Can we separate the artist from the art?

DickSwiveller Returns · 20-07-2018 12:16PM #1

Just reading about a controversy at Manchester University. Rudyard Kipling's poem 'If' had been painted on a wall in one of the lecture halls. A group of activists - objecting to the work of an imperialist and racist being displayed - painted over it with another poem by Maya Angelou.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-manchester-44884913

Does the fact that Kipling was an unpleasant mean we can't admire the good work he produced? If these students had their way almost all literature and music pre the 20th century would banned because more than likely the author/composer held what are now deemed unfashionable views. For example, I love Wagners music, but that doesn't mean I sympathise with his anti-Semitic views.

What do people think?

Hector Bellend · 20-07-2018 12:20PM

If this attitude were applied to all human work then very little of it can be truly appreciated.

Some people need to grow a pair and look past the petty bullshyte.

Nobody is perfect.

A simple example from closer to home. G.B Shaw was awarded the nobel prize for literature but was known to have views advocating population control.

nthclare · 20-07-2018 12:22PM

Some people can compartmentalise unfortunately others can't.

I don't like a certain Gardener, but I think his work is amazing and if anyone was looking for someone with his skills I'd suggest they contact him.

A good person can live by principal above personality.

Lefties haven't the cognitive ability to see through their ignorance.

20-07-2018 12:23PM

Depends on the artist and their crimes/nefarious actions.

Ian Watkins of Lost Prophets, he's the real litmus test for this question.

clintondaly · 20-07-2018 12:24PM

I think Mr Kipling's best work was his exceedingly good pies...

Billy86 · 20-07-2018 12:26PM

Absolutely, you can even separate the art from the art itself to an extent. Birth of a Nation is one of the most important movies in the history of early cinema (maybe all cinema) and was somewhat of a masterpiece for the new techniques and whatnot that it employed, and some of Leni Riefehnstahls work is the same.

One was basically promoting the KKK and was one of the most racist movies ever recorded, the other was literal nazi propaganda.

A different example was a video game made earlier this year set in Poland during medieval times. This stupidly kicked off a controversy about a lack of black people because there was surely a black trader or two along the way... but there were probably Irish people too, no complaints about the lack of Irish accents. The guy who made the game has a history of being on the 'far' side of right on certain issues and of supporting borderline racist groups if I recall, but all he did in that game was give an accurate depiction of the time and place (it's well reviewed, and largely for how accurate it is down to minute details).

If someone wants to avoid a person's art/work because of reasons beyond it, they are absolutely right to. But there are some really petty attempts like the one above to drag the whole thing down based on not liking the person behind it, and that's just nonsense.

DEFTLEFTHAND · 20-07-2018 12:27PM

Of course.

Many of the musicians and authors who I admire were/are not nice people.

That doesn't mean I can't appreciate their work.

20-07-2018 12:29PM

Doctor Jimbob wrote: »

Not really, what he did was viewed as wrong by the vast majority of people at the time. That's very different to judging someone for being racist, etc, a time when practically all of society was.

It's not about whether people viewed his actions as wrong or not. It's if you can still listen to his music and him singing despite knowing what he did. That was my understanding of the thread question...

...but otherwise I agree with your point.

seamus · 20-07-2018 12:30PM

Einstein was also a bit of a racist.

Historical context is always important. You can't expect someone to be a shining beacon of modern humanism when those ideas didn't exist or weren't well-known at the time they were alive.

99% of the most revered historical icons will have been racists, owned slaves, and treated women like property.

Ultimately we should always separate the artist from the art. Just because someone creates something incredible, that has absolutely no bearing on what type of human being they are. Idolising the individual and not the thing they've created is ridiculous.

Look at Gary Glitter - the music hasn't changed at all. He was a cvnt when he made it and he's a cvnt now, but the music is still the enjoyable glam pop stuff it was when it was released. Naturally it's hard to enjoy when you know what the singer did, but that doesn't objectively remove anything from the music itself.

5rtytry56 · 20-07-2018 12:30PM

I will put up my hand and say I'm an artist manqué.

Does that exclude my participation in this thread OP?

Billy86 · 20-07-2018 12:31PM

Hector Bellend wrote: »

If this attitude were applied to all human work then very little of it can be truly appreciated.

Some people need to grow a pair and look past the petty bullshyte.

Nobody is perfect.

A simple example from closer to home. G.B Shaw was awarded the nobel prize for literature but was known to have views advocating population control.

Also to add to that, times change and what is normal now might be viewed negatively in future. Eugenics was very popular for a few decades, and it is very easy to see how people could have viewed it as a positive at the time; a way of maximising human potential and limiting disabilities etc. Of course we know that's not the fl case now with the benefit of many decades to look deeper, but it's a bit mental to judge people from a hundred years ago on today's standards, and shows the folly of judging art based entirely in the artist (within reason for course).

Pac1Man · 20-07-2018 12:31PM

Students are such parasitic cuunts.

Forever throwing spanners in the works.

stimpson · 20-07-2018 12:39PM

nthclare wrote: »

Lefties haven't the cognitive ability to see through their ignorance.

You can’t just lay this at the feet of Leftists. The Nazis loved a good book burning. ISIS were great lads for destroying antiquities. History is littered with examples.

Destroying art for ideological reasons is the work of extremists, regardless of which way they lean politically.

Temptamperu · 20-07-2018 12:43PM

This is what socialism does. Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past. etc...

stimpson · 20-07-2018 12:43PM

Doctor Jimbob wrote: »

That outlook is far too balanced and sensible for after hours.

Something something Muslims.

Better?

Sal Butamol · 20-07-2018 12:43PM

Coming soon to Irelsnd...

Literature removed from syllabus, trigger warnings before lectures, buildings/streets renamed and statues removed.

Some of it already happening, more to come as the delicate little safe space generation import more and more radical bull**** from their counterparts in America, aided and abetted by the likes of that lunatic Zappone

Franz Von Peppercorn · 20-07-2018 12:45PM

seamus wrote: »

Einstein was also a bit of a racist.

A good example of modern western overreaction. He called the peasant Chinese sullen and dirty. Most modern Chinese people in cities think that they probably were. It was a time before showers and baths. And it was a hard life.

99% of the most revered historical icons will have been racists, owned slaves, and treated women like property.

Look at Gary Glitter - the music hasn't changed at all. He was a cvnt when he made it and he's a cvnt now, but the music is still the enjoyable glam pop stuff it was when it was released. Naturally it's hard to enjoy when you know what the singer did, but that doesn't objectively remove anything from the music itself.

Gary glitter is a bad example as he has become an unperson. Don’t expect to see him on TOTP replays ever again.

On the subject of getting rid of old white statues, or poetry or whatever : the logic is eventually everything will go. Eventually a statue or a picture which is of white people will trigger someone.

(Actually I believe that’s already happened).

Billy86 · 20-07-2018 12:47PM

seamus wrote: »

Ultimately we should always separate the artist from the art. Just because someone creates something incredible, that has absolutely no bearing on what type of human being they are. Idolising the individual and not the thing they've created is ridiculous.

I would only very, very slightly disagree with the 'always' part, or at least in terms of the message of the piece. An example might be while someone might like Ayn Rand's writing style and can absolutely still do so, Rand's message that "the advocates and supporters of the welfare state are morally guilty of robbing their opponents, and the fact that the robbery is legalized makes it morally worse, not better" should be judged on the basis that Rand herself went on to take social security payments and depended on the welfare state later in her life.

stimpson · 20-07-2018 12:49PM

Billy86 wrote: »

I would only very, very slightly disagree with the 'always' part, or at least in terms of the message of the piece. An example might be while someone might like Ayn Rand's writing style and can absolutely still do so, Rand's message that "the advocates and supporters of the welfare state are morally guilty of robbing their opponents, and the fact that the robbery is legalized makes it morally worse, not better" should be judged on the basis that Rand herself went on to take social security payments and depended on the welfare state later in her life.

Bad example. Ayn Rand is a terrible author. Anyone who enjoys her writing style is an idiot.

Franz Von Peppercorn · 20-07-2018 12:50PM

Sal Butamol wrote: »

Coming soon to Irelsnd...

Literature removed from syllabus, trigger warnings before lectures, buildings/streets renamed and statues removed.

Some of it already happening, more to come as the delicate little safe space generation import more and more radical bull**** from their counterparts in America, aided and abetted by the likes of that lunatic Zappone

We’re slightly inoculated as we’ve already renamed or “decolonised” some of our streets and statutory. Outside Dublin 4 anyway, I noticed a prince of Wales st close to Lansdowne road the other day.

Most of the revolutionaries were anti empire and anti slavery.

That said I’m sure someone will get upset by some innocuous statue of Meagher maybe - he became a governor of Montana. There are others too that have some suspect ideas by modern standards.

Billy86 · 20-07-2018 12:50PM

Sal Butamol wrote: »

Coming soon to Irelsnd...

Literature removed from syllabus, trigger warnings before lectures, buildings/streets renamed and statues removed.

Some of it already happening, more to come as the delicate little safe space generation import more and more radical bull**** from their counterparts in America, aided and abetted by the likes of that lunatic Zappone

The irony being that it is now and has always been conservatives and right wingers who are more prone to 'safe spaces' (a corporate concept from the 1940s, by the way).

bnt · 20-07-2018 12:51PM

Kipling was not "unpleasant". The poem of his that causes the most controversy is The White Man's Burden, in which he advises the USA to colonise the Philippines, but the poem is mostly caveats and warnings about how thankless a task it would be. He thought colonialism was necessary, but he wasn't delighting in it. As he told Theodore Roosevelt:

Now, go in and put all the weight of your influence into hanging on, permanently, to the whole Philippines. America has gone and stuck a pick-axe into the foundations of a rotten house, and she is morally bound to build the house over, again, from the foundations, or have it fall about her ears.

Had the USA not gone to war over the Philippines, claiming that they were liberating them from Spanish tyrrany and bringing democracy, none of this would have been necessary. To put it another way: "you broke it, you bought it".

20-07-2018 12:52PM

seamus wrote: »

Einstein was also a bit of a racist.

Historical context is always important. You can't expect someone to be a shining beacon of modern humanism when those ideas didn't exist or weren't well-known at the time they were alive.

99% of the most revered historical icons will have been racists, owned slaves, and treated women like property.

Ultimately we should always separate the artist from the art. Just because someone creates something incredible, that has absolutely no bearing on what type of human being they are. Idolising the individual and not the thing they've created is ridiculous.

Reminds me of the Bill Burr bit about some old lad, think it was the duck call TV show or something and he said some racist stuff and Bill is like "What did you think he thought!?" :pac:

Look at Gary Glitter - the music hasn't changed at all. He was a cvnt when he made it and he's a cvnt now, but the music is still the enjoyable glam pop stuff it was when it was released. Naturally it's hard to enjoy when you know what the singer did, but that doesn't objectively remove anything from the music itself.

Rock and Roll is played in high schools and colleges all across America night after night because it's not thought of as a Gary Glitter song to them. Other than that I don't think there's much of his stuff played commercially any more.

Franz Von Peppercorn · 20-07-2018 12:53PM

Here’s an example.

A university in London removes its pictures and busts of its previous faculty. These aren’t racists. They are white.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/2017/07/14/top-uk-university-replaces-busts-portraits-bearded-white-scholars/

7aubzxk43m2sni · 20-07-2018 12:59PM

Billy86 wrote: »

The irony being that it is now and has always been conservatives and right wingers who are more prone to 'safe spaces' (a corporate concept from the 1940s, by the way).

[citation needed]

_Dara_ · 20-07-2018 12:59PM

I never going to stop thinking Chinatown is an excellent film. So, yes, yes you can.

7aubzxk43m2sni · 20-07-2018 01:00PM

Billy86 wrote: »

I would only very, very slightly disagree with the 'always' part, or at least in terms of the message of the piece. An example might be while someone might like Ayn Rand's writing style and can absolutely still do so, Rand's message that "the advocates and supporters of the welfare state are morally guilty of robbing their opponents, and the fact that the robbery is legalized makes it morally worse, not better" should be judged on the basis that Rand herself went on to take social security payments and depended on the welfare state later in her life.

That's an interesting idea. Do you think hypocrisy from the artist undermines their entire argument?

Billy86 · 20-07-2018 01:11PM

Romina Better Coconut wrote: »

[citation needed]

Citation given: http://culture.sociologyofashion.com/cultural-analysis-creative-space/the-semiotics-of-safe-spaces/

7aubzxk43m2sni · 20-07-2018 01:17PM

Billy86 wrote: »

Citation given: http://culture.sociologyofashion.com/cultural-analysis-creative-space/the-semiotics-of-safe-spaces/

Thanks for the article. I will need to read it fully, but skimmig it has not revealed any evidence that safe spaces are something "that it is now and has always been conservatives and right wingers who are more prone to'". Can you shed some light on the relevant section?

ArrBee · 20-07-2018 02:12PM

...and what does this mean for current art?

Will current artists only be able to produce art if they are nice people?
Will unpopular views (or public comments) cause an artist to be censored?

_Kaiser_ · 20-07-2018 02:15PM

Yep.. take a recent example.

Kevin Spacey the man - wrong, and should be investigated/punished as defined by the law and the industry practices.

Kevin Spacey's characters and parts over the years.. completely different! Cutting him out of the final season of House of Cards will prove to be a mistake IMO. He WAS the show!

Can we separate the artist from the art?

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