10-04-2025
For once the BBC is right: monsters can be great artists too
Eric Gill was undoubtedly a monster, guilty of the sexual abuse of children – his own children. For some reason he recorded his obnoxious private life in his diaries and was guilty of offences within his own family that would have landed him in prison had they been known.
Why then, it is being asked, should the BBC wish to spend more than half a million pounds restoring his statue of Prospero and Ariel on the imposing exterior of Broadcasting House?
Installed in 1933, the statue has already been attacked with a hammer twice in the last three years, prompting the installation of a protective screen in front of the work. Gill has become a particular target of the far-Right.
Yet this sculpture forms an integral part of one of London's iconic buildings and is the masterwork of an exceptionally skilled artist. In the Dictionary of National Biography, Gill is described as 'the greatest artist-craftsman of the twentieth century.'
We still live with the beautiful typefaces he designed, such as Perpetua and Gill Sans, enthusiastically adopted by Penguin and other publishers. His view was that 'a good piece of lettering is as beautiful a thing to see as any sculpture or painted picture', but not long before the First World War he began to turn his hand to sculpture as well.
Some of his most famous engravings give away aspects of his character: sexualised images of young women commonly appear, and his views about sexuality placed him at odds with the Catholic Church, of which he was a member, long before the posthumous revelation that he was an incestuous paedophile. He bragged that God had placed him on earth to produce his objects of beauty.
What, then, does one do with the works of art of a man whose creations were to some extent informed by his unsettling beliefs about religion and sexuality?
The choice by the BBC of Ariel as its mascot was inspired: here was a spirit that flew through the air like its radio waves.
Behind the opposition to the restoration of Prospero and Ariel there is an all-too-familiar intention of cancelling famous people in the past who led unpleasant lives.
But we have to recognise the uncomfortable truth that nastiness can stimulate creativity. Richard Wagner's anti-Semitism may have played into the themes of his operas, but there is no denying the enormous power of his music. It is certainly possible to listen to it without sharing his opinions.
Christopher Marlowe led a violent life that probably ended at the point of a dagger. Caravaggio may have been a murderer. They both produced extraordinary art.
At a less exalted level, Roald Dahl's nastiness generated some of the most popular children's books of the twentieth century, without creating a generation of equally nasty children.
We also have to accept that some of the world's greatest monuments were the creation of rulers who robbed, murdered, raped and enslaved, such as Tamerlane, the builder of much of Samarkand, commemorated in one of Marlowe's plays; while the Parthenon, far from being a proclamation of the virtues of democracy, was a celebration of the often brutal Athenian Empire. Gill's undoubted evil does not cancel out the brilliance of his artistic creations. One can admire skill without admiring personality.
