Writer quits Royal Scottish Academy over poems to naked artist

One of Scotland’s most prestigious arts institutions is embroiled in a sexual misconduct row after a veteran writer sent an “inappropriate” poem to a young artist inspired by her naked self portrait.

Timothy Neat, 79, resigned his honorary membership of the Royal Scottish Academy (RSA) accusing it of staging a “Stalinist show trial” and of making “defamatory assumptions” about his motives when it condemned the poetic “fan letter” he emailed privately to Decca Faire, a recent graduate of Glasgow School of Art.

He claims to have been responding to Faire’s work featuring a photograph of her naked body laying face-up on a rock.

He rejected a proposal that he should apologise in writing to Faire in terms agreed with the RSA, said he would not agree to keeping the matter confidential and resigned from a commission to produce a new show for the Academy.

The row dates back to March, when Neat wrote to Faire congratulating her on work she had exhibited at the RSA’s New Contemporaries exhibition in Edinburgh.

He included two poems inspired by her photographs and invited her to take part in a show he was organising for the academy, which was founded in 1826.

One began: “The thought of you: bare/ Naked on that rock, or up/ Against a wall: my/ God —the thought of thee —/ Gives proof that desire and sight/ Still drive love as fact.”

Neat received no reply, but two months later he was contacted by the RSA and informed that an investigation was taking place, because the artist had “advised the academy that she felt that the communication was inappropriate and made her feel very uncomfortable”.

He immediately responded, apologising “absolutely and fully” to the RSA and the artist, adding: “I did not mean to upset her or seek to make any kind of demands upon her.

“I am very sorry if my message was interpreted as being aggressive, suggestive or inappropriate. Again I apologise to her and ask her to forget it — and forgive a, perhaps, foolish old man.”

These apologies proved insufficient for the academy.

In a letter to Gareth Fisher, RSA president, Neat said: “I was surprised that you appear to believe you must protect Faire — not as a free artist but as a female minor who has suffered the ‘male gaze’ (your words) and, by implication, intimidatory and unwanted sexual advances from a powerful male using his status as a HRSA as cover.

“I do not know the age of Decca Faire but I assume they are in their mid-twenties. I am 79 … a Fellow of the Association of Scottish Literary Studies but enjoy no other public status or authority and far from being considered a powerful male I have absolutely no public authority whatsoever and live in an attic flat on two pensions that pay a total of £12,000 a year.

“The hidden assumption — in the attack on me — is that I am a male chauvinist pig who lives the spoilt life of a pimp. This is absurd . . . God Bless You, Sir!”

Faire declined to comment when approached by The Times.

Neat, the biographer of the poet Hamish Henderson, said he had not been minded to resign until he discovered that Faire’s own website “exhibits a considerable volume of powerfully erotic photographic self-portraiture”.

“Such imagery suggests that they are less juvenile and shockable than you, or your council seem to assume,” said Neat.

In the correspondence, Neat explained that his original email to Faire was sent as a fan letter. “I thought her art most impressive. I wanted to encourage her,” he said. His poems “were directly inspired by the art works I viewed” their titles borrowed from the artist’s own work.

“I accept that these poems are direct and deal with issues of sexuality and the earth,” Neat said. “My purpose in writing them was to get them to echo the power of the images they deal with. I genuinely thought they would mean something to the artist who made the images. Wordsworth described poetry as ‘the spontaneous overflow of powerful emotion’.”

The RSA said it had taken “the incident” between the honorary member and an exhibitor very seriously and had initiated an investigation at the highest level.

Fisher said: “We have worked hard to find a solution. Our council offered a solution to the author of the communication which they have rejected and subsequently resigned their honorary membership of the RSA.”

Giles Sutherland, the critic and author said Neat’s poems were of “a high literary quality in and of themselves” adding he could find “nothing in them that is remotely offensive, either sexually or personally.”

Sutherland identified “a cultural-generational gap, and a gender gap” between Neat and Faire. He added: “I would encourage dialogue rather than entrenched positions. It’s clear that the RSA have handled this matter particularly ineptly.”

Timothy Neat’s poems

Self-Portrait (2023)

Ecstasy exists
In the mountains: hides unhinged
In limbs spread delight —
Light lochan and High
Pass — there, where winds trace contours
Become themselves. Laid
Bare by forces know
The moment all – das echt: held
Ever in the mind. (For Decca Faire, Artist)

Where is Ecstasy, 2023 (A Photograph)

The thought of you: bare
Naked on that rock, or up
Against a wall: my
God — the thought of thee —
Gives proof that desire and sight
Still drive love as fact.
Ephemeral it
Maybe: and Spring no more than
Summer long — but when
It comes to looking
Back — it is the thought of all,
Was true of thee, lives
In the mind. Naked
On that rock: a Madonna
For our jaded time. (For Decca Faire, Artist)