Myra is a large painting which is a reproduction of the mugshot of Myra Hindley shortly after she was arrested for her participation in the Moors murders and was created by Marcus Harvey in 1995. It was displayed at the Sensation exhibition of Young British Artists at the Royal Academy of Art in London from 8 September to 28 December 1997.
The work measures 9 by 11 feet (2.7 by 3.4 m). At first sight, it resembles a greatly magnified version of a black and white photograph printed in a newspaper. It was made using casts of an infant's hand to build up a mosaic of black, grey and white handprints, creating a reproduction of the iconic police photograph of a hard-faced Myra Hindley with bouffant peroxide blonde hair taken after her arrest in 1965 (although often reported to have been taken around the time of the trial of the Moors murders in 1966). The photograph is widely recognised in Britain, having been published in British newspapers in the decades after Hindley's conviction. [1] Harvey has said, "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." [2] The painting consciously juxtaposes, as Jennifer Friedlander describes it, the tiny handprints of an "innocent child" and the "depraved world of adults", writ large on a gigantic canvas. [3]
Harvey has also commented: "I know enough to know that she probably didn't do any of the murders, 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." [4]
Harvey's agent bought the work, and sold it to Charles Saatchi for £11,000. Saatchi later sold it for an estimated £100,000. [5] It is now owned by US commodities trader Frank Gallipoli. [6]
The painting was included in the controversial Sensation exhibition of Young British Artists at the Royal Academy of Art in London in 1997. Norman Rosenthal, the Secretary of the Royal Academy, described it as the single most important painting in the show – "a very, very cathartic picture ... It is an incredibly serious and sober work of art that needs to be seen." [4] However, it provoked angry press and public comment before the exhibition opened. [7]
Four members of the Royal Academy – Craigie Aitchison, Gillian Ayres, Michael Sandle and John Ward – resigned in protest at its inclusion in the exhibition. [8] [9] The Metropolitan Police Clubs and Vice Unit visited the exhibition before it opened, but could not find sufficient evidence to bring a prosecution in respect of any of the exhibits under the Obscene Publications Act. [10]
Winnie Johnson (mother of Keith Bennett, one of Hindley's victims, whose body remains missing) asked for the portrait to be excluded from the exhibition to protect her feelings. She joined a protest group, Mothers Against Murder and Aggression, that picketed the show's first day on 18 September. [11] The charity Kidscape accused the Royal Academy of "sick exploitation of dead children" in an effort to attract paying visitors to address its financial deficit. [12]
Windows at Burlington House, where the Academy is based, were smashed. The painting was vandalised twice, by two different artists – Peter Fisher and Jacques Rolé – on the opening day of the exhibition, 18 September 1997. Fisher had smuggled blue and red Indian ink into the exhibition, concealed inside two camera film cases; he threw the ink over the painting and smeared it in. After witnessing this, Rolé left the exhibition, returned with eggs bought nearby, and threw three or four at the painting before being stopped by an off-duty police officer. [13] [14]
The painting was removed to be restored, and was rehung after two weeks behind a protective perspex screen. Security guards stood nearby while the exhibition was open to the public. [15]
Hindley wrote from prison to ask for her portrait to be removed from the exhibition, reasoning that such action was necessary because the work was "a sole disregard not only for the emotional pain and trauma that would inevitably be experienced by the families of the Moors victims but also the families of any child victim." [16] [17] Despite all the protests, the painting continued to hang at the exhibition. The exhibition drew approximately 300,000 visitors, significantly more than usual, but less than the 813,000 visitors attracted to the Royal Academy's Monet exhibition in 1999. [18]
The reaction to Harvey's painting in London has been compared to that received by Andy Warhol's 36-feet-square mural Thirteen Most Wanted Men , which comprised large copies of photographs from a "most wanted" booklet published by the New York Police Department, and was installed in the New York State Pavilion at the 1964 World's Fair. After protests by sponsors, Warhol's work was quickly painted over. [4] [19] The reaction to the potent mixture of the sacred and the profane parallels that to Andres Serrano's prize-winning 1987 photograph Piss Christ in Washington DC in 1989 and in Melbourne in 1997, and Chris Ofili's Turner Prize-winning painting The Holy Virgin Mary in New York in 1999.
The work was shown when the Sensation show went on tour, at the Berlin Hamburger Bahnhof museum from 30 September 1998 to 30 January 1999, and at the Brooklyn Museum of Art from 2 October 1999 to 9 January 2000, and later at the Saatchi Gallery at County Hall in central London.
Harvey's painting remained almost unknown in the US, and caused little reaction when the exhibition opened in New York in 1999. (Chris Ofili's The Holy Virgin Mary attracted greater criticism: it was called "sick" and "disgusting" by New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, and white paint was thrown over it. [13] [ dead link ])
Harvey's painting made a controversial brief appearance in a promotional video for the 2012 Olympic Games in 2008. [20] [21]
A limited edition print of the artwork was destroyed with a paintball gun on the Channel 4 programme 'Jimmy Carr Destroys Art' on 25 October 2022 following an audience vote. [22]
Stuckism is an international art movement founded in 1999 by Billy Childish and Charles Thomson to promote figurative painting as opposed to conceptual art. By May 2017 the initial group of 13 British artists had expanded to 236 groups in 52 countries.
The Young British Artists, or YBAs—also referred to as Brit artists and Britart—is a loose group of visual artists who first began to exhibit together in London in 1988. Many of the YBA artists graduated from the BA Fine Art course at Goldsmiths, in the late 1980s, whereas some from the group had trained at Royal College of Art.
The Royal Academy of Arts (RA) is an art institution based in Burlington House on Piccadilly in London. Founded in 1768, it has a unique position as an independent, privately funded institution led by eminent artists and architects. Its purpose is to promote the creation, enjoyment and appreciation of the visual arts through exhibitions, education and debate.
Christopher Ofili, is a British painter who is best known for his paintings incorporating elephant dung. He was Turner Prize-winner and one of the Young British Artists. Since 2005, Ofili has been living and working in Trinidad and Tobago, where he currently resides in the city of Port of Spain. He also has lived and worked in London and Brooklyn.
Gillian Ayres was an English painter. She is best known for abstract painting and printmaking using vibrant colours, which earned her a Turner Prize nomination.
Gary Stewart Hume is an English artist. Hume's work is strongly identified with the YBA who came to prominence in the early 1990s. Hume lives and works in London and Accord, New York.
Charles Saatchi is an Iraqi-British businessman and the co-founder, with his brother Maurice, of advertising agency Saatchi & Saatchi. The brothers led the business – the world's largest advertising agency in the 1980s – until they were forced out in 1995. In the same year, the brothers formed a new agency called M&C Saatchi.
The Saatchi Gallery is a London gallery for contemporary art and an independent charity opened by Charles Saatchi in 1985. Exhibitions which drew upon the collection of Charles Saatchi, starting with US artists and minimalism, moving to the Damien Hirst-led Young British Artists, followed by shows purely of painting, led to Saatchi Gallery becoming a recognised authority in contemporary art globally. It has occupied different premises, first in North London, then the South Bank by the River Thames, and finally in Chelsea, Duke of York's HQ, its current location. In 2019 Saatchi Gallery became a registered charity and begun a new chapter in its history. Recent exhibitions include the major solo exhibition of the artist JR, JR: Chronicles, and London Grads Now in September 2019 lending the gallery spaces to graduates from leading fine art schools who experienced the cancellation of physical degree shows due to the pandemic.
Marcus Harvey is an English artist and painter, one of the Young British Artists (YBAs).
Richard Billingham is an English photographer and artist, film maker and art teacher. His work has mostly concerned his family, the place he grew up in the West Midlands, but also landscapes elsewhere.
Events from the year 1997 in art.
The Stuckists Punk Victorian was the first national gallery exhibition of Stuckist art. It was held at the Walker Art Gallery and Lady Lever Art Gallery in Liverpool from 18 September 2004 to 20 February 2005 and was part of the 2004 Liverpool Biennial.
Sir Norman Rosenthal is a British independent curator and art historian. From 1970 to 1974 he was Exhibitions Officer at Brighton Museum and Art Gallery. In 1974 he became a curator at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, leaving in 1976. The following year, in 1977, he joined the Royal Academy in London as Exhibitions Secretary where he remained until his resignation in 2008. Rosenthal has been a trustee of numerous different national and international cultural organisations since the 1980s; he is currently on the board of English National Ballet. In 2007, he was awarded a knighthood in the Queen's Birthday Honours List. Rosenthal is well known for his support of contemporary art, and is particularly associated with the German artists Joseph Beuys, Georg Baselitz, Anselm Kiefer and Julian Schnabel, the Italian painter Francesco Clemente, and the generation of British artists that came to prominence in the early 1990s known as the YBAs.
The Victoria Miro Gallery is a British contemporary art gallery in London, run by Victoria Miro. Miro opened her first gallery in 1985 in Cork Street, before moving to larger premises in Islington in 2000 and later opening a second space in St George Street, Mayfair.
Sensation was an exhibition of the collection of contemporary art owned by Charles Saatchi, including many works by Young British Artists, (YBAs), which first took place 18 September – 28 December 1997 at the Royal Academy of Arts in London. The exhibition later toured to the Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin and the Brooklyn Museum in New York City. A proposed showing at the National Gallery of Australia was cancelled when the gallery's director decided the exhibition was "too close to the market."
Adrian Searle is the chief art critic of The Guardian newspaper in Britain, and has been writing for the paper since 1996. Previously he was a painter.
Everyone I Have Ever Slept With 1963–1995 (1995), also known as The Tent, was an artwork by Tracey Emin. The work was a tent with the appliquéd names of, literally, everyone she had ever slept with. It achieved iconic status and was owned by Charles Saatchi. Since its destruction in the 2004 Momart London warehouse fire, Emin has refused to recreate the piece.
The Holy Virgin Mary is a painting created by Chris Ofili in 1996. It was one of the works included in the Sensation exhibition in London, Berlin and New York in 1997–2000. The subject of the work, and its execution, caused considerable controversy in New York, with Rudolph Giuliani – then Mayor of New York City – describing Ofili's work as "sick". In 1998, Ofili was the first black artist to be awarded the Turner Prize. The painting was sold for £2.9 million in June 2015.
Shock art is contemporary art that incorporates disturbing imagery, sound or scents to create a shocking experience. It is a way to disturb "smug, complacent and hypocritical" people. While the art form's proponents argue that it is "imbedded with social commentary" and critics dismiss it as "cultural pollution", it is an increasingly marketable art, described by one art critic in 2001 as "the safest kind of art that an artist can go into the business of making today". But while shock art may attract curators and make headlines, Reason magazine's 2007 review of The Art Newspaper suggested that traditional art shows continue to have more popular appeal.
Gregor Muir is Director of Collection, International Art, at Tate, having previously been the Executive Director of the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London from 2011 until 2016. He was the director of Hauser & Wirth, London, at 196a Piccadilly, from 2004 - 2011. He is also the author of a 2009 memoir in which he recounts his direct experience of the YBA art scene in 1990s London.