BBC has ‘no plans’ to discard statue by paedophile artist

THE BBC will not remove a statue made by a paedophile artist from its headquarters, despite admitting there is debate over his work.

A protester was on arrested on Wednesday after taking a hammer to an 88-year-old statue at Broadcasting House created by Eric Gill, an artist posthumously revealed to have sexually abused two of his daughters.

The BBC said following the protest that there are “debates” to be had about Gill’s life and art, but it has no plans to remove the Ariel and Prospero statue, depicting a man with a nude boy.

The broadcaster said in a statement that it “doesn’t condone the views or actions of Eric Gill”, adding: “Clearly there are debates about whether you can separate the work of an artist from the art itself.

“We think the right thing to do is for people to have those discussions. We don’t think the right approach is to damage the artwork itself.”

The statue of Prospero and Ariel at the door to BBC Broadcasting House was attacked with a sledgehammer on Wednesday afternoon. “With every loud smash,” reported a BBC witness, “there’d be a moan or a shout of ‘stop’ from someone in the gathering crowd below.” The plinth was sprayed with the slogan: “Noose all peados [sic].” Eric Gill, who made the statue in 1933, wrote in his diaries of the incest he committed with his sisters and daughters. Even the dog was not safe. That is a terrible thing. It became known through Fiona Maccarthy’s biography in 1989. Did it mean that sculpture seen as great art for 50 years then became worthless? If so, then sculpture from ancient Greece, where pederasty was culturally accepted, might be broken up for a rockery, too. That would solve the problem of the Elgin Marbles.