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| T-shirts with Myra Hindley on them? Modern art has forgotten how to care | T-shirts with Myra Hindley on them? Modern art has forgotten how to care |
| (4 months later) | |
| Are there any limits to celebrity? Is fame such an addiction of our time that any form of it is equal to all others? | Are there any limits to celebrity? Is fame such an addiction of our time that any form of it is equal to all others? |
| People can be famous for baking cakes, dealing drugs, taking selfies, and even occasionally for achieving something. Fame seemed to be a glamorous toxin to David Bowie and John Lennon when they asked to take a rain check in 1975, but the celebrity of those innocent days seems classy and polite now, when collective fandom seems to be the last and most irrational bond of human community. Every dead celebrity is a martyr in the eyes of millions. | People can be famous for baking cakes, dealing drugs, taking selfies, and even occasionally for achieving something. Fame seemed to be a glamorous toxin to David Bowie and John Lennon when they asked to take a rain check in 1975, but the celebrity of those innocent days seems classy and polite now, when collective fandom seems to be the last and most irrational bond of human community. Every dead celebrity is a martyr in the eyes of millions. |
| Yet an artist called Paul Nelson-Esch has inadvertently conducted an experiment into celebrity’s limits. He has proved there are still forms of celebrity the world won’t celebrate. Nelson-Esch makes a living drawing famous people, from their photographs. His portraits appear on T-shirts, iPhone cases and the like that are marketed online. He has drawn such people as Woody Allen, Freddy Mercury and Roger Federer – but when products went on sale bearing his portrait of Myra Hindley, the outrage went viral. The US website has now withdrawn all the products bearing Hindley’s face. | Yet an artist called Paul Nelson-Esch has inadvertently conducted an experiment into celebrity’s limits. He has proved there are still forms of celebrity the world won’t celebrate. Nelson-Esch makes a living drawing famous people, from their photographs. His portraits appear on T-shirts, iPhone cases and the like that are marketed online. He has drawn such people as Woody Allen, Freddy Mercury and Roger Federer – but when products went on sale bearing his portrait of Myra Hindley, the outrage went viral. The US website has now withdrawn all the products bearing Hindley’s face. |
| Whatever Hindley's reasons, she participated in the premeditated killings of five children. Tolerance has to end there | Whatever Hindley's reasons, she participated in the premeditated killings of five children. Tolerance has to end there |
| This is a triumph for civilisation. There was no justification for Nelson-Esch’s portrayal of Hindley, or its commercial use. His portrait is completely crass. It is drawn with no sign of any understanding of the crimes that made her notorious. She is straightforwardly celebrated in glib black lines as some kind of punk hero. How outrageous. How wicked. How utterly stupid and callous. | This is a triumph for civilisation. There was no justification for Nelson-Esch’s portrayal of Hindley, or its commercial use. His portrait is completely crass. It is drawn with no sign of any understanding of the crimes that made her notorious. She is straightforwardly celebrated in glib black lines as some kind of punk hero. How outrageous. How wicked. How utterly stupid and callous. |
| Hindley’s image has got art into trouble before. The sensation of the Sensation exhibition at the Royal Academy in 1997, which brought Charles Saatchi’s collection of young British art into full public view, was Marcus Harvey’s painting Myra. It too was criticised for glorifying a participant in murder, but it was a lot more conscious of what it was doing than Nelson-Esch’s vacuous portrait appears to be. Harvey’s colossal reproduction of the widely reproduced “iconic” photograph of Hindley is made up, you discover on approaching it, of hundreds of little child’s handprints. | Hindley’s image has got art into trouble before. The sensation of the Sensation exhibition at the Royal Academy in 1997, which brought Charles Saatchi’s collection of young British art into full public view, was Marcus Harvey’s painting Myra. It too was criticised for glorifying a participant in murder, but it was a lot more conscious of what it was doing than Nelson-Esch’s vacuous portrait appears to be. Harvey’s colossal reproduction of the widely reproduced “iconic” photograph of Hindley is made up, you discover on approaching it, of hundreds of little child’s handprints. |
| Is that enough to make it a moral and upstanding work of art – or a good one? Not really. Harvey’s Myra seems a bit dumb and embarrassing today. It represents the most glib and cynical side of the Young British Art movement and has not lasted as a work of art at all. | Is that enough to make it a moral and upstanding work of art – or a good one? Not really. Harvey’s Myra seems a bit dumb and embarrassing today. It represents the most glib and cynical side of the Young British Art movement and has not lasted as a work of art at all. |
| Harvey defended his painting on the grounds that Hindley has been unfairly vilified. “I know enough to know that she probably didn’t do any of the murders,” he said, “that she was just in a relationship where she was probably too attached to the man who was doing it to extricate herself. That her life was probably too dull and boring to throw the relationship away … I don’t believe that’s 30 years worth of reputation as one of the most vile and notorious murderers in British criminal history.” | Harvey defended his painting on the grounds that Hindley has been unfairly vilified. “I know enough to know that she probably didn’t do any of the murders,” he said, “that she was just in a relationship where she was probably too attached to the man who was doing it to extricate herself. That her life was probably too dull and boring to throw the relationship away … I don’t believe that’s 30 years worth of reputation as one of the most vile and notorious murderers in British criminal history.” |
| So Hindley’s image has been demonised by the British press and turned into a demonic icon of evil, and her real role as Ian Brady’s accomplice reimagined as some feminine face of darkness. The trouble with this liberal defence of Hindley is that it falls apart when given any thought. Whatever her reasons, she participated in the premeditated killings of five children. Tolerance has to end there. Art that can empathise with the adult rather than the child, the killers instead of the killed, has no human value at all. | So Hindley’s image has been demonised by the British press and turned into a demonic icon of evil, and her real role as Ian Brady’s accomplice reimagined as some feminine face of darkness. The trouble with this liberal defence of Hindley is that it falls apart when given any thought. Whatever her reasons, she participated in the premeditated killings of five children. Tolerance has to end there. Art that can empathise with the adult rather than the child, the killers instead of the killed, has no human value at all. |
| When The Smiths released Suffer Little Children, their song about the Moors Murders, they too were criticised for exploiting tragedy. And yet Morrissey’s lyrics do what images of Hindley cannot do, however clever the artistic manipulations of her photograph may or may not be. Morrissey imagines the ghosts of the murdered children speaking to their killers. His Hindley is a woman in hell, haunted by the innocents she helped to slaughter. Reading Morrissey’s words again after all these years reminds me that art can be compassionate: “We may be dead and we may be gone/ But we will be, we will be, we will be, right by your side/ Until the day you die.” | When The Smiths released Suffer Little Children, their song about the Moors Murders, they too were criticised for exploiting tragedy. And yet Morrissey’s lyrics do what images of Hindley cannot do, however clever the artistic manipulations of her photograph may or may not be. Morrissey imagines the ghosts of the murdered children speaking to their killers. His Hindley is a woman in hell, haunted by the innocents she helped to slaughter. Reading Morrissey’s words again after all these years reminds me that art can be compassionate: “We may be dead and we may be gone/ But we will be, we will be, we will be, right by your side/ Until the day you die.” |
| Art has the same duty as songwriting to do some justice to truth and pay some honour to the weak. The trouble with celebrity art – all celebrity art, from portraits of Kate Moss to pictures of the royal family – is that it foregrounds life’s winners. To be famous is to be a winner, above the herd. | Art has the same duty as songwriting to do some justice to truth and pay some honour to the weak. The trouble with celebrity art – all celebrity art, from portraits of Kate Moss to pictures of the royal family – is that it foregrounds life’s winners. To be famous is to be a winner, above the herd. |
| Andy Warhol saw through fame’s rags. His famous people are victims too. Marilyn fades to grey. Jackie Kennedy weeps for America. Yet Warhol depicted ordinary victims too: women killed by poisoned tuna, suicides, car crash victims. | Andy Warhol saw through fame’s rags. His famous people are victims too. Marilyn fades to grey. Jackie Kennedy weeps for America. Yet Warhol depicted ordinary victims too: women killed by poisoned tuna, suicides, car crash victims. |
| Modern art has got too tough. It has forgotten how to cry and how to care. Sentimentality is so feared that compassion is self-censored. In the 18th century William Hogarth made a series of prints called The Four Stages of Cruelty. In these cheap prints created to reform the way people lived, a boy who starts by torturing animals grows up to become a murderer. The Georgian critic Horace Walpole praised Hogarth for speaking out against animal cruelty. Hogarth was also a patron of the Foundling hospital. There was a time when artists did not just want to shock people and make money but to improve the world. Just because a photograph of a murderer is widely reproduced and “iconic” does not make it a good subject for art. A better theme would be the suffering of innocents. A better style would be compassion. | Modern art has got too tough. It has forgotten how to cry and how to care. Sentimentality is so feared that compassion is self-censored. In the 18th century William Hogarth made a series of prints called The Four Stages of Cruelty. In these cheap prints created to reform the way people lived, a boy who starts by torturing animals grows up to become a murderer. The Georgian critic Horace Walpole praised Hogarth for speaking out against animal cruelty. Hogarth was also a patron of the Foundling hospital. There was a time when artists did not just want to shock people and make money but to improve the world. Just because a photograph of a murderer is widely reproduced and “iconic” does not make it a good subject for art. A better theme would be the suffering of innocents. A better style would be compassion. |
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