ShortHand: Eric Gill - British Art’s Darkest Secret
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Hotel Mats Espoossa on enemmän kuin hotelli. Meillä on kotonasi. Kompaktista studiosta tilavaan huoneistoon, jossa oma keittiö, parve ja jopa sauna. Oli sitten työmatkalla pidemmällä komennuksella tai minilomalla. Meillä viihdut kuin kotona hotelin palveluilla. Hotel Mats Espoon matin kylässä ajattomasti tyyläs. Aina nykyaikainen. Tämän maistuvan hetkän tarjoaa keiju. S kaikki mikä on tärkeintä, ainoa, mitä on jäljellä jo, se maistuu pienissä hetkissä, ja sen nimi on elämänma. Niin sen nimi on elämän maku. Keiju. Päällimmäisenä maku.
Who was Eric Gill, and why is his art controversial?
Picked up a penguin classics book recently. Or tuned in to an old rerun on the BBC? Well, without knowing it, you've been consuming the work of an artist who shaped the visual identity of twentieth century Britain. Typeface designer and sculptor Eric Gill. And while you might not have known his name before, you're about to find out way more about the man behind the neat black lettering. Then you have a barking for. A devout Catholic convert who preached a philosophy of traditional craftsmanship and spirituality. Eric Gill was known as one of Britain's most celebrated artists. But decades after his death Twisted details from his very own diaries came to light. They painted a less than flattering portrait of the creative genius.
exposing him as a sex mad pervert who dabbled in incest with his own sisters, sexually abused his own daughters, and even indulged in sinister experiments with his pet dog. Luckily for Eric Gill, people weren't quite so hot on cancelling everyone back then, it wasn't really a thing. But today His crimes have a lot of people asking. How far can we really separate art from the artist? This is the shorthand.
To start, we are taking you back to January twenty twenty two, when crowds gathered outside the BBC's broadcasting house in London, watching in shock, as a beanie clad man scaled the building with a hammer. The man hacked at the iconic ten foot wall sculpture of Shakespearean characters Prospero and Ariel, above the building's main entrance, drawing gasps with every chunk of stone that tumbled to the pavement below. As for what has triggered this frenzied assault on the Beebe's stony guardians, well, according to Beanie Guy. The artist behind the sculpture was a pedophile. Police eventually got him down, and the beanie man was arrested for causing criminal damage. But not before he managed to gouge a good few holes out of the artwork that had proudly welcomed the BBC's work for since nineteen thirty three.
Leaving young Ariel conspicuously lacking his delicately carved nether regions. As BBC Bigwigs dithered over loudening cries for the sculpture's removal, The story blew the lid off an open secret that had been festering in artistic circles for decades. One that exposed an unsavory truth. That the BBC would rather have kept under wraps. They've got quite a few of those. So let's go back. Maybe we should just arrest everyone who applies for a job at the PBC. Why not, man? It's something to do, innit? Like it's just like they are everyone, every single person who's ever walked the earth is a paedophile, is how it's starting to feel to me. So let's go back and tell that horrible story once again, all the way from the beginning.
How did Eric Gill become a celebrated British artist and typeface designer?
The man at the centre of this shitstorm entered the world almost exactly one hundred and forty years earlier in eighteen eighty two, in the seaside town of Brighton. Arthur Eric Routon Gill was one of a whopping thirteen children born to the Reverend Arthur Tidman Gill and his wife, Cicely Rose King. A former opera singer who went by the stage name Rose La Rue. before going on to have a gaggle of children. Fucking It's like eleven too many. Possess. I mean There needs to be like four twins in there. I just I cannot imagine how this is possible. And the young Eric's artistic ambitions were clear from an early age. Inspired by the ornate lettering at Chichester Cathedral, Gill studied at a local college before moving to London in the early nineteen hundreds to pursue a career in design.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–1:02
2
Who was Eric Gill, and why is his art controversial?
1:02–4:00
3
How did Eric Gill become a celebrated British artist and typeface designer?
4:00–5:31
4
How did Catholicism shape Eric Gill’s artists’ commune at Ditchling?
5:31–8:36
5
How did Eric Gill’s religious beliefs conflict with his sexual behavior?
8:36–12:03
6
What do Eric Gill’s diaries reveal about his affairs and sexual life?
12:03–13:35
7
What did Eric Gill do to his family, and how did his diaries expose it?
13:35–20:02
8
How did Eric Gill’s designs become famous while his crimes were overlooked?
20:02–32:57