90 CENSURE : ENFANCE / MORT Marcus Harvey, Myra, 1995 Seve Penelas, " Censored ", Exit, n°8, novembre, décembre 2002 – janvier 2003, p.80
The work by Marcus Harvey, Myra (1995) was one of the sparks setting off the controversy surrounding the exhibition Sensation, Young British Artists from the Saatchi Collection, which took place at the Royal Academy, London in 1997. Harvey presented a large format portrait of Myra Hindley, a woman condemned in 1965 for participating in a series of murders of children and teenagers that shocked the British society. The portrait, made 30 years later and with Myra still in prison, was based on a photograph in black and white from the police file on the seriaI killer that was published in the newspaper several times. But it was not the choice of the person portrayed in the photograph alone that infuriated the public ; the straw that broke the camel's back was the method used to produce it : by reducing the picture to a distribution of white, grey and black zones, Harvey resorted to the collaboration of numerous children who impregnated their hands with paint and stamped their prints on the selected zones until the killer's portrait was composed. After tense debates, the exhibition was inaugurated with the presence of significant security measures and with the portrait of Myra included, but that same day it was damaged by two different people, two angry artists who, within an hour, had thrown ink and eggs at the work and were immediately arrested. Jaules Role, a 48-year-old London artist, made a declaration to the press right after he was released, " There are moments when you must do something about it. Otherwise next time we will have even worse, we will have a picture of the actual torture. " The work had to be removed, restored and set up in the exhibition again with protective glass.
Marcus Harvey, Myra, 1995, acrylic sur toile, 396 x 320 cm (reproduction photographique du tableau par Stephen White)