Brit artists take great pleasure in giving former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher a hard time.
The latest example is painter Marcus Harvey, who has created a new silkscreen portrait print of Thatcher, entitled Maggie, that is comprised from various sex toys, vegetables and even a Tony Blair mask to create the Iron Lady’s face.
It’s not the first time Harvey has ridiculed Thatcher in his art. In 2015 he created a sculpture of naked Margaret Thatcher with pigs.
We cast these pieces for Marcus Harvey show to include sculpture of naked Margaret Thatcher with pigs https://t.co/ibyis9C5Hh
— London Mould Makers (@LDNMouldMakers) December 15, 2015
Harvey was part of the YBA movement (Young British Artists) that included Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin. He is best known in the U.S. for his painting of notorious “Moors murderer” Myra Hindley, that formed part of the Sensation exhibition, which opened at the Brooklyn Museum of Art in 1999 after transferring from London’s Royal Academy of Arts. Hindley was part of a serial killing duo (the other person Ian Brady was her boyfriend) that killed five kids in the 1960s in Manchester, England.
Marcus Harvey’s Myra.
A portrait of “UK’s most evil woman” and child murderer using a kid’s handprint.
Still potent pic.twitter.com/dvSUB4xqEi
— E (@paanipedro) September 20, 2015
Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani called another work in the show—The Holy Virgin Mary, which artist Chris Ofili partly made from elephant dung and pornographic images—”sick” and disgusting” and threatened to terminate the museum’s lease with the city.
Harvey’s painting of Hindley, made from casts of an infant’s hand, was hugely controversial in England, with The Sun newspaper writing: “Myra Hindley is to be hung in the Royal Academy. Sadly it is only a painting of her.” But Sir Norman Rosenthal, the Royal Academy of Art’s then Director of Exhibitions, defended it as a “serious and sober work of art.” The work is now owned by U.S. commodities trader Frank Gallipoli.
Together with his new Thatcher work, Harvey has also created a new silkscreen print of the Myra Hindley picture, this time with plaster casts of sundry plastic objects, including children’s toys and iconic sweet brands Harvey associated with the period.
Harvey was unapologetic, telling Heat Street in a statement: “People might struggle to see a connection between Myra Hindley and Margaret Thatcher, but to me they embody a set of cultural issues about post-war Britain, issues inextricably connected with sexuality, power, and perceptions of evil.”
Both silkscreen prints, created for Shapero Modern, are now back on sale at London’s Royal Academy. Brooklyn has likely moved on.
