Agree or Disagree - "Trust the art, not the artist"

[el_bryanto]

This is inspired by a recent Salon story entitled "I love a rapist’s artwork: A brutal crime, a delicate work" - which had me reflecting on a number of other stories throughout the year - particularly involving Bill Cosby, Woody Allen, Mark Wahlberg and others.

Bryant

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[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

1. I think the issue is support.

Is what you're doing going to support the artist? Ie, do they get royalties on tv shows that might not get aired again if too few people watch them? Or on a CD or DVD you buy? Or book?

I might buy a secondhand cd of music that I loved before finding out the artist was a horrible person, knowing that they will not benefit in any way from such a transaction, but I won't buy a new book from someone like Orson Scott Card.

[el_bryanto]

2. Would you patronize a store that employs someone with the same views as Orson Scott Card? nt

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

3. Employs? Quite possibly.

If it's a huge chain, for instance, it's almost a certainty that someone, somewhere, that they employ has such views.

If it's a self-employment situation, though, and they're the sole employee, they have freedom of speech, but that comes with freedom of consequences. If they pull up in a vehicle that has racist, sexist, or other hate speech supporting type of bumper stickers or say such things while I'm talking to them, I will look elsewhere for someone to do the work.

[el_bryanto]

5. So in an ideal world someone with the views of Orson Scott Card would not be employable

I mean the first part is basically "I wouldn't want to, but if I don't know, I'm not going to make an issue of finding out."

I can't really boycott Card myself, as I don't want to read his work. While he wrote a couple of books early on I thought were quite good, like many Sci Fi Authors he kind of descended into his 3-4 favorite tropes, and he never wrote particularly engaging characters. So the novelty wore off.

Let me ask another question - if someone said to you "I don't know why people lionize people like Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin - ok they were competent musicians but they killed themselves with drugs and decadence - that's really not the way people should live," how would you respond?

Bryant

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

20. In an ideal world, probably neither would I.

It is my sincerest hope that in the future, people will look back at the way we (myself included) live and behave with utter disgust. Because that will mean (I hope) that they will have progressed so far that we seem utterly barbaric to them.

As to your other question, that's fine too - it's an opinion, just like my own. I'm not saying OMG, everyone needs to boycott Card. I'm saying based upon my own beliefs, I will do so. So if there are people out there who won't listen to Hendrix or Joplin based on their own choices, that's their choice as well.

[kelly1mm]

4. D. W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation is a masterpiece of cinema (and blatently racist and the KKK are

the heros) and Leni Riefenstahl's classic Triumph of the Will is still taught in film schools, marketing classes, and political science classes as propaganda films as pieces of art. The film glorifies Hitler's rise to power in pre-WWII Germany.

So, yes, I am a firm believer in separating art from the artist.

[Recursion]

6. I think any film student still watches Riefenstahl and Eisenstein

And any composition student still listens to Prokofiev

[el_bryanto]

7. Should any student of comedy listen to Bill Cosby or Woody Allen? nt

[Recursion]

8. I would hope so

I don't think you can understand American film today without an understanding of Allen's work,and there's absolutely no way you could understand American television today without studying Cosby's work.

[kelly1mm]

9. Yes. Comedic timing, nuance, manerisms can all be studied. Don't have to 'be' the person

you are trying to emulate certain aspects of. Additionally, simply being a mimic is not usually the best way to create your own art, IMO

[el_bryanto]

10. Well you might be able to get their works out of the library

or off the internet - but what about buying a Cosby comedy album or an Allen movie - a portion of that money goes to support two men that are considered Rapists?

It's one thing to support the works of artists long dead or who's work is in the public domain - but somethign different if they are still alive and profiting from it?

Bryant

[kelly1mm]

11. As I said above, I separate the art from the artist in many cases. Others may not. If you are one

that cannot then that is fine and you should act accordingly.

If I liked Bill Cosby's art I would buy it. I own several DVD's staring Mel Gibson. I assume he gets some small portion of the proceeds from those DVD's. I have no qualms about that either.

[seabeyond]

12. nope. does not work for me, even a little. further, i think this mentality promotes the rape

culture. a total rejection is the point, by a society, as far as i am concerned.

i did not read the salon link you posted to. just stating my opinion of the question you ask.

no. i cannot/will not ignore rape, to "enjoy" the art.

bullshit.

[el_bryanto]

14. Fair enough. I can certainly understand that as a viable response.

I am more conflicted because I do quite like some of Woody Allen's movies, but the evidence points to him being a rapist.

Bryant

[seabeyond]

15. rapist roethlisberger on the way to superbowl, headline read, he redeemed himself for his past

(rape), because he was taking the team to the superbowl. puke worthy. he did not redeem himself for his fuckin two rapes we know about. people and the headline dismissed his rapes. that simple.

what kind of society, who will seriously argue rape is wrong. something so simple as rape is wrong. then say.... meh... until we do not care two girls were raped.

[el_bryanto]

16. I can't really boycott that game for the same reason I can't boycott Orson Scot Card

I wouldn't watch it anyway. I dont' like football and can barely work up the interest to be aware of what is going on in it.

But I agree that we do let athletes off the hook pretty easily. Much too easily.

Bryant

[frazzled]

18. Then you probably shouldn't look at Caravaggio's paintings

He freaking killed someone, and was continually assaulting people. Or Cellini, who self-admittedly killed several of people. Egon Schiele was arrested for purportedly having sex with a teenage girl (though who knows; I've censored my choice of works here, in case someone is offended); Fra Filippo Lippi seduced a nun.









It is possible to dissociate the work from the real life of its maker, imo. There are a lot of artists, writers, filmmakers, etc. with whom I'd disagree, either in their lives or their politics. But they still might have been great artists.

[seabeyond]

23. rape. merely disagree? polanski, allen, cosby are alive and reap the adulation and

admiration and support. big difference from long since dead.

i stand by my original reply stating these people alive that are allowed to still be respected as known rapist by their supporters and fans and financial reward are part of the rape culture. they should be rejected by society at the very least.

[frazzled]

28. We can't apply different standards to the living and dead

when we're speaking of their art. Leaving Cosby aside (since he is a popular-culture comedian rather than an "artist&quot .

You either believe the films of Roman Polanski are great, despite his troubled personal life, or you don't. You can't dismiss talking about the art because of the person. (And in Polanski's case, that discussion is difficult: he survived the killing of his family in the Holocaust and, later, the brutal murder of his wife; his transgression with an underage girl happened a half century ago. Maybe it's time to reassess.)

If you'd lived in Caravaggio's times you would have rejected his art along with his person, and that would have been a tragedy.

A painting or film is a thing, not a person. Judge it on its own merits.

[seabeyond]

30. yes, we cn apply a different standard. i did. and i explained clearly, why, in my first and second

reply

further, IF i know a history of an artist that repulses me, i expect i would be influenced in a negative manner looking at their art.

validating these rapists work, is validating their rape. there really is no other way to interpret that. we claim to have an issue with rape, until we no longer have an issue with rape. that is our own moral compass and no longer about the rapist.

[CTyankee]

31. Yes, entirely. As an amateur art historian here I give my admiration and support.

[CTyankee]

33. I think we have moved on from the centuries that this art produced...

as an art historian I know all about this. It is history. I get it. But the art remains. It is there and must be interpreted with all its shortcomings. We understand this. It is not difficult. But it is a different time and place. We can cope with change.

[frazzled]

34. I do not understand your statement

especially coming from an art historian. Exactly what would your line of demarcation be for packing away things in "history" to make them acceptable? Caravaggio? Turner? (he was quite the shitty little man, but oh, what beautiful paintings), Schiele? Picasso? Giacometti? de Kooning? Hirst? Koons?

The question is not one of different times or of putting things away into historical boxes, which apparently, once tied up in a nice bow, make them more acceptable in some people's minds. It's about the ability to separate works of art from the people who make them. Art is a thing, sometimes just an idea. People are people. You can judge one without judging the other.

There are some very nice and moral people who make crappy art. There are some quite nasty people who make good art. And vice versa. I should think we'd all be able to understand the difference between personal morality and aesthetic value.

[CTyankee]

35. I think we don't disagree. I was trying to say that we can and should judge

the artist's criminality but that the artist's work is separate from his personal misbehavior. I did an entire independent study in grad school on Caravaggio, not just his art but his life and times since this was in the context of Liberal Studies. I have drawn on my observations in that study here on DU in the several essays I wrote for posting. Interestingly, I will be posting an essay I have just finished on Filippo Lippi and the famed seduction of Lucrezia Buti, his 17 year old model for the Virgin Mary (and for Salome). He was supposed to be her Convent's chaplain (she was a novitiate at the time). Some spiritual adviser! But those works of art remain, collected in the Uffizi and in situ in the Duomo of Prato. I can judge him harshly as a human being and still appreciate his place in art history and how he influenced Botticelli (who was one of his young assistants).

[el_bryanto]

36. Judging art made by people long dead is one thing - they aren't around anymore

They aren't benefiting from the art that they produced. Does it change when the person in question is alive right now, and still profiting from the celebration of his work?

Bryant

[CTyankee]

37. I think you'd be right in holding the artist responsible for his transgressions.

I guess the question is more "Can you make a distinction between the artist's vision and his behavior?"

For Jews and many others, the composer Richard Wagner was a terrible human being, both personally and politically. He espoused the philosophy that informed Nazism, glorifying many of its political ideals of the "super race." Yet Jewish musicians play his music and Jews and others who despise Nazi ideology are opera goers.

I would love to visit the Belvedere Museum in Vienna. However, the whole episode with the painting "Adele Bloch-Bauer" made me disgusted with Austria. As late as 2006 the museum (that is the state owned museum) was claiming that the painting was part of Austrian "patrimony" (it was stolen by the Nazis)! It is in the Neue Galerie in NYC today, thanks to lots of work, Ron Lauder's money, and the shame heaped on the 3 judge panel in Austria forcing them to confront the condemnation of the rest of the world. A jurisdictional question on that painting was even adjudicated by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Therefore I will not spend my money traveling in Austria.

[TexasProgresive]

13. Many artists, not all, are jerks who

have created great works of art. It's not a case of separating the art from the artist; once the work is complete it stands on it's on.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

17. Art is art. Artists are people.

[stevenleser]

19. I can do this in some cases, but not others. I think perhaps it's a good place to which to aspire.

Right now, consuming the art of someone I know to be a murderer or rapist or war criminal (i.e. the big crimes) is something I can rarely bring myself to do. In general, I believe that a person should be given due process and outside of the punishment(s) for which due process proscribes for them, society should not levy punishment.

As noted up-thread by someone else, I am not sure how much of the work of classical artists of antiquity we would all find acceptable if we knew all the things they did in their lives.

I can understand that from a purely intellectual standpoint, but I am still generally not able to enjoy/consume the art of folks I know to have committed these crimes.

[CTyankee]

38. I boycott Woody Allen's movies because I don't want my money to enrich him one

penny.

[dawg]

21. If you can manage the feat, then I don't have a problem with it.

For me, I have a hard time getting it out of my head enough to be able to enjoy the art. (And I certainly don't want to do anything to financially support someone I find repugnant.)

[el_bryanto]

22. Are there cases where you enjoy something and then find out something bad about the person

who created it? Does finding that out remove the possibility of enjoy it?

Bryant

[dawg]

24. I can see that happening.

I never really had a chance to get into Woody Allen, but now I don't even think it would be possible. Maybe I'll try to watch Annie Hall someday, I don't know.

I doubt I would enjoy watching Cosby show re-runs now. (And I loved the show when it was new.)

[el_bryanto]

25. The Cosby show is a problematic case because he was presented as so clean-cut

so to know that kind of ruins the character.

The incident with Michael Richardson (Kramer) didn't affect me the same way because while his chracter was a loveable oddball, he was never presented as clean cut.

Bryant

[dawg]

26. Ow, so cute ...

[geek tragedy]

27. It depends.

Can I watch something on human sexuality by a child molestor or rapist? Probably not.

Can I watch a film about the Mayans by Mel Gibson? Yes.

[Starry Messenger]

29. I am an artist that went to a snotnosed school with pedigree.

I cannot stand artwork that I know is made by an asshole or rapist. It ruins their work for me. Artwork isn't created in a vacuum, I consider the character and emotional content of a work that emanates from the artist. It can be impossible to think of something as beautiful when you know it was made by someone with ugliness at their core.

[Iggo]

32. "Stranglehold."

The artist is a degenerate piece-of-shit.

But I crank it every time it comes on. Sometimes I pay along.

It is, and always will be, one of my favorite songs.

(Still not sure where "trust" came into it. I just really like it.)

[Coventina]

39. Art History books would be pretty short if artists had to pass a morality test.

It is important to discuss the biography of artists as a way of drawing the fullest possible picture of their art in context, but it does not play into whether the art is considered good or not.