The Art Newspaper

OTTO OTOWSKI, NEW YORK

This is not the only instance of recent self-censorship by the Tate. The Tate has in its collection 34 works by artist Graham Ovenden, which were online at the Tate collection website until recently, when they were quietly removed. But they have been restored on a protest site and the Tate is criticized for its quisling ways. http://notthetate.blogspot.com/

BILL STOTT, NORTHWICH, UK

Mr Prince makes copies of other peoples' photographs. Why is his work so expensive ? The Emperor's New Clothes, methinks.

MIKE HINC, WARE

It's the Bow Wow Wow farago all over again. It's a nonsense, of course. Don't these philistines realize that context changes everything? Kate Andrews rightly points out the hypocrisy of the press but the public is complicit in these paranoic witch hunts and should be brought book. The police should know better.This is an appropraited image and offends no more than the daily diet of porn in Britain's tabloid press - but its context makes us think again. Like Manet's Olympia and Picasso's Demoiselles it makes us aware of our complicity. Does it offend? I do hope so. It is a function of art to do just this and it's time the gutter press, police and philistine public grew up and realized this.

KATE ANDREWS, EDINBURGH

I understand the 'opt-out in disapproval' stance you are advocating but the fact remains that in this country there are a whole set of reactionary laws (ostensibly, of course, to protect our children— which is a noble and important intention) about the circulation and display of inappropriate materials. However, in deciding what is or is not 'appropriate' there is a whole grey fog surrounding it all and notions of 'artstic intention' are not really taken into account—oh, unless they are old Masters that is! Britain is cloaked in reactionary paranoia now to the extent that parents can no longer film their children's school plays. The media-fuelled hysteria (in the same British newspapers which sexualise young people and sensationalise sexual deviance on a daily basis) cannot even be critiqued without leading to further censorship—see the Brasseye scandal 2001.

BILL CORR, DOBRICH, BULGARIA

OH YES I DO REMEMBER: The Mapplethorpe Exhibition in Full, in Boston, at the same time that Saddam was marching into Kuwait: There were a handful of pix which offended SOME — two naked-kid pix which were NOT anything even remotely like child pornography, which some silly people like Esther Rantzen in England later said they were. There were a few quite innocuous and only mildly exciting prick pictures and a very few and surprisingly — or disappointingly — small pix of rather weirder stuff: Mapplethorpe shoving the handle of a bullwhip up his own bum and not looking like he had any real feelings one way or the other while he was doing it, a leatherboy biker pissing in another biker's mouth and one scary S/M photo of a man's dickie and balls shoved through a nasty rough ripped hole in plywood and tied around with thin wire, the whole horrid painful mess apparently dripping blood — or was it 'real' at all. It MIGHT have not been a real live dickie and balls at all, you see.

RICHARD WOMACK, NYC

If someone forces you or drags you in the art-show, call 911. The Mapplethorpe controversy/censorship: Cincinnati Spring 1990..If you do not like the idea, don't go...?

MATTHEW ROSE, PARIS, FRANCE

Don't you just love the trouble authorities step into when they attempt to censor? Let the public censor it by not viewing it. As for pornography, this a very old story. The Internet, for one, wouldn't be as speedy and wouldn't have as much gadgets if it weren't for pornography which accounts for something like 45% of all monies generated on the web. Which means: People want to see naked people (for what it's worth), and like seeing naked celebrities best. As for Richard Prince, he's made his name as a provacteur. He's the one who benefits most from censorship.