To think the BBC need to remove the Eric Gill sculpture?

[Twoshoesnewshoes]

Is there a thread on this? Couldn’t find one.

I’ve just been reading that someone has scaled the BBC building and attacked the sculpture by Eric Gill with a hammer.
Apparently it’s still being repaired from the last attack.
It prompted me to revisit info on the sculpture and sculptor.

AIBU in thinking it needs to be removed?

I’d say they should take it down but not destroy it. It’s a statue, not a building — it could be done, it’s not the same as pulling down the Pyramids. Surely you can change the way a piece of art is displayed or treated in order to reflect/acknowledge wider cultural changes, without “erasing history”.

Something wonderful could go in its place and the Gill piece could be situated in a less prominent location with interpretive signage giving some un-whitewashed context.

Because the statue will now need to be repaired again, at expense. So an opportunity to consider whether it should be repaired, or could it be removed and replaced.

Oops crossed posts, that was in reply to @Ginmonkeyagain

The context is - we found out long after the artists death that he sexually abused his daughters and dog.

Does this knowlege make the statue any less great? Does this later knowledge mean that the BBC is approving of what Gill did? They can't undo it and Gill is long dead so it is not like he can do it again.

@Twoshoesnewshoes I say removing says it is ok for people to destroy or damage art that they do not approve of, which it isn't.

The BBC have done nothing wrong, they do not support or endorse Gill's crimes, which took place over 80 years ago and were now known about until long after his death.

It’s not actually Ariel because Ariel is a fictional character!

Er, throughout history people have made art that depicts 'fictional characters'. Otherwise all paintings and sculpture would just be landscape or portraits. Which it isn’t. It’s called imagination.

As pps have said - Gill was an abuser and a deeply unpleasant man in many ways. That doesn’t mean he wasn’t also a gifted artist. That may be hard to accept but there it is. There are many, many, many, many artists of whom exactly the same could be said. Should we shut down all galleries, expunge all art history of those people, pretend they never existed or made art?

Why are people characterising the idea of taking this statue down from its prominent position as akin to destroying it or damaging it?

They’re not the same thing.

I’m anti-censorship. But that doesn’t mean our responses, as a society, to specific works of art should never be reconsidered. It does not mean you cannot change museum displays or rethink the exact placement of statues to reflect cultural change. Doing that is not in itself cultural vandalism — although of course, if it’s done clumsily or without insight, it could be.

The whole “would you suggest we shut down all galleries?!” line of argument seems a bit straw-man-ish.

The principle is exactly the same as with pyramids. If problematic things should be removed then absolutely tear down the pyramids or wall them off so that no access is possible. Pull down the colosseum. Remove streets and street of Georgian and Victorian architecture. Paint over Michelangelo.

Or do we just deal with the easily removable items and close our eyes to the rest?

again, who gets to decide?

Destruction is being talked about as someone has tried to destroy it - this is why it is in the news.

No, I literally suggested that the statue should be accessible. Putting it somewhere a bit less prominent, and providing interpretive materials to encourage reflection and conversation, is completely opposite in principle to “painting over Michelangelo”, or “removing streets”

How can you not see the difference?

I was referring to this kind of comment though: I say removing says it is ok for people to destroy or damage art that they do not approve of, which it isn't.

To me, that seemed to suggest considered removal of the statue (rather than vandalism) with destruction, which glosses over the far more likely scenario in which it would still in fact be displayed somewhere.

(Sorry, typo from self-revision above — I meant conflate rather than suggest)

I think OP is confusing the artist with the art.

People calling for the decimation of our cultural history need to have a good, long, hard look at themselves. Might as well put a flamethrower to the British Museum. Why not?

My point about destruction was in the context of the OP's question asking that seeing as the statue has been vandalised for the second time would it not be better to remove it?

My point was removing it permanently might be seen as tacit acceptance of the aim of the vandal - which is presumably to have the statue removed from public display.

I assume all the people who think it should be removed have deleted the Gill Sans font from their computers.

The Ariel statue is a boy

It’s a good idea to put it in an art gallery if it is a piece of great art.

There is a really thoughtful piece about this issue in a newish book on the shelves in the history section atm called Rule Nostalgia, a backwards history of Britain by Hannah somebody. It’s well worth reading. For example she reflects on eg the extraordinary wholesale destruction of art during the reformation and the interregnum when people went around smashing up amazing art and buildings - state sponsored - thousands of statues, medieval manuscripts, paintings, screens, way marks, shrines etc and how utterly traumatic it was for those who lived through it and how it explains the paucity of medieval art in the uk when compared to continental Europe. All destroyed. At the end of the interregnum it was even made unlawful to mention that there had been a period without a king - the Act of Oblivion - which she thinks may be part of the reason why there is so little emphasis on this period in our national ‘story’. Anyway, a plug
for a great read by a new author - not wishing to derail.

I didn’t mean to conflate the two periods - reformation and interregnum - they were obviously quite a while apart - but both were characterised by the destruction of art.

It’s not limited to statues. It’s the principle - buildings, books, artwork, so much is “problematic”. Learn about it, learn from it, but it’s not possible to remove it all and pretend we live in some plastic bubble outside of the history that has brought us all to where we are now.

I agree with your principle @crumpet BUT the BBC and several other organisations are more than happy to butcher, re-write, change, or simply not air or use if the powers that be deem them 'problematic' due to the authors or artists not embracing said powers current view.

Either apply the principle across the board and don't apologise for it or remove anything deemed 'problematic' - selective application of the principle is the problem and that is what I have an issue with.

It seems that the BBC in their 'information' about the sculptor are not including the fact he raped his daughters, sister and dog.

Having had a discussion with my partner (who's an art history graduate), my feeling is that Gill's work supports the continued mysoginist dominance of art. My take is that the sculpture should be relocated to a museum with clear descriptions of Gill's depravity and the space used for a contemporary female artist. I think that strikes a balance. To ignore Gill's abuse or to shroud it in artistic language does nobody any service. For the record, my partner thinks it should stay there. But as someone else mentioned, if Gill modeled the Ariel sculpture on a real child then that's really not ideal.

Even before that the iconoclasts stormed Constantinople and destroyed the city's religious iconography.

Being able to separate the art from the artist is one of the characteristics of a grown-up.

What a twattish patronizing little snip 🙄

He sexually abused and raped his own children and the family dog. What's grown up about not associating that with the artist? His work should not be seen anywhere. He was a monster.

I would like to read that the one who attacked it with a hammer had fallen a long way in so doing, along with all the other vandals who attack what isn't deemd to be 'right on' this week.