Nude Brooke Shields Photo Taken When She Was 10-Years-Old to Be on Display in Graphic Museum Exhibit

by Katie Hintz-Zambrano (Subscribe to Katie Hintz-Zambrano's posts)
Posted Sep 30th 2009 at 11:55AM

Brooke Shields Blue Lagoon nude photo of 10-year-old shields to be shown at museum

Pretty Baby: Brooke Shields, nearly nude at 14, in "Blue Lagoon." Photo: Columbia/Courtesy Everett Collection

On October 1, the famous Tate Modern museum in London is set to display a nude picture taken of Brooke Shields when she was only 10-years-old, reports the Daily Mail UK.

According to the paper, the 1983 image was taken by artist Richard Prince (a recent Louis Vuitton collaborator) and shows a prepubescent Shields naked from the knees up, slicked in oil and wearing grown-up makeup.

The work is actually a Prince photo of the original image taken by Gary Gross in 1975. At the time, he hired Shields to model for him and reportedly took the picture with her mother's consent. In the '80s, however, Shields and her mother launched a case to stop Gross from republishing the picture. He ended up winning the legal battle.

The Tate is justifying the image (called "Spiritual America") as "an important work," according the Daily Mail, and officials there say the museum sought legal advice before including the picture within an exhibit titled Pop Life: Art In A Material World, which will also feature images of graphic sex acts and covers of porn magazines.

As for Prince, he exhibited the image at New York City's Guggenheim museum during an exhibit in 2007, and says the picture is "an extremely complicated photo of a naked girl who looks like a boy made up to look like a woman."

But critics tell the paper it's not art of any sort, but kiddie porn, plain and simple, and are calling for it to be taken out of the exhibit. The Tate insists it will try to warn viewers of the graphic nature of the photograph by placing a notice that warns of the "challenging" image over the entrance to the gallery in which the picture is shown.

Of course, Shields has a sordid history of being sexualized as a child. There was her portrayal of a 12-year-old prostitute in 1978's "Pretty Baby," the nude scenes of a 14-year-old Shields in "The Blue Lagoon," and the notorious "What comes between me and my Calvins?" Calvin Klein ads a year later.

Also, no stranger to drama is the Tate, which has displayed sexually explicit sculptures by the likes of Jeff Koons and Takashi Murakami in the past, and thinks it's all about creating a dialogue.

What are your thoughts? Is the Shields image art or kiddie porn? Leave a comment below.

Read All Comments

Filed under: News
Tags: Brooke sheilds, brooke shields, BrookeSheilds, BrookeShields, calvin klein, CalvinKlein, nude, nude photos, NudePhotos, pop life exhibit, PopLifeExhibit, pornographic, richard prince, RichardPrince, tate modern, TateModern

Style Around the Web

ImaxTree

Make Up Tips For Girls With Glasses - Refinery29
How Celebs Work Red Into Their Wardrobe - FabSugar
Celebrity Wardrobe Malfunctions - The Daily Beast
Deodorants that Actually Work - Daily Candy
Would You Wear Long-Sleeve Shirts As Skirts? - The Frisky
Tricks That Guarantee Gorgeous Hair - Daily Makeover
Celebs Have Us Seeing Stars - People Style Watch

READER COMMENTS

(3)Add A Comment

BERTRAND, 10-01-2009, 7:56PM

J'écris de Belgique.
Le remous sur le net est tel que j'ai envie de réagir.
En Europe, de telles photos ne font pas scandale. J'ai pris ma fille en photo à plusieurs reprises dans sa baignoire... C'est toutefois clair que le 1° cliché est assez "tendencieux".
Mais le mal n'est-il pas de voir un "objet sexuel" dans ce qui n'est qu'une enfant dans sa baignoire??
Aurais-t'on fait le même "tapage" (publicité outrancière) s'il s'agissait d'une fillette inconnue??
Désolé pour la traduction sans doute pas très fidèle...
Amitiés à l'Amerique...

I'm writing from Belgium.
The turmoil in the net as I want to respond.
In Europe, such photos are not scandalous. I took my daughter photographed several times in her bathtub ...
It is however clear that the 1st shot is enough "tendentious".
But evil is not to see a "sex object" in what is a child in his bathtub?
Would-you one made the same "noise" (outrageous publicity) if it were an unknown girl?
Sorry for the translation probably not very accurate ...
Friendships with America ...

Reply »

anstasia, 6-10-2011, 4:01PM

It's not porn, it's innocent and lovely. Both of them are.(especially blue lagoon)

Reply »

toastyboast, 2-04-2012, 7:35PM

In a different culture, this might not be pornographic, but in this one, I think there are too many pornographic connotations. I can see how this work is a commentary on the sexualization of young girls and what that means for society, but only in the context of its display in a museum, and even then, I think its commentary value is a little shaky. A much more shocking and "get you thinking" kind of photo would have featured a boy instead (even better, still in full make-up!). That would have perhaps produced some dialogue about both gender and sexualization, and I think it would have solidified the gut feeling for many on-the-fencers that this is a negative trend for kids in a way that it doesn't having the character as a female. We are so conditioned to seeing women and even young girls in sexualized photographs that we often don't even quite consciously realize that they are being sexualized.

The most disturbing thing to me about this piece, though, is that anyone would display it given Shields' opposition to it. If she felt she was at all abused in the production of this photo, I don't think it should be displayed anywhere out of respect for a child-abuse victim.

Reply »

ADD A COMMENT