You love the work; you hate the person who made it. How do you navigate that?
We’ve all had the experience of discovering that one of our favorite artists is, by our own standards, a really lousy person. That singer you love turns out to be a hateful, violent jerk, or the writer you grew up on is revealed to be a baldfaced racist, or your favorite director starts shilling for a cult that opposes every value you stand for. Sometimes, especially with older works, we can console ourselves that times were different, and hey, probably a lot of people back then proposed segregated sidewalks, right? Too often, though, the fig leaves of our justifications fail, and we’re left with the awkward fact that we love the work of someone who, if we met them, we’d probably want to punch.
Even stranger, sometimes we have the opposite experience. I myself recently came across the social media of a writer whose work I abhor, and which I have very frequently cited as a near-perfect catalog of What Not To Do. Turns out he’s a really nice guy, warm to his fans, kind and supportive to his fellow professionals, and a passionate and sincere advocate of values and causes I myself believe in. Dammit. Now I can’t mentally categorize him as “that asshole who writes that crap” any more! Now he’s “that fundamentally decent and giving person who writes that crap”, which is way less fun a category. And make no mistake, his writing is still indefensibly awful; this genuinely nice man puts in a full day producing complete crap.
How do you bridge these gaps? Which works or artists cause you the most dissonance? Have you ever flat-out given up on work you enjoyed, because you couldn’t stomach supporting the person who made it? Have you ever judged someone else for doing that, because you thought their reasons were wrong?
Well – does Louis-Ferdinand Céline sound like a nice person? No. In fact, he sounds like a despicable character, and he publicly agitated for horrible things in his lifetime. Was he a great writer? Yes, certainly. Is “Journey to the End of the World” a great novel? Yes. Is it worth reading, despite the author. Oh yes – it’s a must-read, I think. Céline is extreme example, in part because he’s truly a great arter, and in part because all the awful things he did and said were not just asshattery, he was a true believer. The awful things are… Read more »
I suppose one factor would be whether something you did about the art would benefit an artist you dislike intensely. If you can look at his painting, say, without buying it or a reproduction, that’s one thing. But paying to hear a butthead play the piano really, really well might not be the thing to do. Maybe you could find a piece by the guy on Youtube. What people “know” about Kipling, for example, discredits his work. But what they know usually isn’t valid. Hardly anybody knows anything about Tom Clancy, but, for some folks, his flag-waving discredits him. So,… Read more »
Nietzsche has a quote about how many a remarkable artist was a mediocre human being, and vice versa (probably thinking of Wagner as one example of the remarkable artist/mediocre (being charitable) human being, and perhaps his faithful friend Heinrich Koeselitz as an instance of the reverse case). I try not to learn too much about artists to avoid these conflicts.
You would have to draw the line somewhere, or else you would never read anything older than a century or two. If you only want to read from authors who were against slavery, against racism, and against gender inequality, you’ve restricted your genius pool down to…well, down to almost nothing before the nineteenth century. Maybe. Even MLK was willing to find positive things in the Declaration of Independence. You know, that little piece of propaganda written by a racist, rapist, slaveowning, nerdy, wide-thinking, narrow-minded theorist of liberty and human rights. It’s like I’m suggesting that authors might be contradictory and… Read more »
P.S. You would also have to remember that what you “know” about an author/artist may just be what you “think you know” about an author. Bear in mind that what you think you know about a person may be a half-truth, rumor, allegation, misrepresentation, media campaign, or urban legend. So, before you discount an artist because of X, consider the source of accusations of X. If you’re not sure, maybe take the work at face value on its own merits.
We sort of like this guy…
Geishas, Oil, and Marseilles: Art by Jack Varnell — http://ht.ly/jtPl3