This is something a lot of people don't understand. I enter into a relationship with the work of art, not the artist. I never met Allan Ginsberg and I'll never meet Woody Allen, but I've internalized their work, so it's part of me. I don't get these people that say "you shouldn't have that be part of yourself." What do they expect me to do? Denounce the artist every chance I get like they do in an attempt to exorcise their art out of me?
That's not why they renounce them. They just want to be applauded for saying the popular thing. Which is a downward spiral, because no one is quicker to cancel the moralizer than their own party of critics. They haven't actually interfaced with the artistic work; the concept of separating the piece of shit artist from the eternal art is way beyond them. Show me one great artist who said anything interesting about the world who wasn't an ever-lovin prick. I'm not saying "strive to be a prick because then you can be a great artist". I'm saying, separate the prick from the art, because if you don't, you have no art and you still have a whole lotta pricks.
> I'm not saying "strive to be a prick because then you can be a great artist". I'm saying, separate the prick from the art, because if you don't, you have no art and you still have a whole lotta pricks.
I love the way you’ve put this, couldn’t agree more! I really do believe that we lose a lot as a society by failing to separate works of art from their artist. Once something becomes part of culture it belongs to us all, not just the artist. You can’t undo a work of art any more than you can put toothpaste back in the tube, and nor should we seek to when it turns out an artist is a total bastard.
Polite western society made some agreement when they realized Céline was an incredibly entertaining shitbag. They agreed again with Bukowski, who knows why; they needed a sarcastic troll to counterpoint the really oh-so-sincere trolls. Every moralizing generation like the present Gen Z runs up against the fact that it's more amusing to read some total asshole's view of the world and laugh, than to toe the party line. The more moralizing a generation is, and the more emotionally bound they are to identifying with and reinforcing some prevailing view, the more titillating some drunk psychopath's apologetics will seem to the people who reject their totalitarian ideology. This is the problem for every generation that knows a little, enough to be dangerous, but not a lot, enough to actually control anything. And it's repeated itself in the 1840s, 1890s, the 1920s, 1960s, and again now.
All great art was made by assholes. You still have to be an outcast to make great art. But that doesn't mean being a rapist or something. It means rejecting both the dominant culture of making money and the subculture that demands worship of their totems and fealty to their structured speech.
We should all judge artists - if they're criminals and molesters. But we are not rightly equipped to judge their art unless we really understand it and can do better ourselves. I'mma get flamed for this.
Ginsberg and Kerouac's (the latter slept with underage girls) art was all about their lifestyle. I'm not sure I see the difference here. They did lots of drugs, had sex with children, and wrote about it and the 'insights' they got from their behavior. Their fame and work comes almost entirely from what they were doing.
This is not a true premise in the first place. There are a lot of writers, writing great things, who were not bad people. Probably a much longer list of people. Tolkien is a fine 20th century example, but if you have a specific field of writing you want to talk about, we can pull out names for that one. The same is true of other artists.
And should we separate the art from the artist? Are artists inspired by some divine muse that speaks through them, or is their writing the fruit of their whole self, personality, life to that point? Should I admire and read the self-expression of a man who believed pedophilia was a noble thing? If that's a fundamental part of his worldview, are the 'nicer' parts of it really independent from that, or is it all conditional, tangled and bound together, part of the whole weltanschauung of one man? Am I not perhaps, in some small way, picking up a little bit of what made him sick even if I ignore the ugliest bits? Certainly it won't affect me the same way - but do I want any part of that inside me?
