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Melbourne gallery owner Anna Schwartz says she felt performance artist Mike Parr was intentionally ending their 36-year relationship by creating a political artwork in her gallery that made her feel \u201csick\u201d.<\/p>\n
Schwartz, who had represented Parr for decades until last week, has explained the reason she dropped him was because he painted the word \u201cNazi\u201d next to the word \u201cIsrael\u201d in blood-red in a performance at her gallery earlier this month.<\/p>\n
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Anna Schwartz has spoken about why she dropped artist Mike Parr from her gallery.<\/span>Credit: <\/span>Joe Armao<\/cite><\/p>\n \u201cMike Parr is the greatest artist this country has ever and perhaps will ever produce,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n \u201cThis work started out with slogans on the wall, and they were being painted blind, it was not very coherent. But when it got to the point of the word \u2018Nazi\u2019 and the word \u2018Israel\u2019 being on the wall together, whatever the intention … the co-appearance of the word Nazi with the word Israel made me sick.\u201d<\/p>\n Parr, 78, received an email the morning after his performance, saying his relationship with the gallery had been terminated.<\/p>\n Speaking on ABC\u2019s Radio National on Monday morning, Schwartz said she felt Parr\u2019s performance piece on December 2 was his intentional ending of their relationship.<\/p>\n She said the artist told her before the show: \u201c\u2018I don\u2019t want to hurt you Anna\u2019, but he did hurt me, it was an intentional ending of a relationship that was fundamental to me.\u201d<\/p>\n Schwartz said she and her husband Morry, who owns Schwartz Media, both had family directly impacted by and killed in the Holocaust. Those who survived had chosen Australia to move to, to get as far away from the \u201cmadness\u201d as possible.<\/p>\n She said for 36 years she had provided a \u201cneutral platform of support\u201d for Parr, but could no longer do that.<\/p>\n \u201cI can\u2019t work with an artist who has chosen to hurt me and insult my culture and the generations who come before me who have been annihilated,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve had hundreds of emails of support from a really wide range of people from Jewish people to directors of museums respecting and empathising with what I\u2019ve done,\u201d Schwartz said.<\/p>\n However, she said the work remains in place at her gallery because she believes firmly in the sanctity of the art.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is art and I have allowed that art to stay on the walls of the gallery,\u201d she said. The gallery in Melbourne\u2019s Flinders Lane had been overrun with visitors keen to see Parr\u2019s work this past weekend, as well as the four-and-a-half-hour video of the performance.<\/p>\n \u201cI think we had more people in the gallery than we\u2019ve ever had. And most of those people had never been to my gallery before and didn\u2019t even know who Mike Parr was.<\/p>\n \u201cI am not censoring art,\u201d she said. \u201cI do believe in the sanctity and integrity of the artwork as presented by the artist,\u201d she said of Parr\u2019s work.<\/p>\n She also spoke about the three Sydney Theatre Company performers who wore keffiyeh scarves during the opening night performance curtain call of The Seagull.<\/em><\/p>\n The difference, she said, was: \u201cThey didn\u2019t make an incursion into Chekhov\u2019s work\u201d, whereas \u201cthe work in a gallery is sacrosanct.\u201d<\/p>\n