Benefit of Clergy
by Paddy 0′Cearmada

George Orwell once ventured into Art Criticism, albeit in the form of a book review.  Beginning with the famous observation: ‘Autobiography is only to be trusted when it reveals something disgraceful’ Orwell proceeded to use Salvador Dali’s autobiography to explore what he clearly saw as the depravity of his art.  Necrophilia, coprophilia, masturbation, and narcissism are all identified in the words of the artist and his art.  Orwell clearly does not approve, but the man who later brought to our imagination Big Brother, double-speak and the Thought Police, did not advocate that the works be banned or censored.  In fact he suggested the very opposite:
Now, if you showed this book, with its illustrations, to Lord Elton, to Mr. Alfred Noyes, to The Times leader writers who exult over the ‘eclipse of the highbrow’ — in fact, to any ‘sensible’ art-hating English person — it is easy to imagine what kind of response you would get. They would flatly refuse to see any merit in Dali whatever. Such people are not only unable to admit that what is morally degraded can be aesthetically right, but their real demand of every artist is that he shall pat them on the back and tell them that thought is unnecessary. And they can be especially dangerous at a time like the present, when the Ministry of Information and the British Council put power into their hands. For their impulse is not only to crush every new talent as it appears, but to castrate the past as well. Witness the renewed highbrow-baiting that is now going on in this country and America, with its outcry not only against Joyce, Proust and Lawrence, but even against T. S. Eliot.

History has of course moved on.  Orwell’s criticism now seems old-fashioned in an era when Dali is a sure fire Block-buster and crowd pleaser, with all night viewings at the exhibition held at the National Gallery of Victoria and a triumphant Gallery bureaucracy exalting in the young audience that it drew to the great bastion of fustiness.  Dali is now in the realm of the classical greats, and his exceptional draftsmanship and skill in painting (both readily acknowledged by Orwell) have secured him a place with the gods.  Indeed instead of the real world of the ‘sensible art-hating English person’ Dali’s art lives in the parallel universe of surrealism.

History has moved on, and not in a positive way.  Paul Yore’s work Everything’s Fucked first drew outrage when it was exhibited at the Linden Gallery in St Kilda as part of a multi-venue celebration of the work of Mike Brown, an artist who famously pushed the boundaries and who was himself prosecuted for obscenity.  Frightened by a single complaint, the Board of Linden closed the Gallery, and after re-opening with warning signs a sustained campaign by local political aspirants with very conservative agendas led to a police ‘raid’, confiscation of art works, and charges being laid against the artist for producing and possessing child pornography.

The work is a collage and installation with found objects and collected images including some that are naked and male with erect penises, or men urinating.  The child element appears to be the face of Justin Beiber stuck on the bodies.  The references are ironic and playful, but apparently to the eyes of the investigating police potentially pornographic.  The least that can be said is that this allegation will be tested in court, what followed was even worse.

Paul Yore was invited to participate in the inaugural Sydney International Art Fair which opened last week.  His installation was called The Incoherence of the Incoherence and incorporated images, objects and fairy lights to create a fanciful grotto.  On the afternoon of the scheduled opening a nervous administration reviewed the work with lawyers and on the basis that it contained naked child-like figures ordered that it be removed from view.   This dubious objective was achieved by the erection of a black screen in front of the work and the installation of a burly security guard to ensure that no-one could see it and presumably be outraged.

Remarkably the Chief Executive of Sydney Contemporary, Barry Keldoulis, had no doubt about the decision.  Determining that the work broke New South Wales law he is quoted as saying “Our decision with regard to the installation is about the law of the land and they are on the wrong side of it”.  More disturbingly Tim Etchells, known as the ‘founder’ of the Sydney Art Fair is reported to have said that the work was not of sufficient quality to exhibit.

Orwell gave his review the title Benefit of Clergy.  In 1944 that phrase still had resonance but today it perhaps requires an explanation.  Sometimes called ‘the privilege of the clergy’ it refers to a medieval provision that held ordained priests and some religious houses exempt from trial in secular courts allowing only for trial under Canon or church law.  Famously it led to the great dispute between Henry II of England and Thomas á Beckett resulting the martyrdom of the latter.  Orwell’s use of the term was ironic.  The ‘clergy’ in his review were artists, permitted through their genius to stray into areas of taboo like necrophilia, coprophilia or open discussion of masuturbation.

Once again history has moved on.  Commenting on the Paul Yore controversy Juan Davila an artist who has experienced similar criticism called the whole furore for what it is – a moral panic.  The exposure of systematic abuse of children, often at the hands of the clergy and in particular the Catholic Church, has made any reference to children a challenge.  Leaving aside the fact that the face used in Everything’s Fucked was Justin Beiber; no longer a child, but whose childlike features were shamelessly exploited and sexualised in promoting his saccharine music; the moral bastions now defending us from Paul Yore overlook the fact that their panic has its origins in a Church authority that hid hideous abuse.   These same Church authorities now benefit from the climate of fear by imposing their morality, aided by a government largely beholden to their cause.

Orwell foresaw this in 1984.  Fear enabled the perverse to appear normal and become the new norm.  Rather than ask what it is that Paul Yore is proposing to us about a corrupted world, he is instead excoriated as corrupt by self-appointed guardians and in the case of the Sydney Art Fair they impose untested law backed by a powerful Patron of the Arts who without hesitation declares what we can see.   To paraphrase Orwell their impulse is to crush every new talent as it appears, and to castrate the past as well.

With such moral guardians we are it seems but three steps from the Taliban.