Gallery owner Anna Schwartz has defended her decision to severe ties with performance artist Mike Parr after a 36-year relationship, saying the juxtaposition of the words “Israel” and “Nazi” in his work on display in her gallery were “a deal breaker”.
Speaking on ABC’s Radio National on Monday, the Melbourne gallerist described elements of Parr’s exhibition at the Anna Schwartz Gallery, which included a performance piece called Going Home that took place on 2 December, as “hate graffiti”. Schwartz emailed the artist the following day to say she would no longer represent him.
Schwartz said she regarded Parr as “the greatest artist this country has ever and perhaps will ever produce” and it had been an “incredible privilege” to work with him.
However, she said, “when it got to the point of the word Nazi and the word Israel being on the wall together, whatever the intention … the co-appearance of the word Nazi with the word Israel made me sick,” Schwartz told the ABC’s Patricia Karvelas. “That was the deal breaker.”
In Monday’s interview, Schwartz said she was not censoring the artist’s work. The Parr exhibition, including a four and a half hour video of the 2 December performance, would remain on show in her gallery until its appointed closure date of 16 December.
“I have provided a neutral platform and support for whatever [artists’] statements have been. I don’t mediate the exhibitions,” she said.
Schwartz reflected on the loss of many relatives in the Holocaust, both from her family and that of her husband, the publisher Morry Schwartz. She said those who had escaped and come to Australia had seen the country as a place “they could reach in order to live calm, rational lives. And that’s what they have done …
“That is what Australian society has endeavoured to be, a place of variation, and a place of discussion, argument, yes, but argument doesn’t have to descend to hostility and the invocation and incitement to violence.”
Her decision to end a 36-year relationship with one of Australia’s most high profile artists came from feelings of deep hurt, she said.
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“He said to me before the show … I don’t want to hurt you, Anna. But he did hurt me, because it was an intentional ending of that relationship that I know was fundamental to me. And it was fundamental to him.”
“I can’t work with an artist who’s prepared to hurt me to that degree and to insult my culture and my lived experience, the generations that come before me, who have suffered and been annihilated.”
Parr has been contacted for comment.
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