I posted sometime back on living the art life and how it would be great to have one’s personality be in tune with art such that the art and person blossom to their fullest… I was thinking about the art life a lot after reading reports on art done by people of questionable backgrounds (some of whose victims are now demanding that the artworks be rescinded and not be considered works of art). 
Some cases in point:
Brian Davey wrote fantastic music books for children that teach them about music. His books are used across England and is widely considered works of art. The books have become standards for music teachers across England (an example is the four-part series Recorder Playing). Brian Davey also happens to be imprisoned for 13 years for attempted rape, assaults and indecency against girls in what a judge called “the worst case of child abuse it’s possible to imagine”. His stepdaughter, Antoinette Lyons, (also a victim), has called on a sheet music agency to stop selling his manuals to schools as in her opinion they were written with one aim: “to get to the children”.
Eric Gill, ‘The Plait’, Wood Engraving, 1929, 6″ x 3″
Eric Gill (1882-1940) was born in Brighton, England, to a minister of a small Protestant sect. He eventually became an artist, who created some of the most popular devotional art of his era, such as the Stations of the Cross, where worshippers pray at each panel that depict the suffering of Jesus. He would receive many important and prestigious commissions, including works for the League of Nations, the BBC, and the London Transport. Fiona MacCarthy wrote a biography of him in 1989 (details on Google) that dropped a bombshell. MacCarthy’s book revealed that he regularly had sex with two of his daughters, his sisters and even the family dog. These encounters he recorded in his diary and have since been proven to be true.
There are also similar stories about Wagner (antiSemitic), Caravaggio (killer) and Larkin (supposed racist and sexist), Schubert (paedophile) and Richard Strauss (member of the Nazi party).
The question to you is simple: Would you value works of art done by someone whose acts committed in private are reprehensible while their art done in public is exulted?
Talk about cognitive dissonance! These cases highlight the hidden assumptions we tend to make about artists and their motivations, and also about our social/moral system.
I don’t think I could help but change my understanding of an artwork by learning more about the artist, whether positive, neutral, or negative in an ethical sense. I think I would value it less “as art” only if I came to see it as a real deception (whether I would want to own it is a separate question). In principle, one might hope to pick up on this from the artwork itself, but I certainly don’t think I’m infallibly astute in that way. It’s hard to know if I’m any good at all as an interpreter/evaluator.
In principle, one might hope to pick up on this from the artwork itself, but I certainly don’t think I’m infallibly astute in that way.
Steve, that’s asking a lot of yourself. I don’t think there’s any way to know everything about an artist from their work.
Personally I find that my view of an artist’s work is strongly influenced by what I know about the artist. Even though the work itself is the same, my experience of it changes because of what I know about the person.
Sunil and Steve:
Some would argue that art is ultimately un-moral and un-ethical. They would assert that a work of art is a distilled statement about the interaction of experience and sensibility. The sensibility may belong to a wayward somebody and the experience may be questionable in some way – yet the resulting product remains a statement about the interaction.
I don’t know if a what-you-see-is-what-you-get artist persona serves any constructive purpose. Dali was a handle-barred flame and sold his act for all it was worth. People bought it and continue to do so. But his work stands apart and could have been done, just as well, by a recluse with very little loss of meaning or impact. Dali had to tie up his “stash” and approach his work as a somber and dedicated artist.
You’re going to argue this point, Sunil, but the only dishonesty or mis-representation in art is when an false assertion is made about it. It’s generally against the law to claim a false authorship. It’s called forgery. But let’s say that I dribble around on a canvas and sign it Pablo Picasso. The facts utterly belie the assertion, and while I may be sowing confusion, I cannot be accused of forgery. Lesser instances may include trying to pass off a computer printer print as a drypoint, let’s say, or making false claims about the quality of materials.
Jay,
I’m not sure I catch the connection between the artist’s life and forgeries such as you speak of.
The cognitive dissonance that Steve speaks of is very strong for me. It’s particularly strong when the artist is modern or relatively contemporary or engaged in “contemporary” crimes — sex abuse of children, for example, turns me away from anyone, no matter how gifted or magnificent the work they do.
On the other hand, I find I’m willing to disregard the actions and opinions of long-dead artists — anti-semitism in the 1930’s I find appalling and disturbing, but anti-semitism in the 17th century I can tolerate.
It’s utterly personal and weird with me. A friend of mine refuses to travel to Germany because of the Nazi era there. One of her mentors had survived the camps and my friend says that she knows her reaction is somewhat irrational, but she thinks she might throw up in the Frankfurt airport if she ventured to travel there.
That’s a bit how I feel — I have a visceral reaction to certain kinds of “sins” — which include, if you haven’t noticed, misogyny as well as many others. And that reaction is strongest when it comes from people who are within my historical reach — contemporaries with me or with experiences I have had.
I sort of feel about artist’s personal lives like I feel about the earth itself — the art, like the earth, will live on regardless of what we tiny mortals do to mess it up, but I myself am, as one of those mortals, unable to be totally erased as an actor in my own life. I am narcisstic enough to be unable to tolerate certain kinds of heinous actions, even though I know my reactions make no difference. I’m a cenozoic patriot and a moralistic partaker of art. In both areas, I acknowledge that however I feel, it is worth most to me and my own and not worth a tinker’s damn in the larger scheme of things.
Whew, I do seem to be full of it today.
Hello June. I would say, from your blogs, that the trip to Diamond was a good one.
Please pardon for any confusion. Whatever connections I may have made between artists’ lives and forgeries was entirely unintentional. The point I was trying to make is that one cannot be dishonest about the statement that one’s art makes. At best, one can hope for vagueness, but the work will always stand as a testament to one’s actions.
On the other hand, forgery involves dishonesty at a commodity level. It’s about money. Now a conundrum may arise if, the forgery discovered, the forger steps forward and claims forgery to be his art form.
I think I only have questions at this point.
Maybe we expect our artists to be perfect and saintly? Maybe we think because their work elevates us in some ways then they are 100% pure?
Do we condone a person’s bad actions by liking their art? That’s hard for me to answer, and maybe the answer lies in my own sense of ego; as if I am so important that it matters whether or not I like Caravaggio because he killed someone.
This doesn’t mean I’d let someone hurt someone else in the here and now if I could stop it, though.
Unfortunately “human being” is still an aspiration. None of us have gotten their yet. So we all are complicated and faulty. For many of us we know that we’ve done some great stuff and are hopeful that no one has documented our cruelty.
Whew, I also full of it today.
Speaking of heinous, has anyone seen a Hitler watercolor? The man rendered the cityscape with a relatively uninspired, yet competent hand. There was another side to this mass killer it seems, and knowledge of his actions on the world stage ill prepares the viewer for the mild objectivity with which he approached his subject matter. I sort of draw away from his work, knowing the artist, but want to examine it for its style points. it says to me that here are statements drawn from the intersection of experience and sensibility.
I’ve seen them, Jay. They’re horrible, I’ve seen better works in motels.
Sunil,
What a difficult question you are asking here.
One way to think about it is that if the people weren’t making what would normally be considered good art (if someone with a neutral background made it), they could have spent even more energy harming others. You could see each artwork as a symbol of people not harmed. Imagine Hitler had been more satisfied with painting.
This is a difficult question. In fact after I posted it my wife read this and she went away happy that she did not have to answer it (as she loves Caravaggio’s paintings).
Of course, here it does look like the consensus opinion tends towards ‘if-you-know-the-artist-is-immoral-you-tends-to-stay-away’ mode..
Personally I am not sure about answers to the question that I asked. I sometimes think that if you like the artwork without knowing the artists background and later on finding out that the artists was not the most becoming character, it is easy for one to reduce the height of the pedestal rolled out for the artist but it becomes much harder to take the art off the same pedestal.
Tree’s questions raise more issues for me that I will have to go away and ponder some more.
Jay,
If artists can parade ‘found’ paintings as art (see Shaw at PS1), then why can’t a forger’s work be art?
I recently proposed that a colleague was better satisfied by experiencing absence after waiting in anticipation of a “scheduled” event that failed to happen, than he would have been at had the event proceeded. That absence is a richer experience than presence, to which he replied “Don’t be so Cagean” or rather “Stop being so Cagean”.
I ask for views on this retort, are there problems with the notion of a typical Cagean response.
Jonathan,
I recently watched the movie “Match Point,” in which there is no resolution of a murder. It certainly leads you to consider the consequences for the murderer more deeply than if convention were followed.
“It was a learning experience” is perhaps most often used ironically, but the cliché suggests that the most powerful stimulus to change or development can be a disappointment of hopes or expectations. But is learning something new always the highest good? In this context, Cagean might mean upsettings norms to an extent that most will consider the experience quite negative. Though once one learns about Cage, of course, one should expect that…
One of the interesting things about Cage, of course, is that the descriptions (and the resulting anticipations) of his musical pieces were probably more satisfying than the actual performances.
David:
At some point one’s anticipations would tend to drop to the level of Cage’s performances.