I can fully empathise with the idea of an artist’s actions spoiling one’s subjective enjoyment of their work. I can also agree with the wish not to give money to people who are shitheads.
I don’t understand, though, the idea that some seem to espouse, that a work itself carries some moral badness or evil because the artist was bad. Further, it seems childish to suggest that that people who do appreciate that work are somehow morally wrong (though I do get the idea that those people might promote or lend to that person’s fame).
It’s obviously quite different, but it’s interesting to consider that we would balk at judging a person for the actions of their parents. ‘Ugh I can’t stand x because I know who their dad was’ seems a pretty dickish thing to say. But a child is often quite literally much more the ‘product’ of a person than a song or a statue.
Even when a piece is created by a single person, a human is directed by a vast array of varying influences both external and internal, and if we read about (or know personally) accounts of the creative experience, a common refrain is that our creative selves are often ‘other’ to our daily selves.
This isn’t to excuse moral culpability for one’s acts - people should always be held accountable in appropriate ways - but to suggest that there is no necessary direct link between a work and a given act. Sure, if the work (Matzneff comes to mind) is a direct expression of the moral problem, then we can make the link, but are we really claiming this is always the case? That someone can’t represent beauty or something pure (or something filthy!) in the same lifetime as doing vile things?
And then you have works that are collaborative. Do Spector’s crimes diminish the gifts of the artists who he produced? What of the hundreds of actors, crew, editors, etc who come together to make a film that happens to be directed by someone (or have a certain executive)?
It’s nearly time for my dinner so I’ll shut up, but we seem to be too fixed to the idea of a single solid self-aware and self-culpable ego that is responsible for all the acts of an individual, when most of the historical wisdom of the wold, and an increasing amount of modern scientific research suggests that’s not a viable picture of the human being.
