Warning: This post may cause distress to some readers. It will also, inevitably, pose more questions than it answers. But, hopefully, it will stimulate thought and interest around this thorny issue.

Quote 1

Caravaggio. Narcissus. 1597-9. Wikimedia Commons

“How shall I lose the sin, yet keep the sense, and love the offender, yet detest the offence?”

Alexander Pope

Can we separate art and biography? There are no simple answers, like everything in life. But how do you feel when you look at the above painting and also learn that Caravaggio was a violent criminal? Should this great artist be ‘cancelled’ because he was also a murderer?

This genius, this painter of ‘chiaroscuro,’ this master of light and dark, stabbed a young man to death in a brawl. He had a volatile, intemperate and turbulent personality, a terrible temper, and he lived a brutal, often criminal, life.

Sentenced to be beheaded after the murder, Caravaggio fled to Naples and then abroad, hiding in the residences of some of his wealthy clients, painting amazing masterpieces whilst thus concealed, and still receiving commissions.

The Calling of Saint Matthew-Caravaggio. 1599-1600. Wikimedia Commons

“They were accused of doing something awful, and they made something great.”

Claire Dederer. Monsters: What Do We Do With Great Art by Bad People?

Notice the incredible sensitivity in his work, the outstanding and realistic quality of his brilliant application of paint, the drama of his use of light and shadow, the spiritual intensity, the wonders of his painterly technique, the way he can capture human emotions and facial expressions.

Could this truly be the work of an arrogant, brawling brute? Well, yes, actually, it could, and it is. He was wont to carry an unlicensed sword though the streets, ready for trouble. (Swords had to have a licence, like guns today, and it was illegal to possess them without one. He was often arrested for this.)

Can you, the viewer, “lose the sin and love the offender?” Does the fact that this was painted centuries ago mean the works are more acceptable ? 

But what of artists and performers who lived more recently and have highly suspect biographies, those like Picasso, TS Eliot, Michael Jackson, Woody Allen, Roald Dahl, Ted Hughes?

Is it acceptable to love the raw energy of Ted Hughes’ poetry or the brilliance of Michael Jackson’s music, dancing and singing? How do we manage all the thoughts and feelings that are aroused when we consider the work of those who have seriously offended the law, or have otherwise gone beyond the bounds of human decency? Can we find ways of thinking that will help us to cope with this dilemma?

Quote 2

Old Mill (Alte Mühle), 1916. Wikimedia Commons

“Who can think of Larkin now without considering his fondness for the buttocks of schoolgirls and paranoid hatred of blacks … Or Eric Gill’s copulations with more or less every member of his family, including the dog? Proust had rats tortured, and donated his family furniture to brothels; Dickens walled up his wife and kept her from her children; Lillian Hellman lied. While Sartre lived with his mother, Simone de Beauvoir pimped babes for him; he envied Camus, before trashing him. John Cheever loitered in toilets, nostrils aflare, before returning to his wife. P.G. Wodehouse made broadcasts for the Nazis; Mailer stabbed his second wife. Two of Ted Hughes’s lovers had killed themselves. And as for Styron, Salinger, Saroyan … Literature was a killing field; no decent person had ever picked up a pen.”

Hanif Kureishi, The Last Word

Oh dear, I apologise if including the above quotation has burst some of your happy literary bubbles; I know it did mine. 

And yet… I have myself included the work by Egon Schiele, above, who had an incestuous relationship with his younger sister and was later arrested under suspicion of kidnapping and seducing a girl of 13.

What to think, what to feel, what to do? I love Schiele’s fine and sensitive work, although some of its subject matter  is admittedly creepy, and I simultaneously detest his highly dysfunctional behaviour. Yet I sometimes use his works in my blog posts, as they are so expressive and sensitively drawn. At times, I can separate the art from the artist. At others, depending on my mood, I cannot do so. It is hard to explain, or even know for myself, why this is.

Awareness of an artist’s misdemeanours, or worse, does change the work. I cannot think of the work without thinking about the artist. It colours the work, inevitably. There is an indelible stain…

Quote 3

Alexej Von Jawlensky. Jünglingsportrait.

“When someone says we ought to separate the art from the artist, they’re saying: Remove the stain. Let the work be unstained. But that’s not how stains work.”

*****

“Flooded by the knowledge of the maker’s monstrousness, we turn away, overcome with disgust. Or…we don’t. We continue watching, separating or trying to separate the artist from the art. Either way: disruption.”

Claire Dederer. Monsters: What Do We Do With Great Art by Bad People?

The woman in Jawlensky’s painting above looks to me to be disgusted, or disapproving; perhaps she is reacting to some kind of stain, the kind that Dederer is talking about in her excellent book. Who knows. But what I do know is that I can strongly identify with the sentiments in these quotations about ‘the stain.’ This exactly expresses what many of us see when we witness the work of a seriously flawed genius. We see the work, and, from the moment we learn of the artist’s bad, or maybe evil, deeds, we will always see the stain.

Dederer’s conclusion in relation to this is that we all need to make our own, individual choices about whether we will allow ourselves to appreciate the work of ‘monsters.’ There is no one rule; there is no outside authority to provide guidelines on this. We all have to draw our own lines.  

She counsels us to focus on accepting that we will have more than one set of feelings when we look at such work. (I have also discussed such complex and contradictory issues in another context in my previous blog post). Dederer also talks about ‘fandom,’ and the way we sometimes see great artists and performers as being part of our own identity and also as something to ‘worship,’ superhuman, with no faults or weaknesses.

Fandom is an intense identification with a famous person, involving strong feelings of camaraderie and loyalty. This can become obsessional and detrimental to the ‘fans,’ who might overlook the fact that they are focussed on a human being, albeit with special or popular talents. They may be in denial about the other, unacceptable sides of the artist’s personality, ignoring or blotting out any ‘stains’ in their minds.

It is crucial that we do not use genius or artistic temperament as any kind of excuse for bad behaviour or criminality; it is important not to idealise brilliance and see this as any kind of exoneration or exculpation. We must also remember that people with great abilities may be highly talented but may not necessarily possess wisdom as well. The two qualities are quite different, and do not always coincide in the same person. Larkin was called a ‘filthy genius,’ in that some of his language was seen as lewd and crude and he was a misogynist, highly bigoted about class and race. 

Those who produce great things may be extremely gifted, but they are not superhuman and should not be regarded as such, for they can also be flawed and immature. Keeping both these in mind is necessary when we see genius.

We are, inevitably left with an unsolvable dilemma, an often distressing contradiction. I can only end this post with an important and wise quotation from last week, which, in actuality, encapsulates an attitude that will serve us well throughout the whole of life, in many different situations and contexts:

“The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald

© Linda Berman