This week's vandalism incident in London reignited public debate over how to reassess the legacy of a well-known artist and known abuser. On Tuesday night, a man attacked an Eric Gill statue outside the BBC's central London headquarters. The suspect spent four hours pounding on the sculpture with a hammer while another man recorded the incident. Both have since been arrested, but no charges have been filed as of yet.
Gill, a leading twentieth-century British sculptor, and typographer, detailed his sexual abuse of two of his teenage daughters and the family dog in diaries discovered after his 1940 death. Since then, curators have struggled to reconcile the artist's immorality with his pervasive influence in England. His sculptures are housed in prestigious institutions such as the Tate, the Victoria and Albert Museum, and the British Museum.
The BBC statue was commissioned in the early 1930s by Sir John Reith, the news agency's then-director-general. It depicts Prospero and Ariel from Shakespeare's Tempest. Ariel, a spirit at the magician's disposal, is depicted as a naked child. For decades, campaigners have urged the BBC to remove the sculpture. The broadcaster, on the other hand, has no plans to demolish the statue in the aftermath of the latest attack. The company stated in a statement that "when the statue was commissioned, Ariel—as the spirit of the air—was deemed an appropriate symbol for broadcasting's new dawn."
"The BBC does not condone Eric Gill's views or actions," it continued. Clearly, there are debates about whether the artist's work can be distinguished from the art itself. We believe that it is necessary for people to have those discussions. We believe that causing damage to the artwork is not the appropriate course of action." Katie Razzall, the BBC's culture editor, tweeted a video of the incident, writing: "Outside the BBC, a man is attempting to smash up an Eric Gill statue while another man lives streams discussing paedophiles." Gill's heinous crimes are well-documented. However, is this the correct path?"
During his lifetime, Gill also created popular devotional art, and his sculptures continue to adorn Westminster Cathedral. Ministers and Clergy Sexual Abuse Survivors campaigned in 1998 to have Gill's Stations of the Cross removed from the church. Meanwhile, a plinth honoring his work on a World War I memorial in the village of Ditching, where he lived with his family from 1906 to 1924, infuriated residents who were familiar with the artist's biography.
Recent exhibitions have attempted to reexamine Gill's art in light of his incarceration. The Ditchling Museum of Art + Craft presented "Eric Gill: The Body" in 2017, posing the question, "Is it possible to appreciate Gill's art in light of his abuse?" The exhibition focused on his studies of the human figure and included naked depictions of his daughters. In 2021, the museum issued a statement clarifying its position on the artist: "The trustees operate within these two positions: we unequivocally condemn Eric Gill's abuse of his daughters and make no attempt to conceal, excuse, normalize, or minimize it, but we also have a responsibility to protect, display, and interpret the art in our collections."
Selena Mattei