Shakespeare had the ‘second-best bed’. Ezra Pound had Italy. The prevailing wisdom is that a person’s failings do not affect perceptions of their art; the fact Orson Welles was a raging asshole is not relevant when discussing Touch of Evil. The art stands only in relation to other pieces, not to the artist.
So, what is the best art from the worst people? What works would be cited by someone interested in defending the above thesis, as valuable works we would not be able to regard if we took the artist into account?
What about the Führer’s work? I know they are supposed to be bad but I have always thought they were good, but I am not an art snob so I guess I really don’t know.
I’ve heard that one too, that the best bed was for guests only so the second-best was the marriage bed. Dunno if it’s true though.
But I don’t know what selective sampling has to do with it: what he’s saying is that good artists don’t have to be good people. Maybe more good artists are good people as well, but that’s not the point.
I also think some of Hitler’s paintings weren’t bad. Wish he’d kept at it for the rest of his life and never done anything else…
Joan Crawford was considered a great actress, but was also accused of physically abusing her adopted children (beating them with coat hangers). I’ve never been able to enjoy any of her movies since finding that out.
Picasso was also pretty fucking evil in his treatment of women, by some accounts. Never cared for his art anyway.
Oh, yeah … Michael Jackson … freaky-ass pederast. Neurotic, possibly psychotic. I can do without “Billie Jean” if it means Michael Jackson never existed.
Right, but I think it is pretty easy to judge Shakespeare for being an absentee father, and the sonnets seem to show he was not faithful to his wife whom he only married when she got in a ‘family way.’
I’ve posted many times to the effect that you never want to examine the personal lives of artists too closely. The vast majority are awful people under one definition or another. It only depends on what you personally consider bad. Alcoholism? Neglect of children? Narcissism? Workaholism? Rape, murder, assault, battery, plagiarism, adultery, and the breaking of every additional one of the commandments? You can find something is just about every single artist who ever lived.
Of course, you find these in just about every single human being who ever lived. It’s just that we examine every minute of the lives of famous people. And that famous people tend to get away with more than unfamous people.
If you limit your art to people who have no flaws you may as well sit in a blank room and stare at the walls.
This was, after all, the point of Amadeus – whatever the truth of the matter – and Schaeffer knew he wasn’t telling the true story of Mozart and Salieri – he used the story of the animosity between the two the basis of a play about Salieri’s private war with God because God apparently granted the “undeserving” Mozart superior skills and talent, while the pious and virtuous Salieri was granted mediocrity. That’s why the play is called Amadeus (“beloved of God”), rather than Salieri or Mozart.
There are plenty of stories about how rotten many artists and performers were. The things Bing Crosby has been accused of (just being distant and heavily controlling) I find freaky.
I suspect that, luike everyone else, such artsy celebrities run the gamut of behavior. We’ve all read or heard about the Famous Old Actor/Actress who’s still a Real Trouper or the one Who’s Really a Nice Guy. But if you become famous and adored and still have bad behavior characteristics, who’s going to call you on it? And what incentive do you have to “reform”?
