Maybe human beings are just the conduit through which art travels before taking on an external form. We wouldn't try to reconcile the beautiful and fragile blue shell of a robin's egg, found during a walk in the forest, with the bird who happened to produce it. That bird has moved on, but the near-holy moment of tranquility you experience when touching that shell is yours, privately, forever.
Great write up. Difficult topic and one I’ve thought about a lot, too. At the end of the day, there’s no easy answer and everyone must grapple with it themselves. Just like you did here. Well done
This was a genuinely new way to get at the problem of how--or whether--we separate the art from the artist. I found this quote especially helpful and important: “When terrible things are done to people, they are not done to you. You may feel betrayed because feelings are beyond your control, but you need to understand that it had nothing to do with you.”
My approach, which I have dubbed the Polanski Principle, is a bit different. If the artist uses his work to communicate and advocate for the repellent ideas, then I have no interest in the works. But if he did something had bad struggles with that in the works, as Polanski does in (off the top of my head) Repulsion, Tess, and Chinatown, then it’s fine to read or watch the art.
But I like your point that we are making the choice of how or whether to separate the person from the act all the time, and that for each case we need to make that choice.
Thanks for this. I feel surrounded by people’s personal struggles with the artists whose work they love, playing out in the public sphere right now. I also feel inundated with instruction about how to “reconcile,” what must be done, what ritual invocations must be spoken before the work is referenced, how many times the hands must be washed after touching the defiled work. Being comfortable with fracture - that feels right. I feel fractured even when I engage with work I love uncomplicatedly, because with the art that means the most to me I’ll always feel like it makes me a little bit, too - like I’m becoming the version of myself who exists only in the presence of this one thing.
I think the wrong kind of fracturing is loud, public disavowal and private, guilty appreciation. I think there’s honest fracturing and dishonest fracturing and this gets at that so well.
I really enjoyed that Science Fiction album...until I didn't. It was their best stuff since God and the Devil and then the (likely true) allegations came out. I may have listened to it once or twice since then. I didn't experience a crisis when this came out, just a sort of shrug to it all. Brand New was a band that I quite liked, but was never fanatical over.
I like to say that I am good about separating the art from the artist, but I don't know if I've been unfortunate enough to have had this experience yet, where a favorite artist is revealed to be an abuser.
One song that seems to hold a new light in the wake of all the allegations is "Me vs Maradona vs Elvis." At first I thought it was the "nice guy" view of what the Alpha Male Chad does when he is out picking up chicks at the bar, but maybe it's a bit more of a confessional.
Jesse Lacey is a difficult one. Also my brother's favourite band for many years (who is, I believe, the same age as you and also deeply imprinted upon Nintendo games as a child). I'm not sure if the self-pitying, self-mythologising narrator of Lacey's lyrics can be easily extricated from Lacey as a serial abuser and predator... like Youtubers with similar accusations against them, it seems like he kept trying to be a teenager until he really, really wasn't. But because those self-pitying, self-mythologising impulses are in so many of us - and the music does such a good job at dramatising those feelings - it's not easy to emotionally disconnect from.
I definitely have a habit of falling for the work of artists who are revelead to be problematic at best and outright abusive at worst. Nikolay Dybowski of Ice-Pick Lodge is the one that I can't really get my brain past and fracture over. Lord knows I have my own shitty behaviours to be sorry for, but I can't get back a middle-aged man repeatedly preying on teenagers. I also think he's one of the most brilliant videogame writers of the past two decades. I'm not going to give him any more of my money, but me and my brain will definitely be giving his ideas more of my attention, whether I want to or not.
As long as Ursula Le Guin was a good sort, I can still just about get out of bed in the mornings.
Maybe human beings are just the conduit through which art travels before taking on an external form. We wouldn't try to reconcile the beautiful and fragile blue shell of a robin's egg, found during a walk in the forest, with the bird who happened to produce it. That bird has moved on, but the near-holy moment of tranquility you experience when touching that shell is yours, privately, forever.
Great write up. Difficult topic and one I’ve thought about a lot, too. At the end of the day, there’s no easy answer and everyone must grapple with it themselves. Just like you did here. Well done
This was a genuinely new way to get at the problem of how--or whether--we separate the art from the artist. I found this quote especially helpful and important: “When terrible things are done to people, they are not done to you. You may feel betrayed because feelings are beyond your control, but you need to understand that it had nothing to do with you.”
My approach, which I have dubbed the Polanski Principle, is a bit different. If the artist uses his work to communicate and advocate for the repellent ideas, then I have no interest in the works. But if he did something had bad struggles with that in the works, as Polanski does in (off the top of my head) Repulsion, Tess, and Chinatown, then it’s fine to read or watch the art.
But I like your point that we are making the choice of how or whether to separate the person from the act all the time, and that for each case we need to make that choice.
Thanks for this. I feel surrounded by people’s personal struggles with the artists whose work they love, playing out in the public sphere right now. I also feel inundated with instruction about how to “reconcile,” what must be done, what ritual invocations must be spoken before the work is referenced, how many times the hands must be washed after touching the defiled work. Being comfortable with fracture - that feels right. I feel fractured even when I engage with work I love uncomplicatedly, because with the art that means the most to me I’ll always feel like it makes me a little bit, too - like I’m becoming the version of myself who exists only in the presence of this one thing.
I think the wrong kind of fracturing is loud, public disavowal and private, guilty appreciation. I think there’s honest fracturing and dishonest fracturing and this gets at that so well.
I always think of Yeats--"How can we know the dancer from the dance?"
just saw this post....
Dostoevsky also hated Catholics and Germans. He was a pan-slav as odd as that seems to us today.
I really enjoyed that Science Fiction album...until I didn't. It was their best stuff since God and the Devil and then the (likely true) allegations came out. I may have listened to it once or twice since then. I didn't experience a crisis when this came out, just a sort of shrug to it all. Brand New was a band that I quite liked, but was never fanatical over.
I like to say that I am good about separating the art from the artist, but I don't know if I've been unfortunate enough to have had this experience yet, where a favorite artist is revealed to be an abuser.
One song that seems to hold a new light in the wake of all the allegations is "Me vs Maradona vs Elvis." At first I thought it was the "nice guy" view of what the Alpha Male Chad does when he is out picking up chicks at the bar, but maybe it's a bit more of a confessional.
Jesse Lacey is a difficult one. Also my brother's favourite band for many years (who is, I believe, the same age as you and also deeply imprinted upon Nintendo games as a child). I'm not sure if the self-pitying, self-mythologising narrator of Lacey's lyrics can be easily extricated from Lacey as a serial abuser and predator... like Youtubers with similar accusations against them, it seems like he kept trying to be a teenager until he really, really wasn't. But because those self-pitying, self-mythologising impulses are in so many of us - and the music does such a good job at dramatising those feelings - it's not easy to emotionally disconnect from.
I definitely have a habit of falling for the work of artists who are revelead to be problematic at best and outright abusive at worst. Nikolay Dybowski of Ice-Pick Lodge is the one that I can't really get my brain past and fracture over. Lord knows I have my own shitty behaviours to be sorry for, but I can't get back a middle-aged man repeatedly preying on teenagers. I also think he's one of the most brilliant videogame writers of the past two decades. I'm not going to give him any more of my money, but me and my brain will definitely be giving his ideas more of my attention, whether I want to or not.
As long as Ursula Le Guin was a good sort, I can still just about get out of bed in the mornings.
Dostoevsky is King: https://michaelmohr.substack.com/p/dostoevsky-russian-wizard