Queensland gallery is no place for this kind of ‘art’

Good art should challenge viewers and make them think, sure. But in what world is a painting of dismembered genitalia anything other than a cheap shock tactic aimed at making people uncomfortable, asks Kylie Lang.

It is not often I agree with Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk, but she’s right when she says a grotesque painting depicting the Virgin Mary holding a penis has no place in a publicly funded art gallery.

Juan Davila’s Holy Family is on show at the Griffith University Art Museum until the end of the month after which it will return to the home of erotic art collectors Alex and Kitty Mackay.

It should never have left. The Brisbane solicitor and his wife are welcome to it.

Let those they invite to dinner parties suffer it.

Why subject others to such a degrading and offensive work?

Nothing against Mrs Mackay, who is obviously thrilled with this acquisition, but in telling The Courier-Mail that “pornography or obscenity is in the eye of the beholder”, she is sadly missing the mark.

There is already enough grubby “art” that is easily accessible, both in the real world and online, without this earning wall space.

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While some might think that denigrating the Catholic Church is fair game given the shameful and ingrained cover-up of paedophilia within the clergy, this work takes it too far.

Two wrongs don’t make a right.

And just imagine if it trashed a religion that wasn’t such an easy target as Christianity where the expected response is to turn the other cheek.

Juan Davila’s image, Holy Family (left) is currently on display at Griffith University Art Museum. Picture: supplied

Ms Palaszczuk says her staff has decided the piece is “too obscene” and won’t let her see it.

Good for them. This is positive censorship — and it should be extended to all of us by removing this disgrace from The Abyss exhibition.

How very predictable of a gallery director to defend the decision to include it — “the role of art is to challenge and push boundaries”, says Griffith’s Angela Goddard, like we haven’t heard this before — but what about the public’s right not to have lewd imagery shoved down their throats, as it were?

Telling people who might be offended not to bother coming is another familiar cop-out.

The real problem here is the appalling direction society is heading when demeaning “art” predicated on shock value and vulgarity is treated as perfectly acceptable in a mainstream gallery.

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As one Courier-Mail reader has observed: “Nobody has the right to display a giant penis anywhere in any form publicly is this way, religion or not. It is an affront to every parent.”

Another notes that if the depiction was of the prophet Muhammad, the reaction would be vastly different. “Muslims here and overseas would be proposing death to the artist at the very least. Some things, legal or otherwise are immoral and tasteless. This is one.”

And this: Hanging this painting is a “rabid visceral insult to all Christians designed for its puerile, banal shock value in order to gain cheap and instant notoriety”.

Melbourne-based artist Juan Davila’s painting has caused a huge divide. Picture: Mark Dadswell

The work is crudely based on Michelangelo’s sculpture The Pieta, which is housed at St Peter’s Basilica in Vatican City and depicts the body of Jesus Christ on the Virgin Mary’s lap after the Crucifixion.

Having seen The Pieta several times, I consider it to be one of the most breathtakingly beautiful masterpieces of all time. I challenge any atheist to disagree.

To send it up in such a fashion as Davila has done is deplorable.

RELATED: Virgin Mary penis painting continues to spark outrage

I think Archbishop Mark Coleridge is exceedingly generous in describing the university’s decision to hang it as “disappointing”.

State Opposition arts spokesman Dr Christian Rowan is more on the money, calling it in very poor taste, with the Holy Family being “vulgar and deeply offensive to many Queenslanders”.

The bottom line is this: society has widely accepted standards that must be maintained if it is to remain respectful and civilised.

That is not to say we have to live in a colourless, bland world that denies personal expression, but for every endorsement of something so vile that chips away at those standards, the closer we get to losing our moral compass.

Griffith University is one of the state’s biggest universities, attracting $300 million in government grants and funding last year.

It might time to rethink next year’s level of support, Premier.

Kylie Lang is an associate editor for The Courier-Mail.