Eric Gill Prospero and Ariel Broadcasting House, London.
The most often viewed post so far here on Blogger has turned out to be the one on the Khajuraho Erotic Carvings that I originally posted in December 2007, shortly after visiting the site in Madhya Pradesh in central India.
Some of the posts popularity can obviously be related to the length of time it has been on this hitherto negelected and for a long period abandoned blog (coincidentally echoing the fate of the Khajaraho temple complexes themselves).
After posting the Khajuraho post this blog fell silent and it wasn't until May 2010 that the next post appeared here.
Over the next two years there was occasional activity on this site, but it wasn't until August this year after more than a year with no posts that the site was revived as the new home for Aaran Aardvark and the Total Truth Movement.
After posting the Khajuraho post this blog fell silent and it wasn't until May 2010 that the next post appeared here.
Over the next two years there was occasional activity on this site, but it wasn't until August this year after more than a year with no posts that the site was revived as the new home for Aaran Aardvark and the Total Truth Movement.
From the start it was decided that this Blogger site - which had already attracted what little interest there was around the Khajuraho post - would attempt to be a little more edgy, more adult than the Multiply site it has replaced was. I would add that this is not entirely driven by a desire to attract more readers, but a more general shift in emphasis intended to broaden out what is on offer here and on its sister site The Incredible Magic Theatre.
In line with this new direction we have already seen posts on medieval 'courtly love' and a post on sex and the nation state as well as the prennial interest that has been shown in the erotic stonework at Khajuraho, this blog looks briefly at the complex life and work of Arts and Crafts Movement leading sculptor and calligrapher Eric Gill.
There is a link here with the Indian erotic sculpture in that it became an early influence on Eric Gill when introduced to Jain sculpture at Gwalior Fort in Madhya Pradesh and the giant nude male figures that adorn it.
Below are similar figures I photographed at the Jain Temple complex museum in Khajuraho, the ones that impressed Gill are very much bigger than these sculptures but very similar in appearance.
Below are similar figures I photographed at the Jain Temple complex museum in Khajuraho, the ones that impressed Gill are very much bigger than these sculptures but very similar in appearance.
Gill working
Eric Gill was born in 1882 in the fashionable south coast town of Brighton well known for its Indian style Royal Pavillion.
Wikipedia says of Brighton Pavilion:-
The Royal Pavilion is a former royal residence located in Brighton, England. It was built in three campaigns, beginning in 1787, as a seaside retreat for George, Prince of Wales, from 1811 Prince Regent. It is often referred to as the Brighton Pavilion. It is built in the Indo-Saracenic style prevalent in India for most of the 19th century, with the most extravagant chinoiserie interiors ever executed in the British Isles.
So it was in this somewhat exotic and bohemian town where Eric Gill began a life that was no less unorthodox or colourful ....but if he had been alive today he would almost certainly have been imprisoned for it and he would never gain the prominence that he has in his own life time. If Eric Gill was alive now in the early 21st century he would have been placed on the Sex Offenders Register and would never be allowed to produce high profile public works of art or have any other public role. He would not be allowed to live in close proximity to a school let alone establish a Royal Faculty which is what he did. He would more than likely be a complete social outcast ostracised and terrorised by society as a whole.
As it was however, and as Wikipedia records for us - Gill was named Royal Designer for Industry, given the highest British award for designers, by the Royal Society of Arts. He was commisioned amongst other things to create beautiful stonework for BBC headquarters Broadcasting House opened in 1934.
He also became a founder-member of the newly established Faculty of Royal Designers for Industry. Below is one of the reliefs Gill created for Broadcating House.
Eric Gill was a deeply religious man and after converting in 1913 a devout Roman Catholic who was a living contradiction in many ways. Although some rather disreputable cynics might say "perhaps he wasn't that out of the ordinary given the recent tabloid headlines".... but I would distance myself immediately from such remarks, should any ever be made here.
Gill got away with living an outrageous life of completely obsessed self indulgence...he seems to have got away with living like some sort of exotic harem owning Pasha but in the English county of Sussex, where the Brighton Pavilion may have planted the notion early on of a life in the Perfumed Garden?
His most recent biographer Fiona MacCarthy writing in the Guardian in 2006 said:-
"This is a good time to reconsider Gill, a quarter of a century after
revelations of adultery, incest and relations with his dog caused a
furore in the Catholic press, leading to the Mothers' Union call for the
dismantling of his Stations of the Cross in Westminster Cathedral. Since I wrote the biography in question, and since I love his work, I
have watched with some anxiety the long-term effect on Gill's
reputation. Does consciousness of artists' reprehensible behaviour (Gill
in 2006 would no doubt be in prison) put up a barrier between the
viewer and the work? Or does knowledge of the artist's life,
fallibilities included, amplify and enrich our understanding of the art?"
http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2006/jul/22/art.art
http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2006/jul/22/art.art
This is I think a very good question the answer to which depends upon who we ask what sort of responses we could expect. Gill broke all the rules, he had sex with his three daughters, his sister and his dog, not to mention with his wife Ethel and their one-time live-in lover, various visitors and employees.....he has in his diaries admitted to paedophilia, incest, homosexuality and bestiality so he would be unlikely to find a job teaching nowadays, but how does that knowledge influence the way we view his work?
To me none at all I don't think. I loved Eric Gill's work before when for all I knew he was a pure as the driven snow... these revelations only became known in the 1980s. In the 1960s my friends and I were great fans of the Arts and Crafts Movement in England (I still am) ...we lionised William Morris and extolled the virtues of Liberty and of course knew the work of Eric Gill very well, it was the sort of thing we would talk about at The Kardomah coffee house on a wet Sunday afternoon in 1968 after the art gallery closed at 4pm and before the pubs opened at 6.
So yes, I have been an admirer of the work of Eric Gill all my adult life and long before the lurid details of his sex life were made known. These revelations have made no difference to that appreciation I have of their great beauty, not at all.
I hear people say, but he was a child abuser and so ipso facto in contemporary terms he is now a monster.
Should we admire the art of monsters, or does art rise above the world of assumptions and actualities and does it touch upon something primordial and elementary that owes nothing to contemporary morality or local laws?
I was interested to read the obituary of one on Gill's daughters who posed for nude drawings by her father that have been described as 'both homely and erotic' an interesting and potentially to some people a disturbing combination no doubt?
Due to Gill's fame not only as a scuptor but also as a calligrapher and innovative typesetter he remains important today having invented several type fonts, he is for example covered extensively in a blog originating in Australia called All About Lettering and it was on that blog that I recently discovered the obituary for Petra Tegetmeir nee Gill.
What Petra says is I think important, because she represents to my mind the true meaning of maturity and speaks here with the wisdom of a lifetime. I quote directly here with a cut and pasted section from All About Lettering in bold below :-
She died on January 1, 1999, age 92. By the accounts written she lived a full, happy and rich life. This is by Patrick Nuttgens from the Guardian. (Nuttgens a stained glass craftsman lived near Gill in Pigotts.)
“Gill introduced Betty [older sister] and Petra to the mysteries of
sex and recorded the occasions in his diaries. A remarkable aspect of
those liaisons with Petra is that she seems not only to have been
undamaged by the experience, but to have become the most calm,
reflective and straightforward wife and mother.When I asked her about it shortly before her 90th birthday, she assured me that she was not at all embarrassed –
‘We just took it for granted’. She agreed that had she gone to school [the children were taught at home by their father] she might have learned how unconventional her father’s behaviour was. He had, she explained, ‘endless curiosity about sex’.
His bed companions were not only family but domestic helpers and even (to my astonishment when I heard about it) the teacher who ran the school at Pigotts.”
Then this by Lottie Hoare, published in the Independent.
“When Fiona MacCarthy’s biography Eric Gill (1989) revealed from the evidence of Gill’s diaries, his sexual relations with his two eldest daughters Petra remained unflappable in the face of media furore. She made it clear that her own attitude to sex had not been harmed. The sisters had never been made to feel shame.”
So now if there is anyone left reading this post after all that, I would like to end with some images of Eric Gill's poetics in stone that whatever you think of him or the way he lived his life, I hope you agree with me that his stonework and drawings are masterpieces and his calligraphy shows him to be the master of the drawn line. All the more ironic then that he didn't draw any lines in the relationships he had with his own very intimate family group that were his heirs, his models and later his judges....and it seems they have acquitted him and themselves. The only one not able to give informed consent or later absolution was of course the dog, nobody knows his view on the matter but his willingness seems to be taken as at least tacit approval of Gills demands. So not just people but animals never seem to have declined a sexual advance from Eric Gill.
A photo taken at Ditchling with Gill, centre, and Petra to his left.
It's amazing really, but perhaps if you can create artifacts like these everybody loves you...even your dog?
Or perhaps neither of those responses are appropriate and you have a different view of it and something else to say?
All contributions welcome.
This is a very provocative post, AA,and congratulate you for introducing a figure like Eric Gill to most of us who are likely ignorant of the man if not his dynamic work.
ReplyDeletePersonally, as a Christian, I am aware it is dangerous business to judge a person. All I can say for certain is that I couldn't remove my knowledge of Gill's acts of incest from my opinion of the man anymore than I can remove my knowledge of John Wayne's role as a proponent of blacklisting his fellow Hollywood professionals in the McCarthy Era, or T.S. Eliot's anti-Semitism or Ezra Pound's fascism or the incest that "Papa" John Phillips (of the Mamas and the Poppas) committed on his daughter Mackenzie when she was an underage girl.
If Gill's daughter suffered no ill effects from her father's behavior all I can say is that she is a rare person indeed compared to other women I've known who developed mental anguish from such experiences.
There is another danger I think as well--to regard an artist as beyond the pale of common decency because he is a great artists. And to me incest goes beyond the character flaws all artists and others have.
Thanks for your comments Doug, they are as ever much appreciated. I understand the points you are making here, but I would say for example that John Wayne's domestic spying is a very different situation to Eric Gill's and his relations with various family members et cetera. According to Gills daughter Petra she and her sister Betty were not adversely affected by the odd relationship they had with their father, one that they accepted was not the norm but are happy enough to be exceptions from the so-called norm.
ReplyDeleteI too have met a a fair number of people who have been damaged by sexual abuse when children.... as part of my job. I would never suggest that sexual abuse and incest cannot cause enormous problems for the 'victim'.....What I do argue however is that contrary to the received wisdom in much of the industry that has grown up around support for victims, this sort of experience can be accommodated and absorbed into our rounded view of who we are and how we came to be where we are today as people. Because the prognosis is not as gloomy as some people say....complete recovery (existential acceptance) is a real possibility that is achieved by many people whose experiences have been problematic or painful.
Petra denies that her experiences were like that and who is in a position to argue with her?
These are very interesting topics(to me at least)because they touch upon issues of normative behaviour and deviance (my pet subject).... human resilience, discourses on sexuality and the creation of personal and social meaning, art and spirituality and a whole range of thoughts and opinions on a wide variety of topics. To me this discussion also includes notions of maturity and atonement, aesthetics and morality...you could almost say that an entire humanities course is bound up in this single story that includes social and economic history, art history, ethics, psychology (some like the APA would want to argue psychiatry too) sexology, theology, literature, jurisprudence, politics and cultural anthropology.
Incest is a cornucopia of philosophic possibilities, even talking about it braks the rules because of its status as an almost universal taboo and that is what we are here to do I think....think outside the box and rule nothing out of the equation.
Art must confront the world and cannot hide away from the truth, however that truth is constructed artists must represent it and feed it it back to us imbued in the artifacts we may well treasure.
Thanks for developing the subject further Doug.
Certainly I defer to you on this issue of social services to victims of various domestic situations, AA.
DeleteIf the two women were not adversely effected by their experiences then or as adults, then there is not reason to argue against them, I agree. There are enough young people who are in dire family situations and need to be prevented from further trauma.
As far as calling the artwork into "question" there is no need for that at this stage I wouldn't think.
Still, I would only say actions of an artist changes the image of that man or woman for me, but not necessarily the value of the art itself.
I do agree all subjects have to be laid open and examined and sources and psychiatric and cultural studies are one way to understand why we live in a world where, paradoxically, deviance in behavior is the one "norm" we can always count on.
I read the whole post even though I had to stop for second when it got to the "sex with dog" which I did not even try to picture in my mind lol .
ReplyDeleteDo you think his daughters accepted the incest and were not so damaged by it because of the fact they were home schooled and maybe not exposed to much of the outside world while growing up? They didn't know it was not "normal" or "acceptable", that it was their "normal"?
I actually like the art and I can appreciate it regardless of the man behind it.
And that is all I have to say in my own simple way :-))
Thanks for your comments Ms C, interesting that sex with a dog caused you to falter on your way through, it is something we don't expect to find in most discussions of art, although whether that is because it rarely happens, or just because people rarely want to talk about it, is another question I think.
ReplyDeleteHaving read his diary entry.... I suspect the dog became the most active partner if that helps at all? I was outraged that I haven't been able to discover its name, in all the accounts I've looked at it's just called the dog which given the animal's fame and/or notoriety doesn't seem right, I don't even know the creature's breed, but presumably it was not a Chiwawa, if you take my point Ms C.
Nancy Friday notes that zoophilia as a fantasy may provide an escape from cultural expectations, restrictions, and judgements in regard to sex. As a reality it achieves all of those outcomes it seems.... plus hopefully mutual satisfaction participants in any such couplings I suppose.
Don't worry ....I'll get onto the human side of things next Ms C ;-)
PerfectMindStorm said "Do you think his daughters accepted the incest and were not so damaged by it because of the fact they were home schooled and maybe not exposed to much of the outside world while growing up? They didn't know it was not "normal" or "acceptable", that it was their "normal"?
ReplyDeleteWell I suppose the short answer to that Ms C has to be "yes".....but if that is true it tells us a lot about how the meaning of acts are socially structured, because the other side of that point is ... if we lived in a culture (or sub-culture) where intra-familial sex was 'normal'would it still be emotionally damaging to the participants?
In 1927 Margaret Mead the famous anthrpologist published her book Coming of Age in Samoa...it became a best seller and presented to the public for the first time the idea that the individual experience of developmental stages could be shaped by cultural demands and expectations, so that adolescence might be more or less stormy and sexual development more or less problematic in different cultures. She was sceptical that the "civilised world" at the time had got it right.
From various anthropogical and sexological studies of relationships involving intergenerational sexual contact it shows wide variations in norms and cultural expectations in different cultural settings.
But you are right of course.. the Gill's weren't living in Samoa, but in small town 'civilised' southeast England (and Wales some of the time too)....and even though they grew up and lived their lives in contemporary English society they rejected any victim label that is automatically attached to this sort of behaviour. The point here is that Sussex villages like Ditchling where the Gills resided are not remote or cut off places. Gill did create a 'Primitivist' enclave where he practiced his homespun political ideology he called Distributism. So he wasn't exactly your average Dad.....but the ideological bubble in which he had sex with his daughters and his sister (his wife who changed her name from Ethel to Mary in 1913) also reports having had herself sexual relations with her brother-in-law.
I don't think the Gills were unique in that respect though, I think making sense of our past and coming to terms with the relationships (good and bad) that comprise it, is a pretty grown-up thing to do and for most of us it is a perpetual work in progress.
Thanks for your thoughts on the subject Ms C....I'm glad you like the artwork.
I totally agree that making sense of our past and coming to terms with the relationships ( good and bad) is a perpetual work in progress. I just hope I live long enough to reach some sort of resolution :-))
DeleteAbsolutely know what you mean Loretta :-)
Deleteexcellent post Aaron.
ReplyDeleteThis guys art work is superb, and in my opinion not diminished at all by his personal life. I see his work as something of merit in its own right and not as something tainted by its creators culturally abhorrent lifestyle. There were artists who were favoured by Hitler and who were commissioned by him to create paintings and sculptures extolling the virtues of the (so called) Germanic, Aryan bloodline. The politics behind these works was awful, but some of the work itself, is good. The same thing applies to propaganda art produced in Russia, you may not like the politics, but some of the imagery is brilliant.
As for his abusive lifestyle; I've met kids who have the most awful backgrounds and whose parents (in my opinion) are not fit to own a hampster, but the kids are protective and defensive of the parents. It doesn't seem to matter how badly some kids are treated they still love their parents and want to be with them. Obviously this isn't the same as what happened to those sisters because if the authorities knew what was happening the sisters would have been removed from the parents care. But it does go to show how much children want to believe their parents are good and wouldn't hurt them. Also, sometimes, because of the way our system works, abused people are traumatized first by the abuser and second by the system which demands medical examinations, statements and the whole awful process of going through the system. These sisters were abused by their father but at least they didn't have to also cope with the pressures of going through the system. They didn't have to witness their father going to court and prison and their family managed remained intact. Maybe, even though in theory it would have been better for them if their father was stopped, in practice they coped better without the added stress of courts, publicity etc. What ever the reason, its good to know they came through the experience OK. That probably says a lot more about them than it does about their father.
Thanks for your comments here Loretta, you make powerful arguments for some measure of sympathy, some measure of admiration and I think if I read you correctly a large dose of fellow feeling....Who amongst us was never abused in some deeply significant way or another - somehow? What did Eric Gill's parents do to him, or their parents do to them?....where does the buck stop in the blame game?
DeleteWho isn't a victim if we want to look at things in that way? Or, who isn't a hero(ine) if we chose to take the opposing perspective?
Is our cup half full or half empty and who profits from one option over another?
Ultimately in capitalist society and a sham democracy like this... who isn't a victim of abuse?
In Jim'll Fix It UK whose integrity hasn't been violated?
I appreciate and agree with what you say about art rising above the hands of its creator, because nobody is a Nazi all day, not at breakfast nor in the loo ....or at their nephew's christening party. And neither is an artist when they are creating art evil nor malevolent... whatever they do in their spare time in my view.Art is like grannies funeral...apolitical and cathartic, a realm free of moral censure so far as I'm concerned anyway.
I couldn't agree with the points you make more.
I'm sorry but for me the art (while unquestionably skilled) is diminished knowing how he lived his life. When a power relationship is unequal as in the case of the daughters and their father, more so because the daughters were home-schooled, then consent can never be taken at face value. And as for the poor dog - words fail.
ReplyDeleteArtists do not have to be saints (none of us are, me least of all) but let them not be monsters at least.
Thanks for adding that perspective Iri, because you seem to be backing ethics over aesthetics here and suggesting that the works Gill produced are in some respect 'tainted' by the abusive lifestyle of their creator.
DeleteI don't think there is any answer to the question of ethics vis-a-vis aesthetics in terms of the virtue of an art object. I can only be guided by what little I know of the views of one of his daughters Petra, who appears in her 90s to still be denying any sense of shame and to be that is the truly uplifting moral of this story.
Who am I to argue with Petra, whose adolescent beauty was immortalised by her seriously weird but apparently to her at least... lovable dad even after a life of well adjusted adulthood including motherhood . I mean how could I possibly have any other view than complete admiration of Petra and all she has achieved despite her dad or anything else life apparently threw at her (in 92 years that must have been a lot)....she is what I think of as the true survivor.
In other words she is a perpetual mythic role model for all of us irrespective of gender or where we sit in the abuse chain. Ironically to me Petra whose childhood may have been stolen by the demands of her father has become the patron saint of adulthood. For me that's the morality tale here, the art stands for itself in another space in reality as I see it Iri.
I was just thinking (something I occasionally do). A few years ago in my small town, a bloke went out to trim his hedges and witnessed his neighbour having full penetrative sex with one of his goats. I do not believe the goat looked like it was having fun by the way. The bloke reported the goat sex to the police and/or the SPCA (who probably had to make a cut lunch before they would venture out here), anyway it came out that this goat-raping man had also sexually abused his children and possibly his small grandchildren as well. Maybe his intellectually challenged wife also. Perhaps not very different in deed and result than Eric Gill. Does being an artist make abuse more forgivable?
ReplyDeleteHow does a goat look when it is enjoying sex I wonder Iri?...
DeleteI mean nosey neighbours could have intervened here in the flow of true love as I see it. Witches were always accused of shagging goats (of Mendes etc) so why shouldn't the opposite pertain now in Aotearoa?
C'mon now fair's fair Iri, isn't this just prejudice against inter species sex?
I don't actually know this for certain Iri... but if Gill's diaries are to be relied upon at all... the dog being a male was not entirely unenthusiastic to participate in the "experiment" so far as I can tell reading between the lines and all that.
Just look at it like taking the animal down to the park and throwing stick into the lake for it.....but then again....how do we know it wasn't true love?
I'm not sure I know the answer to those questions Iri, but thanks for raising those uncertainties..now here's a question.
If you had the opportunity to vote whether to stage an Eric Gill exhibition at the gallery you are involved with would you I wonder vote for it or vote against it?
I don't think being an artist makes abuse (or any thing else) any more forgivable or excusable. But Neither do I think abuse by the artist invalidates his art. The art is what it is, good art, or bad art, or indifferent art, but the conduct of the artist while not actually producing the art, doesn't effect the finished art work in any way, or at least that's the way it seems to me. Art is something encouraged in prisons and quite often taken up by lifers who have raped and/or murdered. Sometimes, the art work they produce is really good. There is a big part of me that is glad these depraved people can create something beautiful, it means something in their life rises above the depraved, and that has to be good.
DeleteI think that is a very good point about violent prisoners art Loretta. Whether art is good, bad or ugly is for most part I think, a matter of personal taste and preferences.
DeleteI really like the stonework of Eric Gill, I think it is touched by genius and as I said in the post above, I already had been an admirer long before these revelations appeared in 1989.
For what it's worth, I think Eric Gill was an obsessively self centred person and I am pretty sure I would not have liked him if we had met.
But as an artist he is in my view quite simply the greatest English stonemason of the 20th century.
I am convinced there must be a link between imagination, depravity and creativity...the latter being imagination with merit and the former being perversity without conscience.
In Gill's case there are also close links between his spirituality (Catholicism) and his sexuality, but I don't think that is a particularly novel state of affairs.
The Karma Sutra is from a Hindu perspective of course about nothing else but that!
The actors in this story are all now dead, only Gill's work lives on and ironically through it, so do his models, his daughters and the other men and women whose relationship with him included his own and (since none alledge rape - so far as I know) their own sexuality and personal intimacies.
So however we judge Eric Gill and whatever those who he had sex with felt about it at the time, or later... it is my view that his art expresses love created with a passion that rises above the transient particulars of his own orgasmic output, well that is how I see it anyway.
There was an excellent UK artist called Christopher Perkins who came out to NZ back in the 1920s who painted some delightful portraits of at least one of his children in the nude. And the dog too I think. And he didn't appear to feel the need to abuse/have sex with his children in order to be an excellent artist.
ReplyDeleteIn today's world passion is too often equated with sex. I would argue back to you that one can be a passionate, even a great artist without being a sexual abuser/predator.
If I was to have seen Eric Gill's work without knowing in background I would have admired it and respected his skill. I can still do this. But it is a huge spoiler for me, knowing that he had sex with his children and his dog, for that part of his life, I can exhibit nothing but contempt. I don't think that defining sexual abuse is about culture, I think it is about power relations. And when you have a big man and a little kid there is no doubt who has the power. And as for the dog, oh gosh, dogs are so dumb and dogs will do anything for the people who own them. Doesn't make it right.
I am finding this a fascinating discussion, by the way, I love stuff which makes you think, eh.
As for whether I would agree or object to Eric Gill's work being shown in our gallery - I have to think some more about that.
Thanks for adding this to the further discussion of Eric Gill....I don't disagree with you about Gill's sex life which I also think was exploitative and deeply self-obsessive.
DeleteAs I have mentioned above I don't think I would have liked him as a person, but this conversation in my view does several things.
Firstly it alows a rational discussion of incest which in itself is a rare thing. Paedophilia is the single and most emotive taboo in contemporary society and of course incest is a near global taboo.
The second point has been raised by yourself above and that is not only the relationship between sex and power but also between the notion of 'culture' and power.
The concept of a 'dominant culture' with a patchwork of deviant subcultures speaks of power in a very direct way I think. I certainly do not equate passion with sex, or at least not with sex only.....I have no difficulty with the idea of asexual or celibate passions.
I do however maintain that Eric Gill's works are expressions of love and I have no reason to believe that he saw his sex life in anything but the same way.
I o believe Gill not only saw sex with his adolescent daughters, or his adult sister, his male and female models, his wife and her inlaws (and even with his dog) as expressions of love and not just his concept of Eros ..but also I think his understanding of Agape too.
There is much to be said here I think and I agree that this is a very important discussion.
I have to leave shortly for an anti-government demonstration so I don't have time to discuss all of the very important issues you have raised here Iri, but I will return to the subject later when I get back home.
To be continued :-)
Iri wrote "And when you have a big man and a little kid there is no doubt who has the power. And as for the dog, oh gosh, dogs are so dumb and dogs will do anything for the people who own them. Doesn't make it right.
ReplyDeleteYou are right of course there is nothing morally defensible in what Eric Gill did, but does it diminish the genius of his art?
I wish dogs knew how to sniff out winning lottery tickets, but the Lotto Hound would have to be a very smart dog indeed, a concept you have cast considerable doubt upon here Iri, so I don't hold out much hope. I'm sure pure greed must have a very distinctive smell to a dog though, but alas..... I digress.
From what I've read, Gill just had no inhibitions he was a bonobo, not because he had failed to internalise moral norms, he was a Roman Catholic not a sage of Thelema, nothing scandalous in that until comparatively recently and then only the clergy have been outed.
In English terms being a Catholic Englishman might be viewed as a bit odd but not exceptionally so, Gill was well within the mainstream so far as his religion was concerned.
Whether this had any impact on his behaviour I don't know, but I think he genuinely believed that penetration and love are interchangeable concepts....he did not predate (so far as I'm aware) upon strangers for sex, in that sense he wasn't that sort of "monster".
It seems he generally kept it all very much in-house either at home or at work.
To Gill all these people (and a dog) were blessed by being shagged by him, the stonemason, the calligrapher, the artist.... because I conject that just as he liberated beautiful forms from solid blocks of unpromising stone, so he seems to have believed that he liberated the spirit through sexual ecstacy. Leaving the incest aside for a moment that is I think the pure essence of Tantra so far as I can see, so the nothing odd there. Petra described her Dad and "endlessly curious about sex" she apparently saw him as a strange and remarkable man who she was proud of.
It's unfortunate for her that these details of her private life became public when she was already a woman of 82. But her diginty and what Lottie Hoare above calls her 'unflappability' in the face of salacious media intrusions is for me a reason to respect and admire her and in no way think of her as a 'victim'....I don't think she would have wanted that from what little I have been able to discover about her.
Thanks again for your contribution Iri...where else other than the Blogosphere, could you have a discussion like this with someone you've never actually met?
I don't think it would work with a stranger sitting next to us on the bus somehow would it?
I've come late to the party. My interest in Gill was aroused by a documentary about the Flying Scotsman, including the origin of the typeface used in the name. Being curious I looked him up, and came across this post. I have always believed that great art is without manners or respect for social conformity: this can be both a good and a bad thing.
ReplyDeleteIn Gill's case it is a bit hard to say. As a father of three daughters I find his behaviour abhorrent and disturbing, but when I read what his daughter Petra said about it all I am more detached. He was an unusual and challenging man, full of curiosity and iconoclastic interest which led him down many paths most would fear to tread, and with good reason.
I find myself both appalled by his conduct and yet wishing to hear his explanation before I condemn him. He went where few men go, and saw what few men see. Whether his observations were worth the excesses it is hard to say