Myra (painting)
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Myra is a large painting created by Marcus Harvey in 1995. It became notorious when it was exhibited at the Sensation exhibition of Young British Artists at the Royal Academy of Art in London from 8 September to 28 December 1997.
Painting
The work measures 9 by 11 ft. At first sight, it resembles a greatly magnified version of a black and white photograph printed in a newspaper. It was made using casts of an infant's hand to build up a mosaic of black, grey and white handprints, creating a reproduction of the iconic police photograph of a hard-faced Myra Hindley with bouffant peroxide blonde hair taken after her arrest in 1965 (although often reported to have been taken around the time of the trial of the Moors murders in 1966). The photograph is widely recognised in Britain, having been published in British newspapers in the decades after Hindley's conviction. Harvey has said, "The whole point of the painting is the photograph. That photograph. The iconic power that has come to it as a result of years of obsessive media reproduction."
