I am an Egyptian. I’m 31 years old, and I spent most of my life living in pre-revolution Egypt, where opinions weren’t so divided or polarized as they are now.
Egypt has always had significant and influential media production, in the form of films, theatrical plays, TV shows, series and other stuff. Over the years, we’ve had our icons; people we always respected and looked up to; writers, actors, columnists, public figures and so on. However, after the revolution in 2011, we’ve seen so many of those icons (that we’ve loved dearly throughout our childhood and youth) fall from grace when they voiced bigoted, ignorant and demagogic opinions against the revolution, the youth and so on, vowing their adamant support to authoritarian rule and military dictatorship and saying stuff like “Kill’em all”.
My question here is: Can any person separate between an artist’s artistic contribution and their morals? I’ve heard many people say that the artistic contribution of these people shouldn’t be judged by their political and moral stances, considering that this art is unique no matter what. My own personal opinion is that an artist’s contribution is definitely to be judged with consideration to the artist’s character. They cannot be two separate things. My girlfriend knew a well-known writer whom she thought is an amazing person and loved his writing, but she also mentioned that he slept with around one thousand women in his life so far. My personal opinion on this is that: A person who sleeps with one thousand women will have to summon a lot of lying and deception in order to get this done. Therefore, I do not respect that writer, and therefore I don’t like his writing. Am I an idiot?
Yes, you are. Not for judging a man by his actions, but for filling in the gaps in ways that don’t necessarily make sense. You are assuming that the only reason a woman would have sex with a famous, eloquent man is if he tricks her into it.
Excuse me here, but it’s not ‘a’ woman. It’s one thousand of them. When you have been involved with one thousand women and you’re only 40-something years old, this involves having to lie, to delete SMS messages, to answer the phone privately, to make false excuses, and to protect all of this with layers and layers of lies. If you believe that sleeping with one thousand women can be done smoothly, without questions and on schedule, then you’ll have to excuse me.
I’m not discussing the ‘reason’ a woman would sleep with him, but rather the logistics involved in getting this done, and I have therefore filled in the gaps with common sense.
Although I agree with Grumman that deception and lying wouldn’t be required for someone with a large fanbase to sleep with a lot of women, I don’t think you’re an idiot.
Consuming art is an emotional thing, and our emotions do not exist in a vacuum. Some people are able to separate the artist from the art, and even think this should be the ideal of everyone, but there are perfectly good reasons not to.
That sort of attitude irks me. It exudes a sort of religious fundamentalism or moral indignation that over rides logic that I really can’t relate to. There’s nothing stopping a serial killer from writing a good book. Either the book is good, or it’s not. When someone is dismayed when they find out their favorite author doesn’t share their political party or they cheated on their wife or something silly like that and ends up dropping them I think they must have a rather limited outlook on life.
If you want to go down the PC holier than thou path, the vast majority of artists through history were racist misogynists.
You’re right to some extent, but I’m talking specifically (I’m mistaken to have not made it clear in my original post) about a broad margin of creation that involves the expression of very gentle and tender human feelings, such as in a poem, and then you read in the newspaper that the poet condones a crime in which the police killed thirty-seven prisoners in cold blood inside a prisoner transport vehicle with the pretext of the crime being that the prisoners ‘rebelled’. After this, when I go back to read this poet’s poetry and see a line that says “Ardent caresses trickle down a sea of senses that are budding; blooming; until next Spring” I am then allowed to call the poet’s bullshit.
No, it’s not general moralities, political or religious beliefs that dictate my opinion, but rather the attitudes on indisputable pillars of humanity. If your artistic creation is sold with a ‘Humanity’ seal on top and you turn out to be a fucking asshole, then the seal is broken and that art leaks out onto the sidewalk to mix with dirt as it should.
Ask yourself this: would you go the other way, and consume art that you didn’t enjoy, because you thought the artist was a swell guy? If not, then there clearly is a separation. Why should it only be one way?
I’d say it depends on the art - as in, I think less about a person’s morals in abstract artforms that can’t really convey their own morality - dance, instrumental music and abstract art, I guess. More so in forms that convey their morality all too clearly - writing, film, song lyrics.
That’s a great counter-argument, and my answer is this:
If I am a person who wrote a wonderful book about how people should lose weight by dieting and exercising and it turns out that I lost weight through a gastric bypass surgery, then my book should immediately be dismissed as a work of art, or as a unit of artistic creation that deserves notability and citation, because it’s based on bullshit. Maybe there is genuinely good advice in the book that can change some peoples’ lives, but these good things should be extracted separately from the book, just as I would learn great new vocab from a poem written by a poet who writes about humanity but turns out to be a real asshole. I will appreciate whatever separate units I can take, but I will definitely cease to like the book or respect the author, and I would only browse through it to get to the vocab/diet advice, without reading the whole thing or recommending it to a friend.
The work of art would lose its ‘unitary’ value; it would not be referred to as a ‘work of art’ anymore, but rather a reference, if there’s any value in it at all.
No, it means meeting one woman a week who wants to have sex with him and doesn’t care that he’s not a virgin. Imagine Scarlett Johansson was single and looking for a one night stand. How many men do you think would turn her down for no other reason than because they were not the first?
Because we can afford to be picky. No art is better than bad art but even if that was not the case, there is still more art in the world than we have time to consume, let alone the money to buy. We don’t need to choose between art that is shit and art that gives money to a serial killer when there is plenty that is neither.
I think the artistic merit of a work, if any, can also be extracted and enjoyed even if the artist is a hypocrite.
If you decide that a poem is good without knowing anything about the poet, then it doesn’t matter if you find out later that the poet is a scoundrel or a saint. Your perceptions of the merit of a poem stand on their own.
Sir Isaac Newton wrote the book Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica, and believed in alchemy. His belief in alchemy does not affect the value or otherwise of calculus. If the biggest creep in the world tells you it’s raining outside, that doesn’t mean the sun is shining. You have to see for yourself.
That’s a different kettle of fish, though; a self-help weight-loss book isn’t art, and gauging the factual basis for the book’s claims is both appropriate and wish.
Poetry, on the other hand, is totally subjective, and doesn’t spring from the same mental processes as a non-fiction book, or even from conscious thought. It’s entirely possible to, say, be a misanthrope, and to also write moving poetry about humanity. The brain’s funny that way.
I don’t think it’s even possible for me to force myself to dislike a book that I actually like, so I can’t really relate to your approach.
I’d disagree that no art is better than bad art; and of course art exists that is neither created by a “bad” person nor “bad” itself, it was merely a thought exercise.
Two hundred years from now the poet will be dead and virtually no one who reads his work will have any idea of his philosophy or behavior. None of that will matter to whether or not they enjoy the poems.
I’ve seen some of Hitler’s paintings. He wasn’t great, but he was much better than ME. His painting don’t automatically become the worst paintings ever because he may have been the worst person ever.
We’ve had threads related to this question before (like here or here), and Dopers have weighed in on both sides.
I’m inclined to think that artwork should only be judged by the artwork itself—but it’s not unusual for aspects of the artist’s character or views to find their way into his work; and knowing things about the artist may help to make us more aware of the subtle echoes of those things that find their way into his work, which are fair game for criticism.
I think that it is possible that an authors morals could influence the interpretation of their work. For example say an author wrote an beautiful and sensual love poem about the purity of his paramour, but then you find out that it was written about his 14 year old niece who is in prison for raping. Or perhaps a fantastic science fiction story which you later find out was written by a neo-Nazi, and that the evil empire was an allegorical reference to the Elders of Zion.
In both cases even if I liked the work intially I think I would view the work in a negative light when presented with the new information.
As far as the deception required to have sex with 1000 women: I would say that most men who maintain this are deceptive but are primarily so with regard to accuracy of the statement itself.
But what about Human Action’s question in post #8? Would knowing good things about an artist make bad art any better for you? If you hated pictures of velvet wide-eyed cats dressed as Elvis playing poker, but found out that the artist did something that really impressed you, would you still feel the same way about those pictures?
More so, perhaps, but still not universally true. There are all kinds of characters who have made some good films both in front of and behind the camera that are unrelated and distinct from their personal issues, which films can be enjoyed without having to share whatever perversions their personal lives may have held. One might feel one should withhold one’s patronage from such persons for moral reasons, but that’s a whole other discussion that has nothing to do with the merit of the art itself.
One might be affected by the subjective association of what one knows about the artist, and that’s fine. Art is a very personal thing and that’s understandable. But others may feel differently. Art either has intrinsic merit or it doesn’t. This is not about how art “should be” judged, it’s how we emotionally happen to judge it in particular circumstances. It’s not about what “should be”, it’s about what “is”.
I agree.
Well said.
Getting dietary advice or improving your vocabulary is not art, and isn’t what art is about.