Now! Then! 2024! - Yorkshire On This Day

Excerpt

When Stass had his 1966 solo exhibition at the Leeds Institute, up a steep staircase, in a room occasionally used for exhibitions, one of his graphic paintings, entitled Lovers and Romances, and a drawing related to it caused a great rumpus. They are small, undramatic images about love. In their bottom left-hand corners they show a man and a woman, naked, more outlined than painted, without emphasis on the two bodies as physical objects. She is seated across his lap. We can make out two lines that may signal the first inch of the man’s penis. They are kissing; there is no indication of further sexual action. These are light and lyrical pictures, romantic rather than sensual. Two schoolgirls had been heard giggling. Someone alarmed the Leeds police. The police seized the offending works, and Stass was accused of “publishing an obscenity.” The press, reporting the trial, seemed surprised at the fuss: would this prosecution have happened in London? For two days, people called as “expert witnesses” by the defence spoke up for the quality and inoffensiveness of the pictures: Sir Herbert Read, the world-famous poet, art critic and educationalist; Professor Quentin Bell of the Fine Art Department of Leeds University, artist and author as well as critic; John Jones, artist and film-maker, who worked with Quentin Bell; myself, by then head of art history at Chelsea School of Art in London and The Guardian‘s art critic. I recall being asked what I would think if I “saw this kind of thing going on in the street outside,” and tried to explain that poetry and art were not the same sort of reality as daily life; that, for instance, when we were hungry we might go to a café or a restaurant but certainly not into an art gallery to feast on a still life. “Mr Paraskos” was found guilty. It was said the pictures would be destroyed, but in fact they were returned to him and a fine was imposed. Not too grave a matter? It lives on in Stass’s mind.

Comment

Comment

The Times establishes the date, but curiously doesn’t mention the better-known experts:

Mr John Edward Jones, a lecturer in painting in the fine art department of Leeds University, giving evidence at Leeds Magistrates’ Court yesterday in the case in which two pictures were alleged by the prosecution to be obscene, said that the work of the artist was “gentle, tender, honest, poetic and lyrical.” He was a witness called on behalf of the artist, Stassinos Paraskos, aged 33, of Lucas Street, Leeds, who had pleaded Not Guilty to two summonses. The first alleged that on April 28 last he wilfully exposed to view in a public place, the Leeds Institute of Art, an obscene picture, a coloured picture entitled “Lost Love”, under section four of the Vagrancy Act 1824 as amended. The second summons alleged that on the same date he exposed to view in the same place an obscene picture, a drawing signed “Stass” dated July 2, 1965. Paraskos was found Guilty on both counts. He was fined £5 on each and was ordered to pay costs not exceeding 10 guineas on each [total ca. £320 in December 2023]. An appeal is being considered (Times 1966/12/21).

Bruce Douglas-Mann in The Spectator, focussing on two contemporary London cases, agrees with The Times that the hearing only took place on one day and mentions nine expert witnesses:

It is not commercialised sex, however, which seems to get prosecuted, but works by serious artists and by writers who are trying to communicate something of significance… It would not be too difficult for those who want to tell us what we may be allowed to read to find magistrates who are known to have little sympathy with modern trends in literature and art, and to ensure that the right to trial by jury is excluded. With books there is at least the right to call evidence of literary merit; when pictures are attacked, despite the intentions of Parliament expressed in the Obscene Publications Act, the defence of artistic merit may be dismissed as irrelevant. Eight distinguished art critics had voluntarily agreed to give evidence of artistic merit in the Robert Fraser case. Six of them spent a fruitless afternoon in court. As the prosecution had chosen to proceed under the Vagrancy Act, the defence of artistic merit was excluded…

Each of these cases shows some disturbing and unsatisfactory features of the law on censorship and the manner of prosecution. Taken together they must cause serious concern, not just to the few who are upset by any individual case, but to anyone who does not wish all his art and literature sifted with every ‘distasteful’ feature of life as it is removed before it reaches us.

A private group of censors with money behind them already exists, as the Last Exit case showed. Sir Cyril was not acting alone. At least one other Tory MP successfully claimed the right to sit behind counsel on the ground that he was ‘behind the prosecution.’ If such a group is allowed loose in our libraries and galleries, and, by operating under antique laws, to exclude the defences that Parliament intended, we may come to recognise Dr Bowdler as an amateur (Douglas-Mann 1966/12/30).

Wikipedia on the 1838 act:

The Vagrancy Act 1838 (1 & 2 Vict. c. 38) was an Act of Parliament in the United Kingdom. It amended the Vagrancy Act 1824 to provide that any person discharged from custody pending an appeal against a conviction under that Act who did not then reappear to prosecute the appeal could be recommitted. It also provided that the penalty established by that Act for exposing indecent prints in a street or highway would extend to those who exposed the same material in any part of a shop or house.[2]

This latter part of the Act was to prove significant in a number of prosecutions of artists for allegedly exhibiting obscene works of art, even when those exhibitions took place in a private space such as an art gallery. One of the most notorious successful prosecutions of an artist under the act was in 1929, when thirteen paintings by D. H. Lawrence at the Warren Gallery, London, were seized by the police. A ban was placed on the paintings being shown in England, which is technically still in force, but they were shown again in London in December 2003.[3]

The last artist to be successfully prosecuted under the 1838 Act was Stass Paraskos in 1966, following a police raid on an exhibition of Paraskos’s work at Leeds College of Art. Again a ban was placed on showing the offending paintings and drawings in England, which is also still legally valid. However one of the paintings was shown at Leeds City Art Gallery in 1993,[4] and again at Scarborough Art Gallery in 2000, and several others are now owned by the Tate Gallery, London.[5] In 1969 a total of 35 people were prosecuted under section 2 of the Act and section 4 of the 1824 Act for acts of public display of obscene images in shop windows and exhibitionism.

Although aspects of the Act had been repealed in a piecemeal fashion by subsequent legislation, the full Act was formally repealed in 1981 by the Indecent Displays (Control) Act 1981 (c. 42), partly due to the lack of clarity in distinguishing between indecency and obscenity. [6] For example the advertising of contraceptives was considered obscene from 1857, but fell under the ambit of the new act of 1981.

A great introduction to the man by his son, Michael Paraskos:

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Original

When Stass had his 1966 solo exhibition at the Leeds Institute, up a steep staircase, in a room occasionally used for exhibitions, one of his graphic paintings, entitled Lovers and Romances, and a drawing related to it caused a great rumpus. They are small, undramatic images about love. In their bottom left-hand corners they show a man and a woman, naked, more outlined than painted, without emphasis on the two bodies as physical objects. She is seated across his lap. We can make out two lines that may signal the first inch of the man’s penis. They are kissing; there is no indication of further sexual action. These are light and lyrical pictures, romantic rather than sensual.

Two schoolgirls had been heard giggling. Someone alarmed the Leeds police. Technically speaking this was a public display, though very much inside the Institute and for the College of Art around the corner. The police seized the offending works, and Stass was accused, under the Vagrancy Acts of 1824 and 1838 of ‘publishing an obscenity’. (The question whether it was not the College that was actually guilty of ‘publishing’ this art was never asked. Easier to go for the individual.)

The trial must have been a painful experience for him: a strange situation in a strange country. Today we are all more relaxed about these things, and the accused might well be heroicized by the media. Even then, the press, reporting the trial, seemed surprised at the fuss: would this prosecution have happened in London? The trial took place before three magistrates. For two days, people called as ‘expert witnesses’ by the defence spoke up for the quality and inoffensiveness of the pictures: Sir Herbert Read, the world-famous poet, art critic and educationalist; Professor Quentin Bell of the Fine Art Department of Leeds University, artist and author as well as critic; John Jones, artist and film-maker, who worked with Quentin Bell; myself, by then head of art history at Chelsea School of Art in London and The Guardian’s art critic. We did our best to sound reasonable. I recall being asked what I would think if I ‘saw this kind of thing going on in the street outside’, and tried to explain that poetry and art were not the same sort of reality as daily life that, for instance, when we were hungry we might go to a café or a restaurant but certainly not into an art gallery to feast on a still life. What if we saw a man being crucified in the street? It was all a waste of time. ‘Mr Paraskos’ was found guilty. It was said the pictures would be destroyed, but in fact they were returned to him and a fine was imposed. Not too grave a matter? It lives on in Stass’s mind.

The most immediate consequence was two-fold. The head of the College, Eric Taylor, arranged for Stass to be given part-time teaching: two days a week. Stass had already, since 1963, been teaching under Tom Hudson at the Leicester School of Art. To be teaching in, so to speak, his own College was an additional confirmation of respect, especially after that prosecution. The other consequence of the trial was that there was talk in London of raising the question of obscenity laws as relating to this instance in Parliament. No one thought them effective or satisfactory (they have been amended since, but the situation remains unsatisfactory, as it must in a such private-public matters where people generally want freedom for themselves but often seem to feel that others need the protection of censorship). Stass received letters from the Home Office, signed by the eminent politician Tom Driberg, who was writing on behalf of the even more eminent Roy Jenkins (the late Lord Jenkins, then Home Office Minister in Harold Wilson’s government). They expressed sympathy for Stass; this would not happen again, and if Stass cared to let the Home Office know when he was next exhibiting work in London, the Minister would make a point of coming to see it and bring with him Jennie Lee, the admirable Labour Member of Parliament who was Minister for the Arts. The United Kingdom has a gift for fudging issues where morality and law conflict, but this unambiguous encouragement – implying, if not actually stating, disagreement with the court’s decision – was both bold and admirable.

738 words.

Tags

Tags are assigned inclusively on the basis of an entry’s original text and any comment. You may find this confusing if you only read an entry excerpt.

• Bell, Quentin (1910-96) (1), art historian and author, first Professor of Fine Art at the University of Leeds (1959-67) ·
• Censorship (3) ·
• Cyprus (1) ·
• Drawing (1) ·
• Human sexual activity (5) ·
• Indecent Displays (Control) Act 1981 (1) ·
• Jenkins, Roy (1) ·
• Jones, John Edward (1926-2010) (1), painter, film-maker, Joyce scholar, magic-lantern expert, teacher at Leeds University ·
• Leeds Arts University (1) ·
• 📌Leeds (235) ·
• London (74) ·
• Love (3) ·
• Lynton, Norbert (1) ·
• Obscene Publications Act 1959 (1) ·
• Obscenity (2) ·
• Painting (1) ·
• Paraskos, Michael (1969-) (1), novelist, lecturer, art critic ·
• Paraskos, Stass (1933-2014) (1), Cyprus-born artist, teacher and writer ·
• Penis (3) ·
• Pornography (1) ·
• Read, Herbert (1) ·
• Robert Fraser (art dealer) (1) ·
• Stass Paraskos obscenity trial 1966 (1) ·
• Vagrancy Act 1824 (3) ·
• Vagrancy Act 1838 (1) ·
• Visual arts (2) ·
• West Yorkshire Police (5) ·

All tags.

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