Outcry as Paris City Hall bars under-Eighteens from seeing adolescents featuring in Risque pictures taken by an American photographer for an art exhibition
Outcry as Paris City Hall bars under-Eighteens from seeing adolescents featuring in Risque pictures taken byu00a0an American photographer for an art exhibition
The exhibition, which opened yesterday, is a retrospective of the US photographer Larry Clark's 50-year career and chronicles the lives of American teenagers between 1960 and 2010.
Restricted
His photos, viewings of which have been restricted to minors at the Museum of Modern Art of the City of Paris, depict their subjects' everyday lives and subcultures, from skateboarding to punk rock, drugs and firearms. About one in 10 of the pictures portrays young people engaged in sexual activity.
In protest against the age restriction imposed by Paris City Hall, an explicit black-and-white shot from the collection was splashed on the front page of the newspaper Lib ufffdration yesterday.
The show's catalogue has also raised difficulties. The traditional publishing house for the capital's exhibitions, Paris Mus ufffdes, refused to print the book because six images made it feel "uncomfortable".
The ban has, therefore, provoked controversy in the French media and complaints by Green Party politicians sitting on the Paris city council.
u00a0
Are French teenagers more innocent than US teenagers, they asked, or is France, which used to have a reputation for being open-minded, becoming prudish?
The Mayor of Paris, Bertrand Delano , replied that "what could be done 20 years ago raises problems today; the ideological and legal context regarding contemporary art has changed."
u00a0
The Mayor pointed to legal action launched by associations against museums and curators in the recent past, and said this was not a risk he was willing to take.
'Nonsensical ban'
Clark claimed on Wednesday that the Paris museum's ban made no sense, saying that it was like telling teenagers to "go back to your rooms and watch all this s**t displayed on the internet, but we don't want you to see art that talks about you in museums".
He added, "Of course these photos are disturbing. Art is disturbing. And yes, it's showing sex and nudity, but it's part of life."
The 67-year-old Clark is also a film-maker best known for the 1995 movie Kids, which caused a scandal with its raw portrayal of teenagers, sex and drugs.
Age restriction or censorship of an exhibition by the courts is very uncommon in France, but the stereotype that the country is more artistically liberated than any other has been eroded in recent years.
As Clark pointed out, Parisian teenagers need not be too concerned about missing his exhibition: they will still be able to download his photographs from the internet.
The exhibition, which opened yesterday, is a retrospective of the US photographer Larry Clark's 50-year career and chronicles the lives of American teenagers between 1960 and 2010.
Restricted
His photos, viewings of which have been restricted to minors at the Museum of Modern Art of the City of Paris, depict their subjects' everyday lives and subcultures, from skateboarding to punk rock, drugs and firearms. About one in 10 of the pictures portrays young people engaged in sexual activity.
In protest against the age restriction imposed by Paris City Hall, an explicit black-and-white shot from the collection was splashed on the front page of the newspaper Lib ufffdration yesterday.
The show's catalogue has also raised difficulties. The traditional publishing house for the capital's exhibitions, Paris Mus ufffdes, refused to print the book because six images made it feel "uncomfortable".
The ban has, therefore, provoked controversy in the French media and complaints by Green Party politicians sitting on the Paris city council.
u00a0
Are French teenagers more innocent than US teenagers, they asked, or is France, which used to have a reputation for being open-minded, becoming prudish?
The Mayor of Paris, Bertrand Delano , replied that "what could be done 20 years ago raises problems today; the ideological and legal context regarding contemporary art has changed."
u00a0
The Mayor pointed to legal action launched by associations against museums and curators in the recent past, and said this was not a risk he was willing to take.
'Nonsensical ban'
Clark claimed on Wednesday that the Paris museum's ban made no sense, saying that it was like telling teenagers to "go back to your rooms and watch all this s**t displayed on the internet, but we don't want you to see art that talks about you in museums".
He added, "Of course these photos are disturbing. Art is disturbing. And yes, it's showing sex and nudity, but it's part of life."
The 67-year-old Clark is also a film-maker best known for the 1995 movie Kids, which caused a scandal with its raw portrayal of teenagers, sex and drugs.
Age restriction or censorship of an exhibition by the courts is very uncommon in France, but the stereotype that the country is more artistically liberated than any other has been eroded in recent years.
As Clark pointed out, Parisian teenagers need not be too concerned about missing his exhibition: they will still be able to download his photographs from the internet.
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