High Glitz - Warning, this entry is full of rambling opinions.
Tuesday, October 20, 2009 at 10:46AM 
From the website: "Susan Anderson’s documentary portrait series, High Glitz, is shot on location at several of America’s child beauty pageants. Setting up her studio amidst the colorful spectacle, she captures the young girls at the height of their performance. Hours of preparation are spent on each child's appearance, and her camera records it all in graphic detail. Children’s pageants are a fascinating subculture, but more than anything they represent a strange microcosm of America itself. Our own values of beauty, success and glamour reflected in the dreams of thousands of young girls… "
I'm not particularly enthralled with these photos, but I'm always interested in artists who seem to tread a thin line between critiquing something or being part of it. I have a personal belief that art is a safe space to explore the darker aspects of ourselves and our cultures so I'm always interested to see how other people do it.
Child beauty pageants are something which are particularly disturbing to me. The display of little girls are if they were dolls, the sexualisation, of course one can't help but wonder how it effects these girls as they grow up. I would laugh at the ridiculousness of it if it didn't make me want to cry.
Speaking of artists who deal with the sexualisation of youth* – not to mention eroticism of violence, etc etc - what do you folks think of the work of Trevor Brown? (Not safe for work and might be a bit much for some people, though if you've spent even a day on the internet, you must surely have seen worse!)
This is a bit of an old discussion, he's been around awhile, but I'm interested in my own reactions to his work. On one hand, there's that gut reaction "What if he's a total sicko who actually acts out this stuff?" ... I don't tend to believe that, from what I've seen of his online presence, he seems like an educated, thoughtful person (but then, so does Roman Polanski and I have to jump on the bandwagon here and say that guy makes me feel sick) I also don't believe that art should be censored (as long as nobody is actually hurt or abused in the making of the artwork) as, like I said, I think art provides a safe space to explore or darkest depths and by bringing darkness into light, it destroys the dangerous power of it. Or something.
That being said, I find his art... I don't know, perhaps it's the commercial aspect of it that bothers me more than anything. I'm actually not a huge fan of his work stylistically, I just find my own mixed feelings about it interesting.
Blah blah blah. Opinions? You know you have them! I haven't mentioned the Bill Henson fiasco for the simple reason that I think it was ridiculous. I find his treatment of his subject matter to be sensitive and beautiful so... eh!
* I would like to clarify one thing, when I am disturbed by the sexualisation of youth, this is when adults sexualise children. I do understand that children are sexual beings. It's ridiculous and not helpful to get hysterical and attempt to deny that children are sexual... but this is ENTIRELY different from adult sexuality and should be treated as such. Kids are NOT ready to be put on show in sexy outfits, ugh.
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Reader Comments (7)
Holy shit, I have never heard of Trevor Brown before (clearly I live under a rock) but I am fucking in LOVE with his work. It's so intriguing, so beautiful, so well executed (and I like his style, so I suppose that's a bonus for me). I actually rather enjoy the commercial element, I think that says something else about his work (and the minds of those who view it). Sociologically I think it has some very strong and interesting statements to make, and personally I'm finding it's letting me examine parts of myself that don't get a lot of sunlight.
Cool you got something out of it!
I just want to clarify something about the commercial element... I'm not necessarily against that in art - hell, Takashi Murakami is one of my favorite artists of all time - for some reason it just doesn't quite suit me in Trevor Brown's work but that is quite possibly just a personal thing and I haven't quite made sense of why I feel that way, though I try!
And on another note, I used to really dig his art a few years back so maybe I'm just not in the right head space to appreciate it currently. When it comes to artists, I often go through phases where I'm going on them, off them, then back on again.
Little girls like playing with makeup and dressing like their mum. I'm chilled about it if they enjoy it but not if their pushed by selfish parents.Trevor Browns work looks quite cool.
With both of them we're left asking do they both encourage a very small number of people to cynically seduce (or far less common thankfully) to rape children, and should those people's behaviour curtail the pageant girls and Trevor Brown from expressing themselves. *opens can of worms* :)
I has some opinions for you!
While Trevor Browns work is a little overstated for my personal taste I find him to be very inoffensive and he as a person not at all creepy but I think I feel this way because I think that illustration is such a responsible way to explore such subjects. I hate stuff like genki genki http://genki-genki.com/ and wished that the creator of that stuff just made illustrations, having real models do these things makes it all feel so sad; even though some of his still photography is stunning.
So I'm going to throw the Chapman brothers into the mix here http://www.whitecube.com/artists/chapman/ix/ if you're not familiar with them I suggest doing a search in google images. Their sculptures of kids are especially relevant to this discussion.
I think the Chapman Brothers make Trevor Brown look tame but they really still can't compete with the horror that is High Glitz.
While I don't think the pageant phenomenon really contributes at all to the pedephilia problem (which I know is not what you're suggesting Jesse but Jake you mentioned this connection and it's a commonly cited one) I believe these things shouldn't exist. From what I've read and seen of them they seem to put really young children under extreme pressure. Not to mention the unrealistic beauty ideals which I know all young girls growing up have to deal with but not in such an intense and horrific fashion.
Oh and I find what Roman Polanski did repulsive also and I'm quite shocked at peoples willingness to accept it as okay. Whoopi Goldberg said something like 'It wasn't rape, rape'. Wow.
That's a lot of opinions!
The Pageants are culturally a million miles away from us, so I don't think our opinions would be very effective at changing very much. If child protection agencies researched child beauty pageants, perhaps they could make qualified recommendations and move public opinion. I had a look at a bit of a youtube doc http://www.youtube.com/watch?gl=AU&hl=en-GB&v=gsy-rRzkufQ and my first thought is they could start by perhaps scaling prizes back to something valuable only to a child. I think taking things in that direction would be the right way to go.
Bobby, I tend to agree with you about illustration being a safe way to explore these fantasies. Though I do hover back and forth with my thoughts about that from time to time - particularly when it comes to pornographic illustrations containing children - on the one hand, I can't help but feel it may give people a safe, harmless space to explore those things on the other I can't always help being disturbed by it. I do try to discuss it in a way that is not hysterical however, as it disturbs me when people react to such things with black and white, good and evil viewpoints.
Genki Genki is a pretty freaky website. Some of the images are quite amazing, I agree... and maybe if the models really get off on what they're doing then that's fine but a lot of it strikes me as just incredibly cruel and wrong. To be honest, the thing that disturbs me most is the animal cruelty... it it were just consenting adults, no matter how sick the stuff they were doing was, I wouldn't entirely be able to react against it (though of course it's hard to tell just how much consent is going on there - it all looks pretty fucking exploitative to me!) but when animals without any ability to consent are brought into sexual fantasy and abused in that way... ugh. It's horrific.
Anyway, good call with the Chapman brothers. It's funny how much a stylistic, artistic change does for me, however. I find their work incredibly fascinating and it seems to deal with a huge spectrum of human darkness - the child sculptures being just one series of work - but you've made me realise I need to do more reading and learning about their work so thanks for that, Bobby, you rock my world ever so hard!
I feel like I have so much more I have to say about this all in response to both your comments and all the things I've already been thinking about but I find it so difficult to articulate myself clearly without rambling and talking in circles. It makes me feel as if I should get back into academic writing because I found it really useful in helping me to clarify and better understand my own thought processes. Difficult, though, I am not naturally a writer.