Review

Ambition

Culture

3 November 2023

6 min read

The awe and outrage of Musk's toxic ingenuity

Walter Isaacson’s Elon Musk, is a biographic rollercoaster reckons Krish Kandiah. One marked by magnificent moments and moral crossroads.

Krish Kandiah

Krish is a social entrepreneur partnering across civil society, faith communities, government and philanthropy. He founded The Sanctuary Foundation.

Elon Musk, wearing a dark suit, stands on a stage to a white robotic looking surgical robot.

Elon Musk at a demonstration of the Neuralink technology in 2020.

There is something both inspiring and unnerving about Elon Musk. He is a game-changing pioneer and innovator in so many industries pivotal to our future: rockets, electric cars, solar panels, batteries, satellite Wi-Fi, and Artificial Intelligence. But he is also no stranger to scandal, controversy and allegation. In his latest biography, author Walter Isaacson explores the toxicity as well as the ingenuity that has come to be associated with the richest man on the planet. As he reveals Musk’s series of successes, and what has been sacrificed to acquire them, I found myself going on an emotional journey: from compassion to awe to outrage.

Compassion: a man familiar with misery

In the opening chapter of his book Isaacson draws attention to the trauma in Elon’s childhood. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Elon was socially awkward at school. When he once pushed back at a boy who bumped into him, he was being beaten up so badly his face was unrecognisable. When he returned from hospital Musk reports how his father reacted: “I had to stand for hours. He yelled at me and called me an idiot and told me that I was just worthless.” There are a number of similar stories from Musk’s seemingly brutal childhood. Errol Musk, Elon’s father, features heavily in a series of shocking revelations including that he slept with his own stepdaughter, fathering two children with her. The background of Musk’s chaotic childhood, his experience of domestic abuse, and his series of fractured relationships provides a context for some of the strange, indeed outrageous things catalogued in the book.

Having worked for many years with children in the care system and with refugee experience, I understand a little about the impact of trauma and how it can change the brain in profound ways. There is a great deal of evidence showing how adverse childhood experiences can cause long-lasting impact on decision-making, impulse control, relationship building, mental health management and emotional regulation. While many turn to alcohol, drugs or self-harm as coping mechanisms, others, perhaps like Musk, channel the pain into ambitions and achievements.

I found myself feeling profoundly sorry for Musk. No child should have to experience such prolonged cruelty both at school and at home. All of us need to know that we are loved and valued, independent of anything we have done or anything that has been done to us.

Awe: a man of magnificent moments

Musk’s ideas have revolutionised so many industries. The automotive industries move to electric power owes a lot to the innovation of Tesla. His Space X programme is currently changing the way we think about space travel. His company was the first to create self-landing reusable rockets and was the first private owned company to develop a liquid-propellant rocket that reached orbit; the first to launch, orbit, and recover a spacecraft; the first to send a spacecraft to the International Space Station; and the first to send astronauts to the International Space Station. He is also trying to revolutionise Artificial Intelligence (AI) through his company xAI - a direct competitor to Open AI even though he was one of their early backers.

Musk has a complex relationship with AI as he is not only one of the lead innovators in the field but also the most prominent of the 33,000 signatories of a letter calling for a pause to ‘Giant AI Experiments’ until there is, in Musk’s words, “a regulatory body established for overseeing AI to make sure that it does not present a danger to the public."

AI, alongside each of the other major interest areas in Musk’s work, is way beyond any dreams I ever had of a futuristic world. Musk has managed not only to imagine the unimaginable, but to find a way to get there with impressive speed, scale and sustainability values. The more I read about the innovations involved in each step of each project, the more impressed I am with the genius behind them.

Outrage: a man without a moral compass?

Despite Walter Isaacson’s clear respect for all Musk is achieving, he paints a warts-and-all picture of his book’s subject. We see a man who is ruthless in his hirings and firings, who has often treated staff and colleagues badly. In 2018, he famously called a rescue diver, helping to save teenage boys from a flooded cave in Thailand, a ‘paedo’, in what seemed to be a reaction to a snub to his offer of using his minisub.

In light of these sorts of outbursts, and his apparent desire to save the world from looming environmental disaster, it is no wonder that some people have accused Musk of having a messiah complex. Yet if he does, it is a very different mindset from the true messiah. He appears to me to be morally, emotionally and financially the polar opposite to the Jesus whose willingness to sacrifice himself on behalf of those in need was central to his claim to be sent from God. From the way Isaacson describes Musk, I see him more as a man on a mission to save himself than to save those around him.

The future? Musk, a man at a crossroads.

Isaacson closes his book with the following analysis:

“But would a restrained Musk accomplish as much as Musk unbound? Is being unfiltered and untethered integral to who he is? Could you get the rockets to orbit or the transition to electric vehicles without accepting all aspects of him, hinged and unhinged? Sometimes great innovators are risk-seeking man-children who resist potty training. They are reckless, cringeworthy, sometimes even toxic. They can also be crazy. Crazy enough to think they can change the world.”

I find this a disconcerting epilogue to the book. It suggests that we can pardon toxicity in the name of innovation, that the ends always justify the means, that morality and decency can take second place to advancement and wealth. If this stance were to be applied to, say, the development of AI, Musk’s fears of it becoming a danger to the public may sadly well be realised.

While factors such as grand ambition, the contribution to society, early years trauma, and mental health struggles may provide a robust explanation of why a person may be toxic, toxicity itself can never be excused. No amount of wealth can undo the harm toxic masculinity does to those around us. No amount of charitable giving can buy a person a generous spirit or moral compass. No amount of environmental awards can create the sort of world we really want to live in in the future – a world where people treat one another with the respect they need and deserve.

Elon Musk’s biography is unusual because he is still mid-journey. Who knows what else he may go on to achieve or fail at, to create or destroy? Will his AI revolution be a force for good, helping to create a better future for those who need it most, or will it become the behemoth of the doomsayers? What will future editions add to his biography? Is being ‘untethered’ really integral to who Musk is, or can he change? The visionary in me would love to imagine a redemption and transformation story for Musk that can unleash a compassionate generosity that could even overshadow his creative genius. The sceptic in me fears he may end up doing more harm than good.

Review

Art

Awe and wonder

Culture

16 July 2025

5 min read

This gallery refresh adds drama to the story of art

Rehanging the Sainsbury Wing revives the emotion of great art

Jonathan Evens

Jonathan is Team Rector for Wickford and Runwell. He is co-author of The Secret Chord, and writes on the arts.

An art gallery arch reveals a suspended crucifix and other paintings in a distant room

The Sainsbury Wing interior.

The Sainsbury Wing of the National Gallery has recently reopened after closure for two years for building works. There was controversy over the designs for the Sainsbury Wing in the planning stage but its use, once built, to tell the story of the early stages in the development of Western art was widely welcomed and appreciated.

The story that it told is essentially the story of Christian art and so the reopening of the Sainsbury Wing together with the rehanging of the National Gallery’s collection provides an opportunity to review that story. As a result of the completed work over 1,000 works of art - a larger proportion of the collection than has been previously displayed - trace the development of painting in the Western European tradition from the 13th to the 20th centuries from beloved favourites to paintings never previously seen in the National Gallery.

The Sainsbury Wing features works from the medieval and Renaissance periods. Painting came of age during this time. It moved from manuscript illumination to images on panel and canvas, overtaking metalwork, tapestry and sculpture as the most popular and prestigious art form in Europe.

An opening room contains works from the 14th to the 16th centuries, including The Wilton Diptych and Leonardo Da Vinci’s The Virgin of the Rocks, which together ask visitors to consider the full spectrum of what painting can do. This introductory room gives a sense of what these paintings were for and how they were used. Painting’s rise in status was due to all the things it can do such as tell complex stories, convey human emotions, fool the eye, capture a likeness, make viewers laugh, weep, pray and think. This room provides a sample of those achievements and the various functions painting fulfilled.

Throughout the Sainsbury Wing, new display cases are used to show paintings as objects viewed from all sides, not simply as flat panels on walls. Medieval altarpieces often had winged panels that could be opened or closed depending on the season or occasion. An example is included here to show how such hinged panels were used.

From this introductory room spanning the period, visitors can follow either a Northern European route or Italian route around the space, enabling influences between both to be highlighted. The key change explored on both routes is that artists in this period began to create a convincing illusion of reality in their paintings.

The earliest paintings in the National Gallery Collection were made in central Italy nearly 800 years ago. These naturalistic and intimate images of love, grief and suffering responded to a new interest in the humanity of Christ. A chapel-like space is entirely dedicated to Piero della Francesca whose work, with its cool colour palette and keen sense of space and light, possesses a dignified solemnity. Another room focuses on the spiritual power of gold-ground scenes of devotion, exploring the way gold in paintings was used to evoke the timeless, spiritual significance of Christ, the Virgin and saints, and set these holy figures apart from our world.

The galleries in the Sainsbury Wing were designed to evoke, for visitors, a Renaissance Basilica. Its architectural features make it possible to display paintings in a similar way to how they would have originally been encountered. The central galleries form the nave of the basilica and all the altarpieces displayed are now there. These galleries are devoted to works made in Florence, Venice, and Siena. The early Florentine room represents the principal point of departure for this new art. In the Venetian room we see the development of perspective, while the Siena room resembles a side chapel in the basilica.

An altarpiece made for the church of San Pier Maggiore in Florence by Jacopo di Cione and his workshop has been reconstructed and sits on an altar-like plinth to evoke the view of it originally seen by worshippers. Predella panels by Fra Angelico are displayed in a case in front of this altarpiece giving an indication of the way in which predellas interacted with a larger, grander altarpiece. The positioning of these two works also illustrates the movement in terms of realism found in the paintings of this period. The Ascension scene on the altarpiece depicts a statue-like ascended Christ while Fra Angelico’s resurrected Christ in the predella is more realistically floating in the air.

In a first for the National Gallery, Segna di Bonaventura’s Crucifix is visible down the central spine of the Sainsbury Wing, suspended from the ceiling. This enables today’s audiences to view the work in the way it would have been seen in the 14th century. Painted crucifixes were common in 13th- and 14th-century Italian churches, often displayed high-up like this one. Rood screens on which such crucifixes were originally placed were often destroyed in the Counter Reformation, which led to crucifix’s then being hung from the ceiling, as is the case here.

The rehang also presents several works back on display after long-term conservation projects. The Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian by Antonio del Pollaiuolo and Piero del Pollaiuolo is back on show after nearly three years of conservation and scientific examination.

The rehang of The Sainsbury Wing brings to life the way artists forged a new way of painting, painting with a drama that no one had seen before.

Despite the religious and political upheaval caused by the Reformation, the arts also flourished in Northern Europe during this time. Prints transformed the exchange of artistic ideas. Christians were encouraged to use images as a focus for meditation on the lives of Christ and the saints and paintings that were meant to be handled and examined close-up were created for the private devotion of members of religious orders and laypeople. Albrecht Dürer and Lucas Cranach were key figures, with Dürer’s prints, portraits, altarpieces and non-religious subjects transforming painting both in the Holy Roman Empire and beyond.

Christianity became the predominant power shaping European culture after classical antiquity, inspiring artists and patrons to evoke the nature of sacred mysteries in visual terms. The rehang of The Sainsbury Wing brings to life the way artists forged a new way of painting, painting with a drama that no one had seen before and with stories flowing across panels in colourful scenes. These displays also promote a greater understanding of how works of art were, and still are, used as models of moral behaviour, as celebrations of the deeds of holy figures or as a plea for one’s hopes, both in this life and in the afterlife.

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