THE NIGHTMARE NETWORK - Art, Pornography & The Artist

The difference between the Shields photos and the Bronzino painting is, for me, that Shields has been deliberately presented as visual sex candy, whereas the woman / mother in the painting seems to be the centrepiece, not the angel-winged child. What's more, Bronzino appears to be commenting on the old Oedipus complex issue, whereas the photographer is simply trying to suggest that an underage girl can be made sexually desirable if you plaster her in grown-up make-up.

The angel-winged child doesn't strike me as being particularly sexualised although he is clearly adolescent. I also think the glaring patriarchal figure in the top right of the picture is a strange, complex fusion of the envy some fathers feel when their wives lavish attention on children instead of them, and also a judicial, censorious condemnation. Indeed, although I know nothing of the history of the picture, it could even be that the two figures at the top corners respresent a man and wife, and that the man is pulling back a veil to reveal to his wife what could / might / is happening within their family as he himself sees it i.e. rendering the picture a dream or nightmare based upon his imaginings.

In contrast the Shields photo is pure paedophiliac fantasy. I see no artistic merit in it whatsoever.

JK