Myra is a large painting created by Marcus Harvey

Marcus Harvey

Marcus Harvey is an English artist and painter, one of the Young British Artists .-Exhibitions:Harvey has shown work internationally in many exhibitions including ‘The Führer's Cakes’ at Galleria Marabini in Bologna, ‘Snaps’ at White Cube in London, ‘Sex and the British’ at Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac...

 in 1995. It became notorious when it was exhibited at the Sensation exhibition of Young British Artists

Young British Artists

Young British Artists or YBAs is the name given to a loose group of visual artists who first began to exhibit together in London, in 1988...

 at the Royal Academy of Art in London from 8 September to 28 December 1997.

Painting

The work measures 9 by. At first sight, it resembles a greatly magnified version of a black and white photograph printed in a newspaper, similar to the works of Chuck Close

Chuck Close

Charles Thomas "Chuck" Close is an American painter and photographer who achieved fame as a photorealist, through his massive-scale portraits...

. It was made using casts of an infant's hand to build up a mosaic

Mosaic

Mosaic is the art of creating images with an assemblage of small pieces of colored glass, stone, or other materials. It may be a technique of decorative art, an aspect of interior decoration, or of cultural and spiritual significance as in a cathedral...

 of black, grey and white handprints, creating a reproduction of the iconic police photograph of a hard-faced Myra Hindley with bouffant peroxide

Peroxide

A peroxide is a compound containing an oxygen–oxygen single bond or the peroxide anion .The O−O group is called the peroxide group or peroxo group. In contrast to oxide ions, the oxygen atoms in the peroxide ion have an oxidation state of −1.The simplest stable peroxide is hydrogen peroxide...

 blonde hair taken after her arrest in 1965 (although often reported to have been taken around the time of the trial of the Moors murders

Moors murders

The Moors murders were carried out by Ian Brady and Myra Hindley between July 1963 and October 1965, in and around what is now Greater Manchester, England. The victims were five children aged between 10 and 17—Pauline Reade, John Kilbride, Keith Bennett, Lesley Ann Downey and Edward Evans—at least...

 in 1966). The photograph is widely recognised in Britain, having been published in British newspapers in the decades after Hindley's conviction. Harvey has said, "The whole point of the painting is the photograph. That photograph. The iconic power that has come to it as a result of years of obsessive media reproduction." The painting consciously juxtaposes, as Jennifer Friedlander describes it, the tiny handprints of an "innocent child" and the "depraved world of adults", writ large on a gigantic canvas.

Harvey has also commented: "I know enough to know that she probably didn't do any of the murders, that she was just in a relationship where she was probably too attached to the man who was doing it to extricate herself. That her life was probably too dull and boring to throw the relationship away ... I don't believe that's 30-years-worth of reputation as one of the most vile and notorious murderers in British criminal history."

Harvey's agent bought the work, and sold it to Charles Saatchi

Charles Saatchi

Charles Saatchi is the co-founder with his brother Maurice of the global advertising agency Saatchi & Saatchi, and led that business - the world's largest advertising agency in the 1980s - until they were forced out in 1995. In the same year the Saatchi brothers formed a new agency called M&C...

 for £11,000. Saatchi later sold it for an estimated £100,000. It is now owned by US commodities trader Frank Gallipoli.

Sensation exhibition

The painting was included in the controversial Sensation exhibition of Young British Artists

Young British Artists

Young British Artists or YBAs is the name given to a loose group of visual artists who first began to exhibit together in London, in 1988...

 at the Royal Academy of Art in London in 1997. Norman Rosenthal

Norman Rosenthal

Sir Norman Rosenthal is a British curator. He was Exhibitions Secretary at the Royal Academy from 1977 until 2008. His encyclopedic programme of exhibitions which stretched from Egyptian antiquities to recent art production, included the exhibition of Charles Saatchi's collection of contemporary...

, the Secretary of the Royal Academy, described it as the single most important painting in the show – "a very, very cathartic picture ... It is an incredibly serious and sober work of art that needs to be seen." However, it provoked angry press and public comment before the exhibition opened, including the ironic comment in an editorial in The Sun: "Myra Hindley is to be hung in the Royal Academy. Sadly it is only a painting of her".

Four members of the Royal Academy – Craigie Aitchison

Craigie Aitchison (painter)

Craigie Aitchison, RA, CBE was a Scottish painter. He was known for his many paintings of the Crucifixion, one of which hangs behind the altar in the chapter house of Liverpool Cathedral.-Education:...

, Gillian Ayres

Gillian Ayres

Gillian Ayres, CBE is an English painter.-Early life and career:Ayres was born on 3 February 1930 in Barnes, London, the youngest of three sisters. Ayres started school when she was six. Her parents, a prosperous couple, sent her to Ibstock, a progressive school in Roehampton run on Fröbel...

, Michael Sandle

Michael Sandle

Michael Sandle RA is a British sculptor and artist, "widely recognised as one of the finest sculptors in the world". His works include several public sculptures, many relating to themes of war, death or destruction...

 and John Ward

John Stanton Ward

John Stanton Ward CBE was an English portrait artist, landscape painter and illustrator. His subjects included British royalty and celebrities.-Life and Work:...

 – resigned in protest at its inclusion in the exhibition. The Metropolitan Police

Metropolitan police

Metropolitan Police is a generic title for the municipal police force for a major metropolitan area, and it may be part of the official title of the force...

 Clubs and Vice Unit visited the exhibition before it opened, but could find insufficient evidence to bring a prosecution in respect of any of the exhibits under the Obscene Publications Act

Obscene Publications Act

Since 1857, a series of obscenity laws known as the Obscene Publications Acts have governed what can be published in England and Wales. The classic definition of criminal obscenity is if it "tends to deprave and corrupt," stated in 1868 by John Duke Coleridge, 1st Baron Coleridge.There have been...

.

Winnie Johnson (mother of Keith Bennett, one of Hindley's victims, whose body remains missing) asked for the portrait to be excluded from the exhibition to protect her feelings. She joined a protest group, Mothers Against Murder and Aggression, that picketed the show's first day on 18 September. The charity Kidscape

Kidscape

The London-based charity Kidscape was established in 1985 by child psychologist Michele Elliott. Its focus is on children’s safety, with an emphasis on the prevention of harm by equipping children with techniques and mindsets that help them stay safe....

 accused the Royal Academy of "sick exploitation of dead children" in an effort to attract paying visitors to address its financial deficit..

Windows at Burlington House

Burlington House

Burlington House is a building on Piccadilly in London. It was originally a private Palladian mansion, and was expanded in the mid 19th century after being purchased by the British government...

, where the Academy is based, were smashed. The painting was vandalised

Vandalism of art

Vandalism of art refers to intentional damage of an artwork . The object is usually exhibited in public, becomes damaged as a result of the act, and remains in place right after the act...

 twice, by two different artists, on the opening day of the exhibition, 18 September 1997. In the first attack, Peter Fisher smuggled blue and red Indian ink into the exhibition, concealed inside two camera film cases; he threw the ink over the painting and smeared it in. After witnessing the first attack, Jacques Rolé left the exhibition to buy six eggs from Fortnum & Mason

Fortnum & Mason

Fortnum & Mason, often shortened to just "Fortnum's" is a department store, situated in central London, with two other branches in Japan. Its headquarters is located at 181 Piccadilly, where it was established in 1707 by William Fortnum and Hugh Mason...

, on the other side of Piccadilly

Piccadilly

Piccadilly is a major street in central London, running from Hyde Park Corner in the west to Piccadilly Circus in the east. It is completely within the city of Westminster. The street is part of the A4 road, London's second most important western artery. St...

 close to the Royal Academy, and threw three or four at the painting before being stopped by an off-duty police officer.

The painting was removed to be restored, and was rehung after two weeks behind a protective perspex screen. Security guards stood nearby while the exhibition was open to the public.

Hindley wrote from prison to ask for her portrait to be removed from the exhibition, reasoning that such action was necessary because the work was "a sole disregard not only for the emotional pain and trauma that would inevitably be experienced by the families of the Moors victims but also the families of any child victim." Despite all the protests, the painting continued to hang at the exhibition. The exhibition drew approximately 300,000 visitors, significantly more than usual, but less than the 813,000 visitors attracted to the Royal Academy's Monet exhibition in 1999.

The reaction to Harvey's painting in London has been compared to that received by Andy Warhol

Andy Warhol

Andrew Warhola , known as Andy Warhol, was an American painter, printmaker, and filmmaker who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art...

's 36-feet-square mural Thirteen Most Wanted Men, which comprised large copies of photographs from a "most wanted" booklet published by the New York Police Department, and was installed in the New York State Pavilion at the 1964 World's Fair. After protests by sponsors, Warhol's work was quickly painted over. The reaction to the potent mixture of the sacred and the profane parallels that to Andres Serrano

Andres Serrano

Andres Serrano is an American photographer and artist who has become notorious through his photos of corpses and his use of feces and bodily fluids in his work, notably his controversial work "Piss Christ", a red-tinged photograph of a crucifix submerged in a glass container of what was purported...

's prize-winning 1987 photograph Piss Christ

Piss Christ

Piss Christ is a 1987 photograph by artist and photographer Andres Serrano. It depicts a small plastic crucifix submerged in a glass of the artist's urine...

in Washington DC in 1989 and in Melbourne in 1997, and Chris Ofili

Chris Ofili

Chris Ofili is a Turner Prize winning British painter best known for artworks referencing aspects of his Nigerian heritage, particularly his incorporation of elephant dung. He was one of the Young British Artists, and is now based in Trinidad.-Early life:Ofilli was born in Manchester. He had a...

's Turner Prize

Turner Prize

The Turner Prize, named after the painter J. M. W. Turner, is an annual prize presented to a British visual artist under the age of 50. Awarding the prize is organised by the Tate gallery and staged at Tate Britain. Since its beginnings in 1984 it has become the United Kingdom's most publicised...

-winning painting The Holy Virgin Mary

The Holy Virgin Mary

The Holy Virgin Mary is a painting created by Chris Ofili in 1996. It was one of the works included in the Sensation exhibition in London, Berlin and New York in 1997–2000...

in New York in 1999.

Later impact

The work was shown when the Sensation show went on tour, at the Berlin Hamburger Bahnhof museum from 30 September 1998 to 30 January 1999, and at the Brooklyn Museum of Art from 2 October 1999 to 9 January 2000, and later at the Saatchi Gallery

Saatchi Gallery

The Saatchi Gallery is a London gallery for contemporary art, opened by Charles Saatchi in 1985 in order to exhibit his collection to the public. It has occupied different premises, first in North London, then the South Bank by the River Thames and currently in Chelsea. Saatchi's collection, and...

 at County Hall

County Hall, London

County Hall is a building in Lambeth, London, which was the headquarters of London County Council and later the Greater London Council . The building is on the bank of the River Thames, just north of Westminster Bridge, facing west toward the City of Westminster, and close to the Palace of...

 in central London.

Harvey's painting remained almost unknown in the US, and caused little reaction when the exhibition opened in New York in 1999. Chris Ofili's The Holy Virgin Mary attracted greater opprobrium: it was called "sick" and "disgusting" by New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani, and white paint was thrown over it.

Harvey's painting made a controversial brief appearance in a promotional video for the 2012 Olympic Games in 2008.