The Guardian says BBC 4 will host a show called “Jimmy Carr destroys art,” in which the comedian will host debates about problematic people who have created art. Then, the audience decides whether Carr will put a flamethrower or hammer or find another other way to destroy the piece.
Among the objet d’art is a painting by Adolph Hitler. Other works include stuff made by at least three men known for their art and for sexual abuse: Pablo Picasso, Australian Rolf Harris (a longtime entertainer convicted in 2014 of sexually assaulting four teenage girls), and sculptor Eric Gill (a serial sexual abuser.)
The question for the show is whether you can separate art from the artist, an important question asked long before the #MeToo movement.
Channel 4 head Ian Katz told The Guardian that the show works like this: “There are advocates for each piece of art. So you’ve got an advocate for Hitler. There’ll be someone arguing not for Hitler, but for the fact that his moral character should not decide whether or not a piece of art exists or not.”
There’s been a backlash, of course, as The Guardian and others also have reported. Bringing Hitler into it is among the reasons.
There are questions about using Carr, who joked in a Netflix show that a positive about the Holocaust was that gypsies also were killed. (Can you separate the artist from the art for Carr, too?)
Olivia Marks-Woldman, head of the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, said it’s wrong to make “Hitler a topic of light entertainment” She told the Guardian: “The question of how far art can be linked to its creators is an important one, but this programme is simply a stunt for shock value, and cannot excuse the trivialisation of the horrors of Nazism.”
BBC News quoted a Channel 4 spokesperson saying the should would be “a thoughtful and nuanced exploration of the limits of free expression in art.”
But when you see the channel’s choice of images to market the show, you may wonder just how “thoughtful and nuanced” it will be. And the title of the show itself seems to answer its own question.
