Fear of a fiberglass boy
• Sodomitical Polity
A lovely youth asleep. It isn't a painting but a photograph of a fiberglass sculpture. I could almost regret my recent remarks about artificial paramours but really fiberglass isn't anything to snuggle up to much less other things.
Some months back Wal-Mart, invincible retail empire that has forced more American manufacturers to have their products made by Chinese slave labor (to keep their prices low enough to satisfy Wal-Mart), took what the British call lad's mags, Maxim, FHM off the shelves. And put the Cosmo Girl in a partially opaque wrapper. Backward Middle America is the backbone of the Wal-Martians.
Barnes and Noble is Wal-Mart's opposite number in the new book trade. Many small bookshops have perished when a Barnes and Noble superstore hit town. American capitalism represents anything but diversity. Both companies have the power to grant or forbid their suppliers success.
You think of B&N as attracting a comparatively more sophisticated clientele. From this report Barnes and Noble is more than ready to bow - in advance - before the prudish people who increasingly limit others' choices.
The publishers [of Artlink] have been told by the American distributors that their March issue, Adelaide And Beyond, will not be sold in Barnes and Noble stores unless it is in opaque bags because the cover depicts a "completely nude male".Artlink manager Tory Shepherd says she is disappointed because it is actually a sculpture by Adelaide artist Christian Burford.
"It's a fibreglass scultpure of a young man. It's completely not sexual in any way," she said.
"It's not salacious or pornographic, it's art. It's actually got the same marble sheen on it as the statue of David, so we're considering on our next issue of putting a photo of Michaelangelo's David on the front."
Art magazine faces nudity ban in US
Artlink says:
The artist Kristian Burford, trained at the South Australian School of Art is famous for his sculptural installations in which young adults inhabit a fantasy version of run of the mill settings, often involving the sleep of dreams. His latest piece titled "In the later years of Christopher's residence at boarding school he discovered that if the hand of a sleeping boy were to be submerged in tepid water, the boy would be made to wet his bed....." The nude teenager sleeps on a bed in his late mother's sewing room amongst her quilts and sumptuous drapes. There is an anticipation in the retail trade that some patrons of our newsagencies may find the image offensive. Artlink has resisted a request to "figleaf" the figure.
Comments
These Puritan oafs are the Christian equivalent of the Muslim Fundamentalists that are causing so much grief in the world. Lets put them on an island together and let fight it out then we can leave the survivors there and the rest of the free thinking world can get on with being happy and not hurting others, through ill conceived dogmas and religions.
Posted by: nemo | April 5, 2004 7:10 AM
Apart from the typos, I wholly agree with you Nemo.
Posted by: mac | April 5, 2004 7:12 AM
Since you two both have the same IP I’d expect you to agree. (I make typos all the time.)
There’s an old C.M. Kornbluth story, The Marching Morons in which the bright people of the world trick all the stupid people into going on vacation to Venus to rid the world of them. Always seemed an elegant solution.
Posted by: Richard | April 5, 2004 7:27 AM