Scotland Yard eyeing "graphic" sex photos in Christie's catalogue

For the first time in its 200-year history Christie's, famous for selling Old Masters, has issued a warning in one of its modern art catalogues about the sexual content of some of the images on sale, The Sunday Telegraph said.

The catalogue photographs for the contemporary art sale on February 8 and 9 show couples, including a female dwarf, engaged in explicit sexual practices, hermaphrodites, transexuals and women in bondage gear. One picture which has particularly concerned the police involves a woman penetrating a man with her fist.

Inspector Graham Ward, the head of the Obscene Publications Unit at Scotland Yard told The Sunday Telegraph he and his team will visit the auction house to see whether such an image should be shown to the Crown Prosecution Service.

"The reason why this particular sex act is regarded as obscene is because of the violent nature of the act," Inspector Ward said. "It is right on the edge - basically it's where the line is drawn."

The photographs causing the most concern are those of the Spanish artist Andres Serrano, who gained notoriety in 1987 for selling a crucifix submerged in his own urine called Piss Christ. According to Christie's, his photographs are a straightforward representation of sex.

"From Old Masters to Serrano, sexuality has been the subject that has been explored frankly," said Graham Southern, the Christie's specialist in charge of the sale. "It is nothing particularly new. I think possibly the amount of media attention is different, and contemporary art seems to be an area where we get a disproportionate amount of attention."

The photographs, which are estimated to sell for about £6,000 each, will be exhibited at Christie's King Street headquarters in London before the sale. They will be hung in a special area behind a screen.

A spokesman told The Sunday Telegraph: "We've done it all before - we had a similar method of presenting the Jeff Koons picture we sold in November."

"It's a question of getting the balance right as to who sees these works of art - we don't want people under the age of 18 to see them. But this is the contemporary art market and we don't want to be seen as censors."

Asked if some of the images could be described as pornographic, the Christie's spokesman said: "That is the question the art market answers, not Christie's."

(dpa)