EPPH - Every Painter Paints Himself

The Hanging of Myra Hindley

The Moors Murders resonate in British minds of the post-war generation. Myra Hindley killed 5 children with her boyfriend and sexually assaulted four of them. Myra’s mug shot and the horrific crime is burnt into the memory of many. So by 1995 when Marcus Harvey, a young British artist, memorialized her in a monumental portrait based on that photograph few had forgotten. The public were scandalized, a shock made worse by the manner of its making: the tiny image of a child’s handprint stamped over and over again.¹ Newspapers were outraged; gallery windows were smashed; visitors vandalized the painting; and guards at the Royal Academy were put in place to protect it. One newspaper even favored the hanging. “Sadly”, they wrote, “it’s only a painting.”² Was it a publicity stunt? Or does Myra fit the tradition of art as explained on EPPH? In other words, do artists today still keep mum like Manet did during the scandal of Olympia?

Think about resemblance first. If any or all figures in an artwork share some of the artist's facial features, there is a good chance from the outset that the image is the fruit of a philosophical mind and not a mere painter’s. The exhibition catalogue helped us make that comparison by placing Myra and Harvey on facing pages.  

Both Marcus and Myra glare at the camera from the the top of their eyes. Each eyebrow on the left angles upwards, almost sharply. His mop and her beehive bulge similarly. Their thick noses are the same length and both artist and painting have high cheekbones. In addition, a full lower lip protrudes beyond the upper one. Her flat chin, the only significant difference, is wider than his. Nevertheless their facial proportions are strikingly alike. Marcus Harvey, it can now be said, has fused his own features into Myra or recognized the similarities. He chose her in part because she resembled him and represented evil which in art signifies a chaotic mind. But that’s not all. Marcus Harvey also opted for Myra Hindley on account of their shared initials: M. H. And the odds on that happening by coincidence are hundreds to one. The conjunction is significant.

Artists over many centuries seem to agree that good and evil do not exist in the world other than as mental constructions inside us. What we think of as evil is chaos or the actions of a damaged mind. Harvey has said that he does not believe Myra murdered anyone and was probably just too attached to her boyfriend to extricate herself, her life too dull and boring to throw the relationship away.³ In all likelihood she was unimaginative and could not find a creative way out of her predicament. We too must construct a path out of the chaos of life on the way to becoming more fully human, more loving, more happy, more blessed. Artists, likewise, search through the creative chaos in their imaginations to find the unlikely combination of parts which, once put together, represent truth, beauty and wisdom. On both levels, ours’ and the artist’s, Myra’s mug shot represents the start of that process, Myra the painting the end.⁴

1. For another controversial painting from the same Sensation exhibition, see Chris Ofili's Holy Virgin Mary (1996)

2. Alison Young, Judging the Image: Art, Value, Law (New York: Routledge) 2005. p. 34.

3. Gordon Burn, "White Cube: Marcus Harvey: The Hand That Rocked the Academy", The Guardian, 6 September 1997

4. Harvey is not the first British artist to memorialize a well-known murderess. William Hogarth, England’s first major post-Renaissance artist, did that in his Portrait of Sarah Malcolm (1733) which also resembles himself.