The Stass Paraskos obscenity trial was a notorious court case held in the northern English city of

Leeds Leeds () is a city and the administrative centre of the City of Leeds district in West Yorkshire, England. It is built around the River Aire and is in the eastern foothills of the Pennines. It is also the third-largest settlement (by populati ...

in 1966 involving an exhibition of paintings by the

Cyprus Cyprus ; tr, Kıbrıs (), officially the Republic of Cyprus,, , lit: Republic of Cyprus is an island country located south of the Anatolian Peninsula in the eastern Mediterranean Sea. Its continental position is disputed; while it is geo ...

-born British artist, Stass Paraskos.

Background

Stass Paraskos was born in

in 1933, but moved to England in 1953. Settling in the city of Leeds he enrolled for classes at

Leeds College of Art Leeds Arts University is a specialist arts further and higher education institution, based in the city of Leeds, West Yorkshire, England, with a main campus opposite the University of Leeds. History It was founded in 1846 as the Leeds Scho ...

and became a painter. In 1961 he began teaching at

, and in 1966 an exhibition of his work, under the title ''Lovers and Romances,'' was organised for him by fellow artists and Leeds College of Art lecturers, Patrick Hughes and

Robin Page Robin Page (2 November 1932 – 12 May 2015) was a British painter. He was one of the early members of the Fluxus art movement. Biography Page was born in England in 1932. His father, Peter Carter-Page, was a humorist and cartoonist who worked ...

, in the art college's gallery, known as the Leeds Institute Gallery.

Obscenity trial

When the exhibition opened it was allegedly visited by local school group, but the teacher leading the group objected to the painting called Lovers and Romances and two colour sketches on the grounds that they showed a woman masturbating a man. The teacher reported the exhibition to the local police force and the exhibition was raided by the police and closed down. Although initially the Chief Constable of City of Leeds Police decided no action should be taken, during the Chief Constable's absence on vacation a decision was made to prosecute Paraskos after all. Consequently, Paraskos was charged under Section 4 of Vagrancy Act 1824 and Section 2 of the Vagrancy Act 1838, and under the Obscene Publications Act 1959. Following this, Paraskos was summonsed to appear in court in Leeds on a charge of displaying paintings that were 'lewd and obscene', in contravention of the Vagrancy Acts and that the images were likely to ‘corrupt and deprave' anyone who saw them. This court case was one of a number of important legal challenges to the freedom of the arts in the 1960s and 70s, starting with the Lady Chatterley trial in 1960, and ending with the '' Oz'' magazine trial in 1971. However, 1966 appears to have been a key year in attempts by the British legal authorities to place restrictions on artistic freedom, with attempted and actual prosecutions that year of an exhibition at the Robert Fraser Gallery in London of paintings by

Jim Dine Jim Dine (born June 16, 1935 in Cincinnati, Ohio) is an American artist whose œuvre extends over sixty years. Dine’s work includes painting, drawing, printmaking (in many forms including lithographs, etchings, gravure, intaglio, woodcuts, l ...

, and a display of prints by the Victorian artist,

Aubrey Beardsley Aubrey Vincent Beardsley (21 August 187216 March 1898) was an English illustrator and author. His black ink drawings were influenced by Woodblock printing in Japan, Japanese woodcuts, and depicted the grotesque, the decadent, and the erotic. He ...

, at the

Victoria and Albert Museum The Victoria and Albert Museum (often abbreviated as the V&A) in London is the world's largest museum of applied arts, decorative arts and design, housing a permanent collection of over 2.27 million objects. It was founded in 1852 and nam ...

, London, in addition to the Paraskos trial. As with these other examples, the Paraskos trial became an international cause célèbre, with articles commenting on and protesting against the prosecution appearing in both the national British press, and internationally. It was also cited in the report of the Working Party convened, under the chairmanship of John Montgomerie, by the

Arts Council of Great Britain The Arts Council of Great Britain was a non-departmental public body dedicated to the promotion of the fine arts in Great Britain. It was divided in 1994 to form the Arts Council of England (now Arts Council England), the Scottish Arts Council (l ...

in 1968, to review the obscenity laws in England and Wales. Despite luminaries of the art world speaking in Paraskos's defence, including

Herbert Read Sir Herbert Edward Read, (; 4 December 1893 – 12 June 1968) was an English art historian, poet, literary critic and philosopher, best known for numerous books on art, which included influential volumes on the role of art in education. Read ...

and

Norbert Lynton Norbert Casper Lynton (22 September 1927 – 30 October 2007, Brighton, England ) was Professor of the History of Art at the University of Sussex. From 1998 - 2006 he was Chairman of the Charleston Trust. He has published on architecture ...

, and messages of support from Britain's Home Secretary

Roy Jenkins Roy Harris Jenkins, Baron Jenkins of Hillhead, (11 November 1920 – 5 January 2003) was a British politician who served as President of the European Commission from 1977 to 1981. At various times a Member of Parliament (MP) for the Lab ...

, Paraskos lost the trial and was fined twenty-five pounds making him the last artist to be successfully prosecuted in Britain for obscenity under Section 4 of the

Vagrancy Act 1824 The Vagrancy Act 1824 (5 Geo. 4. c. 83) is an Act of Parliament of the United Kingdom that makes it an offence to sleep rough or beg in England and Wales. It is still mostly in force and enforceable. Critics, including William Wilberforce, c ...

and Section 2 of the Vagrancy Act 1838.

Aftermath

Out of this Paraskos was invited in 1967 to take part in a group exhibition, ''Fantasy and Figuration'', alongside

Pat Douthwaite Pat Douthwaite (28 July 1934 – 26 July 2002) was a Scottish artist. She has been notably compared to Amedeo Modigliani and Chaïm Soutine, the ''peintres maudits'' of early twentieth-century Paris. Life Douthwaite was born in Glasgow, ...

, Herbert Kitchen and

Ian Dury Ian Robins Dury (12 May 1942 27 March 2000) was a British singer, songwriter and actor who rose to fame during the late 1970s, during the punk and new wave era of rock music. He was the lead singer and lyricist of Ian Dury and the Blockheads an ...

at the

Institute of Contemporary Arts The Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) is an artistic and cultural centre on The Mall in London, just off Trafalgar Square. Located within Nash House, part of Carlton House Terrace, near the Duke of York Steps and Admiralty Arch, the ICA c ...

in London. Dury was later to become a close friend as they both began teaching at Canterbury College of Art in 1970. In 2007 the

Tate Gallery Tate is an institution that houses, in a network of four art galleries, the United Kingdom's national collection of British art, and international modern and contemporary art. It is not a government institution, but its main sponsor is the U ...

in London acquired two of the colour sketches that led to the prosecution, and these are now in the collection of the Tate Archive. In 2016 the Tetley Arts Centre in Leeds staged a reconstruction of the raided exhibition, comprising several of the original paintings, along with archive material, from Britain's National Archives, relating to the trial.'Obscene art of the 1960s returns to Leeds', in ''Parikiaki'' (UK newspaper), 30 June 2016, p.13; also, Chris Bond, 'Art that led to obscenity trial back in city after 50 years', in ''The Yorkshire Post'' (UK newspaper), 12 July 2016, p.9

References

External links

Official Stass Paraskos website

Tate Gallery Catalogue

The Guardian newspaper (UK)

ArtUK Public Collection Art Listings in Britain

* ttps://docs.wixstatic.com/ugd/f49235_40a9500396284d2b962eb5a3245439cb.pdf Original police file on Stass Paraskos {{DEFAULTSORT:Paraskos, Stass 1933 births 2014 deaths 20th-century British painters Alumni of Leeds Arts University Obscenity controversies in painting