Food for Thought

[Artyczar]

Interesting opinion piece.

https://hyperallergic.com/692727/wh...hat+Do+We+Do+with+the+Work+of+Immoral+Artists

 

[Claude J Greengrass]

Ah but where does one draw the line and who does the drawing?

 

[Terri]

This is very thought-provoking, and well written. I don't envy the writer his predicament at all.

The book he mentioned to help him explore the issue sounds interesting, because so many of us are well aware of this issue. Great link - thanks, Arty!

 

[JennieJo]

Interesting opinion piece.

https://hyperallergic.com/692727/wh...hat+Do+We+Do+with+the+Work+of+Immoral+Artists

Hyperallergic always has something I want to read. Very interesting. Have discussed this with several people over a few years. I'm left with a few questions, for myself.
One, were there any rules/accepted conventions across creative disciplines, that can be tracked over time? Have never gone looking.
Two, have the rules changed because people can do more, more easily, more secretly? Yet have those decisions go viral when discovered?
Three, how would I apply my personal value system: if I could acquire a creators work that I really admired, could I live with fact that I owned that work? Did it automatically mean I supported the creator?

I enjoy the discussion of the type highlighted in the article.

 

[ZenDruid]

With all due respect, I found this article unnecessary and over-intellectualized. I read it at first, then scanned it, and finally concluded "Who gives a crap?" It contributed nothing to my understanding of art. The writer doesn't understand his confusion and spends too many paragraphs mentally masturbating about it.

 

[brianvds]

My impression is that generally, we tend to be more forgiving towards artists who are dead. With living ones, if you support the art of some rapist or something, you are financially contributing to his life, and it is not wrong to feel a certain discomfort with that, however great the art is. But lots of the great artists in history were flawed human beings, to say the least. If we "cancel" them all, we end up impoverishing ourselves and our society.

In a sense, art is a consumer product like any other. If your local plumber turns out to be a kiddie rapist, you may think twice about doing business with him. This does not prevent you from admiring the brilliant plumbing systems of Ancient Rome, even though by modern standards, they did things vastly worse than anything our hypothetical plumber did.

We must also guard against what Nassim Taleb refers to as "anachronistic sanctimony," i.e. judging people from the past by our own standards, and then concluding that this or that famous historical person was a racist or homophobe or misogynist. These concepts did not even exist at the time.

The article in the OP has a typical example, and I quote:

It’s even more complicated when what’s attractive about the art is closely tied to what’s abhorrent about the artist. For instance, Gauguin’s exotic, erotic Tahitian paintings are so compelling to many viewers because they show their subjects through the colonialist, misogynistic lens that emboldened Gauguin to force himself on Tahitian girls.

To the best of my knowledge, this is complete and utter nonsense. For one thing, Gauguin often got into trouble with the colonial authorities because he routinely took the side of the natives in disputes. As for the "underaged" girls? He lived in a culture that saw nothing at all controversial about it, and indeed, in the native culture it was even more acceptable than in contemporary Europe.

In the west we have developed a habit now of self-hatred, and endless soul searching about colonialism. We are committing cultural suicide, and will lose everything that took our ancestors centuries to build. We engage endlessly in these vicious, petty witch hunts, and when we run out of living victims we turn to the dead, in a grand conflagration of virtue signaling.

Well, I cannot tell other people what to do or how to live, but the bandwagon will have to do without me as passenger.

 

[Hermes2020]

There has been a debate over Wagner's music for many years, largely owing to his appropriation by the Nazis, but also his character flaws. My standpoint is that I love his music and I don't allows those issues to cloud my appreciation and enjoyment. Prominent Jewish intellectuals like Stephen Fry and Daniel Barenboim are of the same opinion. The same goes for Edgard Varese, who wasn't a very "nice" person, but I love his music anyway. What about Bach? He was in prison for a while as a young man. In the world of painting, should we refuse to look at Caravaggio's paintings, just because he had a criminal record?

 

[brianvds]

There has been a debate over Wagner's music for many years, largely owing to his appropriation by the Nazis, but also his character flaws. My standpoint is that I love his music and I don't allows those issues to cloud my appreciation and enjoyment. Prominent Jewish intellectuals like Stephen Fry and Daniel Barenboim are of the same opinion. The same goes for Edgard Varese, who wasn't a very "nice" person, but I love his music anyway. What about Bach? He was in prison for a while as a young man. In the world of painting, should we refuse to look at Caravaggio's paintings, just because he had a criminal record?

All of them safely dead, of course. The case of Wagner (and, for that matter, Nietzsche) is instructive: Wagner was a bit of an anti-semite, though not really any more so than most other Europeans at the time. And yes, he was also a bit of an asshole. But his main sin seems to have been not so much anything that he did or said, but that he was Hitler's favorite composer, and was in a general way appropriated by the Nazis.

Same thing happened to Nietzsche: he would probably have been absolutely appalled at the Third Reich, and considered anti-semitism to be utterly stupid, but the Nazis "adopted" him, or more specifically, their own wrong-headed interpretation of his ideas.

And thus, we see that a person can, quite inadvertently, become "contaminated" if he becomes hero to some genuinely vile group, even if he himself actually had nothing at all to do with the group, and indeed even if he would have been as disgusted by said group as anyone else. (Wagner would almost certainly have found the Nazis utterly disgusting).

Humans have a certain intuition for contamination, hence we avoid things that smell bad, for example, and we shudder at the thought of such things as rotten meat or feces (particularly human feces, which is the most likely source of fecal contamination). This instinct is, in a general sort of way, a good thing, because it helps to keep us safe.

But it is also on a hair trigger, and can be triggered by all manner of things that are perfectly safe. Sometimes the results are merely amusing, e.g. lots of people will absolutely shudder at the very thought of what people from other cultures eat. There are funny videos of Japanese people being fed perfectly edible stuff like Marmite/Vegemite, and hating it; similarly, lots of westerners shudder at the thought of sushi, or fried octopus or whatever else might be considered a delicacy in Japan.

And let's not even get started on China: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgin_boy_egg

But this contamination instinct also has a really dark side. In a general sort of way, we shudder a bit at whatever strikes us as alien or different, and when it comes to food, this is a perfectly reasonable and healthy reaction. But we easily have the same reaction to people from different races and/or cultures. It's a short and easy step from shuddering at some or other thing they eat to concluding, in the back of our minds, that the people themselves are disgusting. And it is all too easy to start hating disgusting people, and anything and everything we associate with them.

How does Wagner fit into this? He is hated by many not for anything he said or did, but simply because he has become associated with Nazis, and thus, in many people, causes a visceral reaction of disgust. Virtually none of them have ever heard a single note he composed, or read anything he wrote, or can give you an even vague biography of him. But the Nazis liked him, so he's bad.

I have seen people argue quite seriously that vegetarianism is a bad thing because Hitler was a vegetarian.

So it goes: when our disgust/contamination instinct kicks in, all further reason is thrown overboard.

 

[Bartc]

Ayin, I'm sure it's not just "modern" life that forces us into these difficult positions. You can read about this dilemma in many accounts of art through the ages.
In the end, it's personal choice based on not just values but also knowledge and opinion. So that line is pretty hazy when you look closely.
Frankly, so much of nude figurative art is and was always created for titillation that you'd pretty much drop most undraped bodies in painting and sculpture.
What is Beauty and the Beast anyway? A love story, or one based on sexual exploitation and seduction, and this theme is played over and over again in many works.
Should you stop listening to Ravel's Bolero because it became famous in the 1900s as an accompaniment to sex and seduction?
How about that murderer Caravaggio?
In the end for me it boils down to the central premise I read in that article: If you can figure out how to appreciate the work of art while not encouraging the morally questionable artist, then you're OK. If not, well, YMMV.

 

[mill]

I agree with Brian and Zen Druid, I think they say everything that needs to be said. The excellence of the art has no relevance to the moral quality of the artist in his time or certainly not to the adherance to retrospective modern moral opinions.
John

 

[Enyaw]

The article to me is soft sell. Seriously, if there is money to be made someone will promote it regardless of public opinion.

 

[Terri]

We must also guard against what Nassim Taleb refers to e. judging people from the past by our own standards, and then concluding that this or that famous historical person was a racist or homophobe or misogynist. These concepts did not even exist at the time.

This statement I find questionable. No concepts of racism? In any society where there were slaves there were people who were against it, particularly in the Southern US: the abolitionists were quite verbal in their abhorrence. That's just one example.

Homophobes, misogynists - of course, these concepts also existed: they were simply swept under the rug more effectively back in the day, and plenty of laws existed to prop them up. Our LGBTQ population just stayed in the closet to avoid persecution, and women were basically second class citizens - as recently as the late 1970s a woman could not obtain a credit card without a male co-signer. Non-entities.

That's like saying, "There are no people with disabilities in our town," while not acknowledging the narrow street sidewalks, with curbs a foot high, and no ramps.

In the west we have developed a habit now of self-hatred, and endless soul searching about colonialism. We are committing cultural suicide, and will lose everything that took our ancestors centuries to build.

I can't equate studying our past and acknowledging the darker, more unseemly parts of it as self-hatred or cultural suicide. What, exactly, would we lose that took us "centuries to build?" Just as the article seems to suggest, we must be able to look at the bad as well as the good, of our history, our art and artists - all flawed, of course. All built or created by humans.

 

[Artyczar]

As far as the article goes, it's a question of each person aligning their values with how they personally feel and how they want to support art (whatever form). It's a difficult thing to separate the art from the artist sometimes. Some people don't have any issue with it at all. Like the writer of this article, some people are conflicted and still trying to navigate it. For me, it is about context, but that can vary too. It always depends. I can make allowances for some things, and not for others, I suppose because of my own personal ethics. It all/always just depends on the context and my own core beliefs. I also grapple with some things myself.

No one is perfect. This is true. I've made some allowances for my own parents because of their generation alone, so I can see making some for people during times when other things were accepted, but only to a point, just like my own parents. Ya know? People still have choices. I think most people inherently (and generally) know right from wrong.

Overall, I think now is a different time. Things in society are changing on what is and is not accepted anymore. It's still SLOW and backwards in my opinion and somethings seem to still be sitting in the dark ages, but it seems (hopefully) the new generations are making things a little better on what they are willing to be accepting of. They teach their parents how to "tolerate" things they weren't so accepting of the generation before. That's some positive change. Of course, in some areas, there's still a lot of inequality, but more and more people are trying to change that. Art contributes to that. I think, even art from the past because without it, there wouldn't be the art of today. We need the past to learn from in order to make better futures.

 

[Artyczar]

Ayin, I'm sure it's not just "modern" life that forces us into these difficult positions. You can read about this dilemma in many accounts of art through the ages.
In the end, it's personal choice based on not just values but also knowledge and opinion. So that line is pretty hazy when you look closely.
Frankly, so much of nude figurative art is and was always created for titillation that you'd pretty much drop most undraped bodies in painting and sculpture.
What is Beauty and the Beast anyway? A love story, or one based on sexual exploitation and seduction, and this theme is played over and over again in many works.
Should you stop listening to Ravel's Bolero because it became famous in the 1900s as an accompaniment to sex and seduction?
How about that murderer Caravaggio?
In the end for me it boils down to the central premise I read in that article: If you can figure out how to appreciate the work of art while not encouraging the morally questionable artist, then you're OK. If not, well, YMMV.

Bart, why are you addressing me personally? I am only posting the article for discussion. I didn't write it. You can see my point of view above.

 

[Bartc]

Wasn't calling you out specifically, Ayin. Only responding to your OP on the subject in general. Apologies if it seems otherwise.
In fact, I'm not calling anyone out. My point is that it's pretty difficult to find one's footing based on the article and so much opinion. All I'm doing is adding my opinion to the fray, and it's worth nothing more than anyone else's in the end.

 

[brianvds]

This statement I find questionable. No concepts of racism? In any society where there were slaves there were people who were against it, particularly in the Southern US: the abolitionists were quite verbal in their abhorrence. That's just one example.

Homophobes, misogynists - of course, these concepts also existed: they were simply swept under the rug more effectively back in the day, and plenty of laws existed to prop them up. Our LGBTQ population just stayed in the closet to avoid persecution, and women were basically second class citizens - as recently as the late 1970s a woman could not obtain a credit card without a male co-signer. Non-entities.

That's like saying, "There are no people with disabilities in our town," while not acknowledging the narrow street sidewalks, with curbs a foot high, and no ramps.

The concepts as we understand them today did not exist, and to the extent that they did, very often everyone was guilty, including native people.

I can't equate studying our past and acknowledging the darker, more unseemly parts of it as self-hatred or cultural suicide. What, exactly, would we lose that took us "centuries to build?" Just as the article seems to suggest, we must be able to look at the bad as well as the good, of our history, our art and artists - all flawed, of course. All built or created by humans.

I have no problem with learning from the past, and not repeating mistakes. But "canceling" this or that artist because they were products of the culture of their own time is just ridiculous. Particularly when we cancel only white males and no one else. Here in South Africa where I live the complaints about the horrors of colonialsm never end. But in Durban there is a statue to King Shaka, one of the worst psychopathic mass murderers in this region's entire history.

 

[Hermes2020]

The opposite is also possible: one could like an artist, composer, or musician's work because of their personality or lifestyle. I can't think of any examples in my case, though.

 

[Artyczar]

The concepts as we understand them today did not exist, and to the extent that they did, very often everyone was guilty, including native people.



I have no problem with learning from the past, and not repeating mistakes. But "canceling" this or that artist because they were products of the culture of their own time is just ridiculous. Particularly when we cancel only white males and no one else. Here in South Africa where I live the complaints about the horrors of colonialsm never end. But in Durban there is a statue to King Shaka, one of the worst psychopathic mass murderers in this region's entire history.

I can think of a few non-white males that have been "cancelled" in recent times. Depending on what they have done (and have been found guilty of). I don't think race or ethnicity matters. It's usually been men in positions of power. But let's face it, who are most of the people in power? How often can an impoverished woman of color (for instance) exploit a white man and get away with it? Just sayin.

Also, South Africa and America are two very different cultures seeing how Apartheid wasn't abolished all that long ago. They are very different climates in many ways. We also have statues dedicated to slave-owners and such in the South here where many (with the same, ongoing views) still object to having them taken down. Everyone, everywhere have their views on these thing--what is "fair" and "unfair" and toward what kinds of people. And so perpetuates the hatred and the wars, and the animosity towards one another. We can only hope it will get a little better. Will it ever be cured? I have no such pipe dream.

 

[Enyaw]

... as we say when friends talk religion or politics .. a change of subject would be beneficial about now.

 

[Artyczar]

Agreed! I didn't mean to post this to get divisive. Just a "food for thought" kind of thing. Something to think about, and perhaps discussing it wasn't the best idea.