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03 Art and (not or) Pornography DONALD BROOK
Issue 211, July, 2008

From time to time there is a great fuss made about whether some object is a work of art or pornographic. Experts are invited to testify, and mostly ridiculed for their trouble. Witnesses with no expertise at all are treated more courteously; often being commended for their assistance in establishing a community standard. This manoeuvre is prejudiced in two ways. First, those without expertise are not invited to testify in statistically significant numbers, and their opinions are mainly selected and filtered through the calculating minds of lawyers. Second, and perhaps more importantly, no conservative judge and jury seriously believes that a change of mind will ever be the appropriate response to evidence that a more radical opinion than their own is the community standard. (Or vice-versa, for more a radically minded judiciary and a more conservative community standard). All these good people are determined to do the right thing, and no evidence that in the domain of nutrition (for example) eating beef is the community standard will persuade a vegetarian to approve of it. 

Read more in this issue of AMA




01 Collateral Damage DENISE FERRIS & MARTYN JOLLY
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02 Humbert or Humbug? ADAM GECZY
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03 Art and (not or) Pornography DONALD BROOK
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04 Shashinjinsei: Nobuyoshi Araki’s photo journey MANAMI OKAZAKI
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05 Ai Weiwei: Under Construction JEREMY ECCLES
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06 Keep Calm and Carry On: new work by Mel Robson LOUISE MARTIN-CHEW
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07 Sex in the Country: David Laity’s Laid Bare JACQUI VERROCCHIO
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08 Survival, Decay and Excavation: curating Arthur McIntyre DANIEL MUDIE CUNNINGHAM
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09 Bent Western, Sydney CRAIG JUDD
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10 Dual purpose: Otto Dix’s Hugo Erfurth with Dog JUSTINE BAYOD ESPOZ
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11 Sam Leach: ghost in the machine ASHLEY CRAWFORD
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12 The Brisbane Sound DANNY ZUVELA
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Copyright 2003 Art Monthly.