murdered anyone has he?

If one decides to have no use for the rational and the clear differences it perhaps illuminates, ok. Check. I'll tell the wife to stop taking those pornographic shots of our five year old at the beach and in the bath. Because he's naked right? And all you need to be pornographic apparently is ergo, to be naked and photographed. Really? Would I use such a model as Bill did? Nope, I'm not Bill Henson. And that doesn't make Bill's art, porn.

Hey, there's a lot of Indian temples smothered in carvings of wildly copulating couples, groups and every combination thereof. The photgraphs are available at the library and through most any large bookstore. In Japan, tourist photo's show a traditional phallus and fertility festival where the kids sit on a wooden pecker, for happy snaps, hoping for plenty of Grandchildren! And in a lot of the Islamic world, Bill Henson's photo's could be just unusually well done shots of the wife. It is, a big, crazy and er, "diverse" world out there.

Christ, if there is insanely no difference between some art and any porn for some, egad! Life imitating art as part of the human soul and condition, well, that's some endless bleeding edge, innit? I can tell the difference because there are many differences, so why can't you? Many people use actual porn but most I imagine, don't wack off at art galleries. Maybe try to act as speedily against the horrible Himalaya of the real child abusing thing. There's an idea.

Now apart from Bill being a real talent and therefore, someone you can take completely seriously, Henson is also that rare thing in Australia or anywhere, a great and international artist who sees, understands and appreciates something more profound, resonant and timeless than the merely fashionable and ideological . Bill makes a lot of alleged artists look like the crude, rudimentary and obvious pamphleteers that they truly are. His pictures are filled with a strange longing, displaced melancholy and the ruin of the old human condition. Henson especially describes the narrow and fleeting moments twixt evening and night.

“Australian artist Bill Henson is a passionate and visionary explorer of twilight zones, of the ambiguous spaces that exist between day and night, nature and civilization, youth and adulthood, male and female.

His photographs of landscapes at dusk, of the industrial 'no-man's land' that lies on the outskirts of our cities, and of androgynous girls and boys adrift in the nocturnal turmoil of adolescence are painterly tableaux that continue the tradition of romantic literature and painting in our post-industrial age.

Were it not for Henson's primary, almost devotional need to elicit empathy for his troubled human subjects, there's a feeling that nothing would prevent the black in his photographs from completely absorbing his attention and extinguishing his work”. Dennis Cooper at Pavement Magazine.

So, the pin head people are gonna arrest Bill! And we have so many pinheads! They’ve already confiscated his paintings. Bill hangs in major galleries in Australia and around the world. Bill’s great, mate. Henson uses young models in his work and because he’s used a naked thirteen year old in a series, this is automatically defined as child pornography. Dig? Well, if you're a pervert and a dumbass, everything is so.

Dudley Moore and Peter Cook as Derek and Clive. Derek: "Everything gives me the horn! Even a photograph of a piece of toilet paper gives me the horn!"

Clive: "You know what gave me the horn? The Pope when he was laying in state. He looked so vulnerable, with his untrimmed nose hair".

Derek: "The word 'and' gives me the horn".

Clive: "Yes, AND there's so much of it about".

The simple equational link for the simple minded and cultural missing link of mind, is that any photo of naked girls can only ever be porn. Actually, I imagine this is much the same kind of thought process as a paedophile. So those shots of my son in the bath wearing a soap bubble hat are porn then, aren’t they? Gotta be!

“Facts are nothing without nuance”. Norman Mailer.

The facts and nuance that pass the average asshat wearer by, is that Bill Henson is not a pornographer and doesn’t produce pornography. And correct me if I'm wrong, but no adult is supposed to find children sexually attractive, nor look for it. Children are what make life worth living, and are the way to see the meaning in life as they are the meaning. Thus the work of Bill Henson.

Children are also often an irritating bore, are weirdo's and they smell, but who want's to see that in a gallery?! I can get that at home.

Almost every MSM outlet has dealt in their usual rather tabloid way, but with their pretensions at something higher largely in tact. This shows rather starkly, that such subjects, like most areas, are beyond and above them. They are after all, a hack factory. A hacktory!

Hey, Kevin is everyday, revealing himself as the average and mediocre witted technocrat he actually and clearly always was. The automatic and knee jerk is for our tiny PM, his level and idea of a considered analysis. Thus he was the perfect King of Non-Ideas for a Day at the recent, absurd and ridiculously void of 'Ideas Summit'. 2020 twas called. Ironic the number choice really, considering the smug, conceited myopia of the elitist celebrity activist, academic and government beneficiary types that held the stage.

What a fiasco and neo-Berkley style boobfest it was. Not one “idea” worth a damn came out of it. It all boiled down to "...the government should spend much more of your money, though not mine", and on everything PC and Leftard approved. Especially the kind of utterly insane, juvenile, useless and moral vanity framed money pit pet project's of old and new Left Liberalism, that will never be held to account for anything like an actual achievement.

So a dearth of any er, 'idea's', but a surfeit of hubris. In fact, I think they hit the Motherload. But I digress.

It’s funny, innit? More and more, the real idea's of truth, meaning, reason and context are all brushed aside in a flash, by the same poop minds who wank on endlessly and earnestly about the imaginary “Fascists!” who limit their diversity.

Hey, Bill Henson could be considered a genius by much of the world forever and and a day and sadly, most of Australia, the MSM and every badly styled average politician still wouldn’t know him at all. These folks have the inquiring, curious and original minds of a slice of Swiss cheese.

Unless Henson was on say a lifestyle show, the ABC's mega tedious and fraudulent 7:30 Report, or the fatuous jelly of 60 Minutes, and continuously for at least a month. Even though I take it as a given that many of our betters in places of authority, power and influence know 'eff all about much at all, I’m still taken by surprise by what real peasants they are.

Our pathetic twerp and ten steps down to the mezzanine Leader of the Opposition, Brendan 'head butt me now' Nelson, apparently also agrees with the PM. Big as they say, 'effing surprise.

Here’s a recent sideline from earlier this week, but eerily connected to this idiocy I believe. And the guy concerned is I believe a Lefty kinda guy, of the pro-and often unviable public transport kind, but if he’s correct about the mentality and methods of the Punyversity concerned? But that’s not the point.

It’s the er, mentality of the good folks who don’t like his “intemperate” comments. They’re “derogatory and insulting”. Sounds like my kind of guy. If ever anywhere needed a barrage of insults, it’s the claustrophobic and phony cloisters of bloated academia. In fact much of our public discourse needs a damn good Sex Pistol whipping.

"Riiiighta!!" John Lydon.

Melbourne Uni has demoted Paul Mees, a senior lecturer, because he said in a “strongly worded attack” on the authors of a 2007 report on transport privatisation, that they were “liars and frauds and should be in jail”.

It’s all maybe because the Uni department doing the report, are all er, rather cosy with and funded by the er, government. As Dr. Nick Low, da man in charge of the transport research department supposedly doing independent work said of Mees views, they are "...directly contrary to our wish to conduct our relations with the State Government in the spirit of partnership and co-operation”. Sweet and chummy, eh? But this is the best part.

In the inquiry into the naughty Paul Mees affair, a Dr King, ‘found it did not matter whether Dr. Mees statements were true or not!' Quite. Now dig this. “His defence of truth should be dismissed!”, says Dr. King’s report. Riiight. From the 22 May edition of 'The Age' newspaper. Yeah, sure it is. I always fact-check even the date!

And thus in a separate but equally stirring case, and without apparently any public tender, what’s gonna be an in-tandem Leftard think tank, or I’ll eat my guitar, has been given 15 million dollars by the government. Just like that, Guv.

Er, how many more tax payer funded neo-Socialist wank chambers, just like the celebrities with no bloody idea summit do we need exactly? Isn’t just about every Uni and government department one of these bullshit spin domes by default? And now they want to get into art criticism too! There is so little alternative voice in almost any area in poor old Oz, sports. By definition for the Left of mind, any tiny glimmer of light is always way too much illumination.

"The light! It burns!"

I thank God for the free market/Conservative Institute of Public Affairs, one of the few serious and bright spots on the ever shrinking intellectual Oz map.

And as for Bill Henson, neither the presence or absence of light will ever register, penetrate or reflect in the dimness of his idiot detractors. What do context, meaning, history and intent mean to Henson’s critics? In such mind bogglingly stupid and crassly instant reactions, and in the end, precisely nothing but an irrational fear of the wrong things out there, and in the dark.