ARTISTS could be forced to have their work classified before being displayed and some work could be blacklisted despite being legal, if recommendations to a federal inquiry into Australia's film and literature classification scheme are accepted.

The Senate inquiry, launched by the conservative Christian Guy Barnett, has heard submissions calling for any film containing full frontal nudity to be refused classification; artworks and books showing nudity to be classified; and all artworks to be restricted to certain age groups. ''Artistic merit'' should be abandoned when classifying art.

Offensive content? ... Gentileschi's Judith Slaying Holofernes.

The executive director of the National Association for the Visual Arts, Tamara Winikoff, said many of the organisations that had made submissions to or spoken at the inquiry's hearings, and members of the inquiry, had tried to demonise artists and paint them as child pornographers.

''We are particularly worried that artists might have to have all their work classified immediately, regardless of the material,'' she said. ''There is a sense [in the inquiry] that art is dangerous.''