Should NYU Exhibit Larry Rivers’ Film of Nude Daughters?
In what looks to be an interesting case of ethics and law, the NY Times ran an article today on the pleas by two women who allege they were forced and obligated to appear nude and topless in their father’s videos and films. The artist is Larry Rivers, and his two daughters are Emma Tamburlini (43) and her older sister, Gwynne Rivers. The artist’s foundation, the Larry Rivers Foundation, has declined Rivers’ daughters’ request to destroy the film and videos.
Via The Times: In the film Rivers tells the girls to take off their clothes and then zooms in on their breasts from various angles. He interviews them about how they feel about their breasts and whether boys have started noticing them. In some scenes Clarice Rivers appears with her daughters, displaying her own breasts and talking about them.
The Foundation originally sold the archives to New York University for an undisclosed amount. According to the Times, NYU has agreed to withdraw the film and video footage from viewing during the daughters’ lifetime. It’s unclear whether NYU will exhibit the material once one or both daughters die.
The NY Times quotes one of Rivers’ daughters as stating, “I kind of think that a lot of people would be very uptight, or at least a little bit concerned, wondering whether they have in their archives child pornography.”
One must agree. It’s hard to imagine, no matter how liberal or artsy one thinks one is, this is a case that leans more toward child pornography than art. Perhaps it’s not that it cannot be art. Just that it doesn’t necessarily follow that because it’s art it is therefore legal.
The NY Times has more on this here.
UPDATE: July 8, 2010
Salon weighs in on this controversy:
Given the current legal stance toward the possession of any material depicting child nudity or sexuality, it’s kind of astounding to think that NYU will have this stuff in its “special collections” library.
Ruth Matilsky:
July 7th, 2010 at 7:19 pm
This ought to be a no-brainer — If someone were to call a social worker and report something like this, the parents would be in big trouble and the girls might be taken away from them. Calling this “art” is like telling the emperor his suit of clothes is amazing.
Give them back NYU and don’t make these women suffer any more than they already have.
Marina:
July 10th, 2010 at 8:06 am
Although my father was not a famous artist, he documented himself watching me in inappropriate ways, just like Larry. Was this a trend in 1970’s Manhattan?
As a victim of my own father’s predatory desires, I hope this doesn’t get swept under the proverbial rug. I started reading all the comments posted regarding Larry’s archive and his abuse. As a father, he abused his daughters by using his authority over them to get them to participate in his project. His thoughts were of himself, not his daughters. Loving parents don’t take risks with their children’s welfare just to complete their own pet projects. Larry’s wife quoted him, “What Larry said was that it would belong to them, as a record that when they got older they could look back at.” My father taped himself saying “This is not for us to know, but for you to know 10 or 20 years from now.” and I used this in my film as evidence. Chilling. One person pointed out another atrocity that became public: the images from Abu Ghraib. I kept reading and couldn’t believe the similarities to my own experience. I even wrote an obituary for my father that references Abu Ghraib.
I once had a father named Abe
Who treated me like a hot babe
He lecherously stared
While he photographed me bare
So my home felt like Abu Ghraib.
Larry’s daughter Emma said “I don’t want it out there in the world. It just makes it worse.” She has every right to this archive and to do whatever she wants with it. It is a document of her lost childhood. her archive of betrayal. Every time I revisit my father’s archive the pain is excruciating. I have been in therapy for many many years and nothing can compare to the healing I have achieved since I unleashed my father’s archive in public. The difference, as noted in my Cahiers du Cinema interview, is that I chose to re-use the toxic material to give birth to the artist within me. I made my own choice in showing my pain publicly. It was not dictated by an “art authority.”
You can watch my 18 minutes of trauma cinema at themarinaexperiment.com
cary Sipiora:
July 18th, 2010 at 8:13 pm
Despicable situation and a reminder that children are often still considered chattel. The film was taken without the legal consent of the children because it appears that they did not have the law on their side or did they? The film should be returned to the daughters immediately with apologies from whomever was involved in this tragic affair.