“All censorship is doomed and so is all liberal rationalisation of art”

We reported recently about a Helsinki artist who was found guilty of using images of children to critique, get this, child pornography. There’s an ongoing battle going on over at The Guardian over a proposed U.K. law which would make digital depictions or drawings of child abuse illegal. David Hockney has weighed in on this debate, and so has The Guardian’s Jonathan Jones:

“And this is the wondrous truth contained in our museums: that you cannot control the human mind or predict its vicissitudes. All censorship is doomed and so is all liberal rationalisation of art. A man I met at the Klimt exhibition in Liverpool told me there’s something ‘evil’ in Klimt’s art. Maybe he’s right. But in a museum, we have the freedom to see evil.”

The U.S. provides ample First Amendment protection for fictional depictions of children. However, there are criminal sanctions for the promotion of child pornography.