Controversial Australian photographer Bill Henson’s art opening in Sydney, Australia was shut down by police last Thurdday after complaints about photos featuring nude preteens and teenagers. 20 photos were seized and the police plan to interview the children and their parents. Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has called the photos “absolutely revolting.”

The dark subject matter of Henson’s photographs often include half-nude children in disturbing, sometimes suggestive poses in low light and amid sweeping landscapes. Some call his work pretentious while others find it compelling and meaningful. He’s had photographs in galleries around the world for at least 15 years featuring the same subject matter. It’s only recently that anyone has begun to draw attention to his work and accuse him of being exploitive of children.

Cate Blanchett and 42 other prominent Australians have signed a letter questioning the police raid of the gallery and wondering what implications this may have for the future of artists in the country:

Henson, 52, a renowned artist whose work is displayed in galleries around the world, has not spoken publicly since the controversy erupted.

But his supporters have rallied around him. Prominent members of the arts community, including actress Cate Blanchett, and politicians have decried the police actions as censorship.

“The potential prosecution of one of our most respected artists is no way to build a creative Australia and does untold damage to our cultural reputation,” Blanchett and 42 others said in an open letter to the prime minister released Tuesday. Other signatories included writer Peter Goldsworthy, playwright Michael Gow and filmmaker Ana Kokkinos.

“The intention of the art is not to titillate or to gratify perverse sexual desires, but rather to make the viewer consider the fragility, beauty, mystery and inviolability of the human body,” the letter said.

Henson’s work, known for its use of light and dark shading, encompasses a wide range of subjects _ landscapes, cloudscapes, suburban and rural life, young people and old people.

“They’re all vehicles for a whole set of feelings to do with what it means to be in transition,” Judy Annear, senior curator for photography at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, told the AP. “That’s why he has often photographed young people, because they are the most obvious to be in transition.”

In 2004-05, her gallery held a major retrospective of the last 30 years of Henson’s work. More than 65,000 people viewed the exhibit _ and not a single person complained.

“A debate is good but it needs to be rational,” Annear said. “There’s a lot of emotional heat in this one.”

She has seen the latest exhibit and calls it “the most still, the most classical, the most formal” of Henson’s work.

[AP report as found on The Huffington Post]

You can see the photo of the 13 year-old girl topless (NSFW and you may feel guilty about looking at it, it’s up to your perspective) on the site for Australian newspaper The Age.

The photo captures a kind of vulnerability in the subject, and when I look at it I feel guilty and protective of the girl, which is exactly what Blanchett is saying. Other photos I’ve found (NSFW - scroll to the bottom right) do seem exploitive and I feel uncomfortable looking at them, but again that’s probably the point. I wish I took an art history or appreciation class in college so I could discuss this with more background. As it is I don’t know how I feel about it. Not all of Hensen’s photographs even include children and it is only the most controversial which have sparked debate.

An Australian politician, Malcolm Turnball, is quoted at the end of the AP article as saying “I think we have a culture of great artistic freedom in this country and I don’t believe the vice squad’s role is to go into art galleries.”

Cate Blanchett is shown at a photocall for Indiana Jones 4 in Cannes on 5/18/08, thanks to WENN.

A: Land him a Scandal Proof BabyMama in ‘08

B: Prove that FedeX Still Delivers the Goods

C: Bring Both Ends of the White Trash Spectrum Together and Let the Healing Begin

D: What Happens in Vegas Stays in Paris

Picture note by Celebitchy: Header image is original art by UrbanDK for Celebitchy.

The artist in 1987.
Famed pop artist Andy Warhol doesn’t seem to have thrown much out, and has left some 610 cardboard boxes full of stuff to the Andy Warhol Museum, calling them time capsules. And what does the ultimate celebrity of the 1970s collect?

A lot of the stuff seems like total crap, like old restaurant receipts, invitations, a mummified foot (interesting, but what does it have to do with Andy?), airline cutlery. There are also some valuables like art deco pieces, folk art and gemstones.

What an amazing bunch of stuff. Interestingly, the archivist claims that Andy had quite a foot fetish, making his name in art initially with pictures of feet, and then collecting shoes, including a pair once belonging to Clark Gable. Maybe they were the same size?

“Feet and Campbell’s Soup Can,” 1961.

Andy Warhol had a phenomenal foot fetish. The weirdest thing he owned was a mummified human foot from ancient Egypt. It was probably from a tomb-robbing, a victim of the Tutankhamen craze of the 1920s. Who knows how Warhol acquired it.

This was just one of 400,000 objects he collected in the last 15 years of his life. He became a compulsive hoarder. Restaurant bills, newspaper clippings, unpaid invoices, pornographic pulp novels, airline tickets, supermarket flyers, postage stamps, Chubby Checker LPs - you name it, he kept it.

Warhold died in 1987, leaving behind 610 cardboard boxes, which he had referred to as time capsules, conscious they would act as a chronicle of his era. As archivist at the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, his home town, it’s my job to sort through them - or as many as time allows. I have been sorting for the past 16 years - the Warhol Foundation gave the time capsules to the museum when it was founded, in the early 1990s. Yet, of the 610 capsules, only 19 have been fully catalogued; 91 have been inventoried; and 40 or so have been peeked into, with notes made of their more interesting contents. It would be easy to label the stuff “junk”, but they’re really archives - and the value of archives increases as years pass and we become further removed from their creation.

[From SMH.com.au]

It’s amazing what people do for a job - if this was anyone else’s junk it would just get thrown out (yes mum and dad, that is what I plan to do with your old calendars, Cosmo magazines, and movie tickets that you will keep until the day you die) but Archivist Matt claims that these are artifacts of the high life.

We get to see where Andy socialized, and who with, as opposed to now when we’d get the paparazzi pictures before the pair had exchanged farewell air kisses. We got to see where he ate and where he stayed, without having service staff spill their beans to the tabloids. Andy also kept a lot of the pictures of himself with the famous, like Pope John Paul II and Mick Jagger.

So, when Tom Cruise dies, will he leave it all to the Tom Cruise Museum and we’ll sort through his paper artifacts? Do you think he’s thrown out all his old receipts or that he’s saved them to bequeath to Scientology? He’s probably a compulsive shredder, but he could be a hoarder too. You never know with that guy. I really, really want to go through people’s stuff right now.

Image below of Warhol’s archives from Warhol.org. Inset image from Independent.com. Header image from Brittanica.com.

Hugh Grant and Liz Hurley are currently in NY together, and The Daily Mail reports that Liz’s new husband, software company CEO Arun Nayar, is nowhere to be found. Grant and Hurley have also gone to great lengths not to be photographed in each others company:

Hugh Grant has been caught trying to avoid being photographed in New York with former girlfriend Liz Hurley, the Daily Mail reports.

The Four Weddings and a Funeral star went to extreme lengths to conceal that the pair had attended a dinner party together on Sunday, sparking rumours that the former couple may have reunited.

Moments after 42-year-old Austin Powers star Hurley arrived at a Manhattan hotel, Grant arrived — but an hour later, he emerged in a different suit.

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Minutes afterwards, a car arrived to pick up Hurley. Just a few blocks down the road, the car stopped and Grant jumped in.

A few blocks before the venue of Valentino’s dinner party, 47-year-old Grant stepped out of the car, which proceeded to the door to drop off Hurley minutes before Grant arrived.

The next day the two British actors were spotted at an exclusive restaurant, Fred’s, for lunch — again with staggered entries and exits.

[From News.ninemsn.com]

It’s possible Liz and Hugh are in NY for different reasons and just happen to be staying at the same hotel and going to parties and restaurants together. They live quite close to each other in London and have remained “friends” after their breakup in 2000. There was a rumor that Hugh’s last girlfriend, Jemima Khan, was jealous of his close friendship with Hurley and that’s what hastened the end of the relationship.

Hugh took a tropical vacation with Elizabeth and her entire family, including her husband of eight months, last month. Maybe they are just close friends.

Grant has his own purpose for being in NY. He is looking for a home in NY City after earning $22 million from the sale of a 1962 portrait of Elizabeth Taylor by famous pop artist Andy Warhol. Is it wrong of me to think that he should have waited until Taylor died to sell it?

Hugh Grant is shown on 2/21/07 at the Music and Lyrics By premiere in Rome. Elizabeth Hurley is shown on 11/8/07 with her husband, Arun Nayar, at the Women of the Future Awards in London. Thanks to PRPhotos.

Prince Harry is being depicted dead, in his military uniform, for a London art show. Just in case you think this might be real art, this is produced by Daniel Edwards, who produced that horror inducing sculpture of Britney giving birth, and another of Suri cruise’s first poop. He’s also done some others of Hilary Clinton’s cleavage, Paris Hilton undergoing an autopsy, and Fidel Castro dead.

The piece, entitled Iraq War Memorial Featuring The Death Of Prince Harry, The Martyr of Maysan Province, suggests how Harry - son of Prince Charles and the late princess Diana - would look had he gone to Iraq and been killed.

Harry, 23, is an officer in the British army like his elder brother William.

Earlier this year, officials decided he would not be able to serve in Iraq because of the risk, despite previously saying he could go.

The sculpture shows a life-size Harry lying on his back, clasping a locket featuring a picture of his mother, with pennies placed over his eyes, his head resting on a copy of the bible and a vulture perched on his boot.

Sydney Morning Herald

The artist claims that ‘Prince Harry’s spirit must have died the day they told him he couldn’t serve’. Do you really think so? After all, isn’t being in the military more of a family tradition rather than a calling for the royals? I think his spirit died when he was five and got told he couldn’t be a fireman. I know mine did. Mum was trying to explain I wouldn’t be a man when I grew up, but I was hugely confused.

I was almost ready to accept that this sculpture was art, and had a message, until I read it had no ears. An Iraqi militia reportedly offered to kill Harry and send the ears back to Queen Elizabeth. A bronze casting of the ears – severed? – is to be sold on eBay, and people are encouraged to leave cards and gifts with dead Harry’s corpse. I assume the gift they’re encouraged to leave is cash.

Picture note by Celebitchy: I was confused by images of the state that show the ears intact, but Radar notes that the images show “a clay mold of the work—prior to unveiling the finished piece, the artist will remove the ears.” Nice. Thanks to MAzine.ws and Goldcoast.com.au for these pics.

Johnny Depp’s longterm girlfriend and mother of his two children, French actress and singer Vanessa Paradis, has her first album out in seven years, called Divine Idylle. It features a lovely painting of Vanessa on the cover made with black lines and splotches of muted pink, light yellow and orange.

It turns out that album portrait of Vanessa was painted by Johnny himself. It’s a very good likeness and I never knew he was also a talented artist:

Johnny Depp… has added artist to his resume. He painted a portrait of the mother of his two children, French pop star Vanessa Paradis, for her upcoming album, Divine Idylle! His beautiful rose- and gold-toned album cover isn’t the only family member’s contribution to Vanessa’s first pop record in seven years! Their 5-year-old son, Jack, sings a few lines in “Jackadi,” the last song on the album.

[From Star Magazine, print edition, October 8, 2007]

I’ve never heard that Johnny Depp dabbled in art in his free time, and I couldn’t find anything about his hobby online or in his Wikipedia entry. He seems to be a multi-talented guy who doesn’t talk about his skills.

While Depp helped his wife out in her professional life by painting for her album, she is said to have given him singing lessons so he can do his own vocals in the upcoming Sweeney Todd musical. It is due for release on December 21, 2007.

Depp is going to star in the film Shantaram, which begins filming in January. It’s based on the true life story of a convict who escaped from an Australian prison to live in Mumbai.

According to IMDB, he also has three other films in the works, The Rum Diary and Sin City 2 and 3.

Johnny Depp and Vanessa Paradis are shown at a Mont Blanc event in Geneva, Switzerland in April of 2006.

I was going to focus this article on the ridiculous mural Kanye West has to himself over his dining room table. It features Kanye as a huge God figure surrounded by swirling clouds full of worshiping angels pointing in his direction and reaching out for him, looking like they’re sucked into his orbit and grateful for his divine guidance. (Update: That’s not supposed to be Kanye, see below.)

Then I saw the inside of his house and I just can’t fault the guy. For someone who talks smack constantly about how superior he is you would expect his house to reflect his extreme wealth, but it doesn’t, it’s a showpiece of minimalist modern furniture accented by pop art originals. Kanye West has, dare I say it, excellent taste. The mural of the Kanye God is the only thing that reveals his enormous ego, and it was the first piece of art he commissioned back in 2004.

His house is a 4,200-square-foot three level. It was full of details found in high end homes like a big black granite fireplace and granite throughout. Kanye had all that gutted and redone and had walls blown out to achieve a big serene space without unnecessary details.

Given his celeb stature, West’s home is surprisingly restrained—the furthest thing imaginable from MTV Cribs. Built on spec, the 4,200-square-foot, three-level house started out as a beige stucco monolith. Inside were blond maple floors, an immense black granite fireplace taking up a wall in the living room, more granite in the kitchen, and random soffits all over. “Kanye loved the newness and the city views,” Stewart recalls.

When West purchased the property, he was initially looking only for furnishings. That phase was short-lived. “Kanye started to realize how into design he is,” Stewart continues. “Staying at the Bulgari in Milan and the Grand Hyatt in Tokyo on tour, he’d come back full of ideas, in touch with his inner minimalist.” What West envisioned was a cross between a museum and a Louis Vuitton boutique. The project eventually morphed into a full-fledged renovation, lasting almost three years.

Out went every vestige of spec. In came enrichment and consistency. Stewart got rid of all those soffits, raised ceilings, finished walls with raw plaster, and swapped out insignificant windows for frameless glass. He gave the top-floor public spaces a loftlike feel, opening up passages between living room, dining room, and kitchen. Designer and client hit upon French walnut for flooring, Stewart says, after “looking at almost every sample in town.”

[From InteriorDesign.net via Kanye West’s blog]

Of course Kanye hired an interior designer, but he picked someone who would execute his vision, and the results are incredible. It turns out he studied fine art in his hometown of Chicago at the American Academy of Art. I hope this doesn’t mean I have to like the guy, but his house is impressive.

West has art by Andy Warhol, Burton Morris, and Takishi Murakami, who has collaborated with West on his videos and designed some of his cover art. The chair that looks like a bunch of stuffed animals is by Fernando and Humberto Campana, and I’ve seen their furniture in a few modern art galleries.

Yes I’m fawning over his house a little, I’m a modern art lover and wish I could afford furniture from Design Within Reach, not to mention original art and custom pieces.

Here is a drunk Kanye saying he’s the number one human and number one artist in the world, just so I don’t forget who this house belongs to:

And here are pictures of the interior of the house found at InteriorDesign.net, the website of Interior Design Magazine, where the home is featured in the September, 2007 issue. Thanks to TMZ for the heads up about his blog.

Update: Thanks to Commentors Cass and Kolby for pointing out that the article, which I didn’t read carefully enough, says that the mural shows Kanye being saved by an angel after he nearly died in an accident. The big figure in the middle looks an awful lot like Kanye to me, but the article says he’s the one kneeling underneath, not the giant angel in the middle “Barnes’s resulting celebration, A Life Restored, is replete with a kneeling West and an angel swooping down.” That’s a lot less egotistical than I assumed. Why can’t Kanye West have a house I don’t love? I just wanted him to have something in his house that shows what an ass he is, but now even the mural is ruined for me.

Sir Elton John owns the largest collection of 20th century photography in the world, and has his own gallery, the Sir Elton John Photography Collection. He loaned 150 of his photographs by Nan Goldin to the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art in Gateshead, England, which appeared to be what started the controversy. Nan Goldin’s images are very provocative and unusual and often elicit a very visceral response – however it hasn’t ever lead to her being accused of creating - and Sir Elton being accused of owning - child pornography. One of the photographs John lent was titled “Klara and Edda Belly-Dancing,” and depicts two young girls, one laying on the ground naked with her legs spread apart, the other standing over her belly dancing. The image doesn’t really seem that provocative to me, but more the playing of children who aren’t yet aware of the strict social morays that will come to govern their bodies. However an employee at the Baltic Centre complained that the images were pornographic, which has caused quite a stir for Elton and Goldberg.

“Police in Northumbria, in northeastern England, were called to the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art in Gateshead after fielding a complaint from the gallery’s management. ‘We attended the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art in Gateshead last Thursday at the invitation of the management, who were seeking advice about an item for an exhibition prior to it going on public display,’ a police spokesperson told the Times of London. ‘This item is being assessed, and Northumbria Police, in consultation with the Crown Prosecution Service is investigating the circumstances surrounding it.’

“In a statement on his official Website, the 60-year-old Rock and Roll Hall of Famer confirmed that he had purchased the picture in 1999 from the White Cube gallery in London. Titled ‘Klara and Edda Belly-Dancing,’ the image is one of 149 images comprising the ‘Thanksgiving’ installation of acclaimed American photographer Nan Goldin.

“‘The photograph exists as part of the installation as a whole and has been widely published and exhibited throughout the world,’ the singer said in defense of the artist. ‘It can be found in the monograph of Ms. Goldin’s works entitled “The Devil’s Playground” and has been offered for sale at Sotheby’s New York in 2002 and 2004 and has previously been exhibited in Houston, London, Madrid, New York, Portugal, Warsaw and Zurich without any objections of which we are aware.’”

[From E! News]

Elton John has an amazing photography collection that includes works by Richard Avedon, Man Ray, Ansel Adams, and Diane Arbus, my photographic hero. I don’t find the image to be all that provocative, or even that special from an artistic point of view. I truly can’t see what the problem is – though for the sake of not offending others, I’ve chosen not to put the image on the site but to link to it above. The gallery has chosen not to display this image, which I think is a shame. To let one person’s perception of art affect everyone else’s jeopardizes creativity. There is certainly a line, but I don’t think this image is near it.

Picture Note by Jaybird: Here’s Elton John and husband David Furnish at the GQ Magazine Men of the Year Awards on September 4th. Images thanks to PR Photos.

Leonardo DiCaprio is proving his geek credentials – getting into a fight with Nicholas Cage about a dinosaur head.

The bidding war between the two Hollywood stars was intense as the price soared for the 67 million-year-old dinosaur skull.

Only when it reached $276,000 did Leonardo DiCaprio blink - and Nicolas Cage walked away from the Beverley Hills auction with a ferocious-looking addition to his fossil collection.

As this recent battle of the celebrities for the head of a tyrannosauras [sic] bataar — the Asian cousin of T-rex — proved, dinosaur bones are emerging as the new, collectible must-haves for the multi-millionaires of Hollywood, Wall Street and Silicon Valley.

Daily Telegraph

Apparently these are the new must-have accessory, although I guess more for geek boys than fashion conscious ladies. Hopefully this doesn’t translate to fashion – I’m thinking the Flintstones here!

Dinosaur bones are a new form of wall art, an alternative to a Monet or Picasso. It must be cool to have one of these.

“Dinosaur bones and all sorts of fossils are increasingly hot right now. Hollywood heavy-hitters and the mega-rich types from the Middle East love this stuff,” said Josh Chait, operations director of the family firm (auctioneers IM Chait).

“When you already have a Warhol or a Monet on the wall, you tend to want a change from traditional artwork and people are turning to natural history for that.”

Daily Telegraph

This is a great trend for Hollywood to get into. Hopefully when they turn into old bones themselves, or even just tire of the trend, they’ll donate the bones to a museum. A Chicago museum recently paid $8.3million for a dinosaur skeleton, so if they could get some for free, everybody wins!

Picture note by Celebitchy: Composite picture includes an illustration of the Tarbosaurus bataar, also known as Tyrannosaurus bataar. It was one of the last surviving dinosaurs, and lived in the Gobi desert in southern Mongolia. It was a carnivore and is a close relative of the T-Rex. Thanks to Dinosaur-World for the picture and description.

And now for a bulletin from the world of high culture … in an era when the high is interested in getting as way down as it can. The National Portrait Gallery in London is no exception: here trouncing over the old high/low divide with that easiest and most often of cheap curator stunts - the Fashion Photography Show … and with the extra cojones of announcing this moldy old museum move as new and cutting edge. If it was a knife it couldnt get through soup. And we quote:

Face of Fashion focuses on the portraits of five outstanding fashion photographers from Europe and America: Mert Alas & Marcus Piggott, Corinne Day, Steven Klein, Paolo Roversi and Mario Sorrenti. It is the first exhibition of its kind, celebrating the innovation and diversity of current fashion portraiture.

Cheap curatorial maneuvering to imply. “Don’t worry folks … its just like a Vanity Fair meets People spread with pricier admission … nothing to be bored by here … you can stroll around then go for drinks.”

The National Gallery is adding to the extra thrilling kick of guarunteed non-boring art with a healthy helping of popular wish fulfilment. Photographer Steven Klein kicks in a picture of Kevin Federline (K-Fed, Fedex, K. Fiddy, Kuff Faddy, etc. etc. etc.) with his throat slit. The NPG continues in heinous prose:

In the contemporary fashion world, models, actors, musicians and designers frequently swap places. The exhibition highlights the relationship between fashion and celebrity and illustrates the extraordinary intimacy that often develops between photographer and subject.

K. Fiddy is none of those but here’s betting the free PR from the photo more than makes up for breaking the paper thin logic of this paper thin concept of a show. And its gotta give Britney a bright moment in an otherwise so far bleak 2007.