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The National Gallery of Australia currently has an exhibition of paintings by a violent paedophile.
Don't take my word for it. One of the country's most respected art critics agrees.
"The ethical case against Gauguin is that he was a violent, fist-swinging thug, a paedophile and a serial rapist," Sasha Grishin who is an emeritus professor at the Australian National University said.
"Gauguin was a 'sex tourist', who dumped his wife and five children in poverty in Europe and took up residence in French Polynesia, where he married three native children, the youngest 13, the others 14."
Not a man of our times, you might think. Or of any times, you ought to think.
![A self-portrait by French Post-Impressionist Paul Gauguin 1888-89. Picture Shutterstock A self-portrait by French Post-Impressionist Paul Gauguin 1888-89. Picture Shutterstock](/images/transform/v1/crop/frm/3BUUzmFAhrhLyX9rFCubPq5/421eeacf-79eb-4cd0-8130-a31986366e8d.jpg/r0_0_2560_1439_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg)
And yet. And yet. Can we like good art - books, paintings, plays - by bad people?
The answer, to my way of fuzzy thinking, is yes and no. Sometimes I do and sometimes I don't, and I have no real rationale for my choices (so help me here, Echidna readers).
I can listen to Wagner until the fat lady sings her last high C, and Wagner was an avowed anti-Semite. You can even argue that his anti-Semitism comes out in the operas which I Iove. Hitler loved them but I do, too.
All the same, I've gone off Bryan Ferry because he seemed to have a soft spot for some dubious causes, including the hunting of foxes for fun. It's not the way rock stars are meant to be.
As Reuters reported: "The 61-year-old lead singer of Roxy Music told Germany's Welt Am Sonntag newspaper last month: 'The way that the Nazis staged themselves and presented themselves, my Lord!'
"'I'm talking about the films of Leni Riefenstahl and the buildings of Albert Speer and the mass marches and the flags - just fantastic. Really beautiful'."
He described Boris Johnson as "bright" (which Johnson certainly is but that wasn't the problem with him).
So I fell in love with Bryan Ferry's rendition of American cabaret songs. His version of Miss Otis Regrets is a masterpiece. I know that - but I no longer want it in my collection.
And Ferry's "sin" is clearly not in the same universe as Gauguin's, yet I love the paedophile painter's paintings. As a teenager, I used to spend my lunchtimes gazing at four of his works in the Tate Gallery in London.
I would do the same again, and I will no doubt pay the $35 to see them in Canberra.
There is no logic to my opinion.
I think it's partly that we forgive the sins of the distant past, with the different values of the different past, but we associate the songs of today with the artists of today who sing them.
There is no hard and fast rule. I, for example, can't quite forgive the Rolling Stones for their money-making when as a spotty teenage Maoist I actually thought Street Fighting Man really was a call to revolution.
I realise there is no sense to my bigotry. My views are illogical.
So what's to be done?
Should we shun the work of the following?
- Norman Mailer who nearly killed one of his wives in a fit of rage.
- William Burroughs who actually did kill his wife.
- Gustav Flaubert who raped young boys.
- William Golding who tried to rape a 15-year-old.
- Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, Roald Dahl and Edith Wharton (anti-Semites).
- Caravaggio who allegedly came close to murdering a waiter for incorrectly serving artichokes.
- The delightful movie Shakespeare in Love because Harvey Weinstein won an Oscar as its producer.
- Roman Polanski, the director of great films (Rosemary's Baby, Chinatown) but also a sex offender. Should we make allowances because he survived the Holocaust? Should we make allowances because his wife was murdered?
Personally, I'd forgive Caravaggio for almost anything. And Chinatown remains brilliant.
But I do wish Bryan Ferry hadn't spoiled it for me. His Miss Otis Regrets is lovely in its darkness.
And maybe it's a song for our times: she shoots the man who treats her badly - and then gets lynched by men for doing so.
HAVE YOUR SAY: Help me clear up my confusion? Do you like songs or films or paintings by artists of whom you don't really approve? Should the National Gallery of Australia be putting on a show by a violent paedophile (particularly given that it seems to think of itself as in the vanguard of wokeism)?
Email your response to echidna@theechidna.com.au.
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IN CASE YOU MISSED IT:
- The Australian military has acquired drones which can be used by soldiers on the battlefield. The Switchblade 300 is called a loitering munition because it can circle the area of a target and wait for the target to appear before striking. The cost of the weapon has not been disclosed.
- Music legend Herbie Hancock is making his return to Australia at the age of 84. His national tour starts in Sydney in October, followed by dates in Canberra, Brisbane, Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth. He has transcended musical genres for seven decades: he performed Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 26 with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra at the age of 11, and went on to become one of the world's top jazz musicians, joining the Miles Davis Quintet in 1963.
THEY SAID IT: "Writing books is the closest men ever come to childbearing." - Norman Mailer.
YOU SAID IT: I opined on Australian and British democracies. In passing, I mentioned the Joe Biden issue.
Cass was not happy about compulsory voting in Australia. "It's jolly good fun booting out hubristic and/or incompetent governments, but enforcing voter participation is a violation of one of the most basic tenets of human rights - the right to choose what one does with one's day," she said.
"Of course Biden should pull out and his family should stop encouraging his delusion! Staying in the 'race to the White House' is improving Trump's chances of a win!" Anita wrote.
"He should depart the scene," Barnard wrote. "I have never been able to understand why he was even considered for the presidency in the first place."
"It certainly looks like Biden shouldn't run again. I am really grateful for the Australian electoral system," Tony wrote.
There was a counter-view. "All the BS about Trump and dictatorship totally ignores the Demonrats [sic] weaponising all elements of the Deep State to persecute him for almost 10 years!" Iain wrote. "The corrosion of US democracy is totally the fault and agenda of the Demonrats [sic]!"
Oh, and Donald offers a compliment or an insult, I'm not sure which: "Aw gee Steve: you forgot Pooh-bah!!!"