Eric Gill and the BBC

well that's an, um, interesting perspective.
I suppose with that sort of logic, the RC church will have no qualms about his work at any rate.

I had to stop reading a biography of the poet David Jones (who had known Eric Gill but not, as far as I read, about the incest) when the author, Thomas Dilworth, described the end of Gill's abuse:
"Accomplished with much internal struggle and the help of confessors, Gill's change of behaviour was an impressive moral achievement." My italics. This is from a book published in 2017!

Well the BBC defended Jimmy Savile for years.
Woke misogynist child abuse apologists.
#DefundtheBBC

I don't see any merit, moral or artistic in relocating it. Would you want Gill's seahorses cum morecambe bay shrimps removed from the Metropole Hotel?

To be fair, I am an uneducated philistine when it comes to art. I only have my naive reactions to what I see to go on, I know nothing about the interpretation of art or art appreciation. I find the particular statue on the BBC house to be unappealing personally, naively, given what I inescapably know about the artist. The seahorses don't elicit the same reaction in me.

a Guardian piece from 2009 which refers to Gill's "sexual experiments" with his daughters and claims that "Their history challenges received opinion on the inevitability of damage done by child abuse."

The Guardian is beyond redemption.

I had a professor who was of this type, and also, as it turned out, capable of some pretty horrific things, though that wasn't known until much later. And it certainly brought up questions about hypocrisy and whether his ideas weren't a kind of illusion, as in the Harper Lee example above.

I had to come to the conclusion in the end that they weren't, that somehow he was simultaneously both things, a sort of hellish person and also a visionary, a supreme egoist but also with startling insight into people. And also, I came to know, quite damaged by his own early life. That these things are related seems like a real, though not entirely pleasant, possibility.

being personally awful is not incompatible with something like being a brilliant philosopher or artist necessarily.

Quite often outliers who are capable of creating great work are almost inevitably difficult people in their personal lives. I'm not equating that with being outright criminals like Gill, just saying that creating great works often requires quite extreme personalities and drive.

We might end up needing plaques about earlier plaques.

It maybe depends what we are 'using' the art/literature/music for. If we read a book with a strong message about morality, say, and give the author's worldview credence based on what they say that turns out to be contradicted by their actions, I think that's a good reason to discount the work. If Harper Lee had turned out to be a raging racist in secret, I suppose would be a hypothetical.

But - a typeface? Does it matter how the person conducted themselves; surely we can separate craft and skill and vision from the artist and the work from the maker in many cases?

On a purely pragmatic note, re the assertion that not all paedophilic behaviour will have a negative effect on its 'recipient' - surely this can only be known in hindsight, i.e. when the putative damage would already be done.

Not really a risk it's ok to take.

I also don't think in general that art should be explained by a plaque. It's in any case just another person who is telling the viewer how to understand it, do we know they are better than the artist was?

Yeah, that's an interesting point, Errol. I think there is not a clear answer.

Generally speaking I am willing to give an almost total free pass to art in terms of what it says, if it does so in a compelling way. But I will say that is clearly a risky proposition. But I really think the kind of perspective that comes from a visible long material history, with all it's changes and chances, is preferable to the kind of historical revisionism that we saw in places like Soviet Russia, China, and now people push for in the US, Canada, the UK.

For me, it's not as black and white as remove/destroy versus keep and glorify. I'd like to see the BBC sculpture removed from its current position and displayed somewhere where there is the ability to place it in context with information about the artist and their actions during their life. Not hide it away or destroy it, but enable people to recognise the issues around it and be informed about it. If I were the owner of the building I would be consulting widely on how to do that.

I certainly don't want art to be smashed and destroyed by anyone with an issue about it.

While I'm generally on the page of 'retain and explain' (not excuse!), there perhaps needs to be some distinction between works of art which happen to be by deeply flawed people, and works of art which are in some way themselves glorifying 'evil'?
But even then - we'll never know the full extent of works which were considered 'evil' in their time and consigned to the Bonfire of the Vanities because they're irretrievably lost. Or the frescos and statues lost from our churches due to puritan iconoclasm.
So I'm not sure that idea helps much.

But I just don't think the evidence supports that it is always true. I have doubts about Foucault because of what he said seeming thin to me, I'm not sure it's even held up so far. But the fact is there are plenty of great things made by bad people, and probably lots more than we think, too.

Yes, it's a good question, Working. I agree that it is complex and nuanced, too. We were talking about Gary Glitter yesterday - I can't listen to him now, but perhaps it's a very personal thing? I suppose the problem is yes, when we start to suggest that nobody else should listen/look/read etc.

Bloody hell. Separating not departing.

The question of departing the art and the artist is one we need to work on and am sure there isn’t one answer. For me personally, I find I have just naturally stopped watching work by Roman Polanski or Woody Allen, and avoid listening to Michael Jackson and will question the reliance on Foucault’s work. But I wouldn’t dream of trying to stop others doing so if they chose - that way lies the Cultural Revolution.

Gill was cleary a monstrous abusive perverted arsehole. As were/are many artists/writers/musicians/politicians/etc.

But we do need to consider whether attacking/boycotting statues/art is useful, or going to actually achieve anything, or might actually just be an outlet for destructive vengeful rage. Might there be more sensible ways to protect children than hammering random statues?

Anyone wishing to boycott the man's work should be careful about typefaces, btw:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gill_Sans

Column in todays Times

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/these-moral-avengers-risk-destroying-all-art-s836dbfqk?shareToken=db6c6c83c16ba233152e63c7b35e6b7e