Separate the art from the artist – quick links
So, that artist you love has just been cancelled. Maybe details about past misconduct have arisen. Maybe they’ve taken to social media with some obnoxious views. Maybe, well, Kanye.
Where does that leave you? Can you still enjoy their work in good conscience? Or should you boycott them altogether, even if it won’t make any practical difference?
This problem is usually framed as whether we can ‘separate the art from the artist’. But it’s more complicated than that, with intersecting issues of endorsement, complicity, solidarity and proximity all in play. It’s not just a problem for art – science, politics, and sport all throw up thorny issues of how to relate to the work of morally compromised people – but with art and literature, creator and creation seem particularly morally entwined.
So: wouldn’t it be great if there was a simple principle or decision procedure we could apply, to help decide when it’s ok to enjoy a problematic artist’s work, and when it isn’t?
Sorry. This isn’t going to be that sort of article. What the Greeks called phronesis, ‘practical wisdom,’ rarely if ever works like that. Moral judgment is always, on some level, a case-specific judgment call rather than the simple application of a rule, even if some calls are vastly easier to make than others.
But there are a few questions you can ask to help you navigate this perennial moral dilemma.
Separate the art from the artist: a moral checklist
Who benefits?
The first and most obvious question is: by giving an artist your money, or even just your attention, are you directly or indirectly benefiting someone who should not receive it?
With living artists, you might draw the line at paying for their work if you think they’re still actively causing harm. But even then, it’s arguably unfair that you might have to give up something you love because of something someone else has done.
Many fans of the Harry Potter franchise, for instance, refuse to drop their fandom despite disagreeing vehemently with creator JK Rowling’s anti-trans activism. They feel that they should not have to give up something they love simply because the person who created it now does something they find unconscionable.
It’s hard not to feel sympathy for this view, but it has its problems. For one thing, it implies we’re less morally obliged to boycott someone the more we like their work – but if that’s how ethics worked, even murder might be morally permissible so long as you really, really enjoy it. Besides, if the author doesn’t have the right to ruin their creation for others, it seems that applies to the casual fan as much as the obsessive, and suddenly ‘cancellation’ doesn’t seem to mean anything at all.
Have they atoned?
In Rowling’s case, her anti-trans activism has only ramped up over time. She’s anything but repentant. But what of the artist who offers a sincere apology, then works to win back fans’ trust?
It seems reasonable that, depending on the scale of the misdeeds, a disgraced artist might eventually be allowed to come in from the cold. Even if people deserve to be ‘cancelled,’ they still need to eat, and in at least some cases there need to be a pathway back to being a part of the moral community in good standing. Not all exile needs to be forever.
Trouble is, nobody can agree just when, or if, a given artist is entitled to return – just ask people what they think of Louis CK’s comeback, or the later work of Mel Gibson. To some, these figures have done their time; to others, they should never be allowed in the public sphere again. (Yes, they need to eat, but there are other, non-showbiz jobs out there.) There’s no obvious way to settle that sort of disagreement – other than just letting PR and collective amnesia settle the question for us.
Is the art itself complicit?
Then there’s the question of how the sins of the artist relate to the art itself.
You might think that the allegations surrounding Michael Jackson are so disconnected from his music that it’s ok to enjoy the MJ musical (currently in Sydney, and coming to Melbourne next month). After all, his songs aren’t about sexual abuse (and Jackson himself is dead, so he’s not benefitting from your ticket price), so surely singing along to Thriller from the stalls isn’t doing any harm? (So long as you’re avoiding sort of bad behaviour musical audiences have been indulging in since Covid, that is).
In other cases, it’s clear the art itself is the problem. The paintings of Australian artist Donald Friend, for example, are often themselves documents of Friend’s decades of child abuse. In such cases, ‘separating the art from the artist’ is much harder, if not impossible.
And that’s assuming we already have all the facts we need to make that decision. In my field of philosophy, for instance, we’d always known that the German philosopher Martin Heidegger was a paid-up member of the Nazi party, but for a long time it was assumed this didn’t really influence the content of his work. When some of his notebooks were published, however, it became clear that Heidegger’s fascism and antisemitism are much harder to extricate from his thought.
Has enough time passed?
Another factor is time. It’s one thing to boycott a contemporary artist, but what about someone whose work – and misdeeds – are deep in the past? History is full of brilliant painters, for example, who were appalling people. In such cases, distance in time can seem to weaken the moral stain of the artist on their work: Edgar Degas’ paintings have an enduring vibrancy that seems more salient than his Dreyfus-era antisemitism, while Caravaggio’s violence has even become part of his mystique as an artist.
We might feel these men’s misdeeds belong to a world that no longer exists, even while their art transcends that distance. But consider Paul Gaugin: when you reflect on the colonising, sexualising character of his Tahitian paintings, do you still feel like picking up that placemat from the museum giftshop? Is his world really as remote from ours as we’d like?
A wicked problem
So, can you still enjoy the work of your problematic faves? Asking the questions above won’t, of course, make that decision for you. But they can at least give you a better sense of what’s at stake – and where some of the unexpected moral pitfalls might lie.
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