Bad taste, art or a shot in the foot?
The London 2012 Olympics allegedly stalled in the starting
blocks at the hand over ceremony in Beijing recently when there
appeared to be a major faux paux in the publicity designed to
showcase London's diverse cultural and artistic heritage.
Well, this is the view of many commentators and indeed the view of
Prime Minister, Gordon Brown and London Mayor, Boris Johnson.
So what was all the fuss about?
How about an image of Moors murderer, Myra Hindley used in a
promotional video, produced by Visit London?
At face value, using Myra Hindley to promote the Olympics may seem
to be an odd thing to do. Boris Johnson called the inclusion of the
painting in the promo "deeply disturbing". However, like
many controversial issues that crop up from time to time, we need
to look deeper.
The fact is; it was not using Myra Hindley, per se, but a piece of
art by the renowned British Artist Marcus
Harvey, which was first exhibited at the
Royal Academy in London in September 1997 as part of the exhibition
Sensation. It was used in the publicity video to emphasise
London's thriving cultural scene.
It was a brave decision by the Royal Academy in the first place to
exhibit this work, which at the time caused a storm and was
frequently attacked by outraged visitors - one threw ink at it,
another eggs. "Unless you tell me it's withdrawn, I'm
coming round to the academy and I'm going to stab the first
person I see," was one of the threats received by the Royal Academy.
Apparently, according to friends of Marcus
Harvey, the controversy surrounding the use of the painting
in the promotional video will mortify the man who painted it. Says
a friend: "Although he's grouped together with the YBAs
(Young British artists) who are well known for their shock tactics
and love of publicity, Marcus couldn't be less like that. When
he did the painting he felt he was making a serious art work that
would provoke discussion about a difficult subject, not
outrage."
And this is the point about any piece of art (as debated in by
previous blog), it is designed to create debate, and in this case
I'm sure that Harvey has not set out to glorify Hyndley. The
artist himself has said that, "the whole point of the painting
is the photograph. That photograph. The iconic power that has come
to it as a result of years of obsessive media reproduction."
Let's not forget that this photograph has been reproduced
hundreds of times in the media and has come to signify the terror
and outrage which surrounded her terrible crime. Harvey is
attempting to continue that debate. Accept it or not, the fact
remains that this is one man's statement and it exists in the
public domain.
It could be argued that an artist's role is to visualise
emotions we find too powerful to explain or face up to, and if so,
then Harvey's powerful, if macabre, image is very cathartic
indeed.
Spokesmen for the Mayor's office and Downing Street have
already condemned the use of the painting in the video and asked
for its withdrawal. Perhaps they should have thought to ask the
then-director of the Royal Academy,
Sir Norman Rosenthal, who argued that Harvey's painting was
the single most important work of the Sensation exhibition and
fought so hard to include it.
And, by the way, he is not the first artist to court controversy in
the art world. Are we therefore now resorting to censorship? We may
as well seek out all the risky pieces of art throughout the ages
and cover them up or burn them.
Is this not a slice of real life, showing that London is brave,
diverse, not scared of controversy, and will not resort to
censorship to show a squeaky clean image, unlike the Chinese who
substituted a young girl singer the opening ceremony with a picture
postcard child because the actual singer was deemed to be too ugly.
So who is right; London or Beijing? Would you prefer censorship and
the shock of the real, or a false, sanitised, picture postcard view
of the world?
I know which I prefer, despite the outrage.
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