Separating Art from Artist

So, yesterday Bill Cosby was sentenced to 3-10 years in prison for sexual assault. As always when Cosby comes up (or Woody Allen or Roman Polanski or Mel Gibson), the concept of separating art and artist arises in me. Some people do separate and others don't.

I have always felt it to be a little disingenuous for the people who don't separate and condemn others who still consume the art of these kinds of people. I can understand their perspective, that consuming their art is a way of implicitly supporting these people, but I don't agree with it. What about when they're dead and you're not giving money to that person anymore? Does that still count or is it then okay? What about artists that you were ignorant of their unsavory or criminal personal lives? I know that doesn't really apply here because we do know about people like Cosby or Polanski, but I’m saying at what point do you care?

At what point do you start separating art and artist? What constitutes an act worthy of dismissing an artist’s work? When does that start to matter? Can you still listen to The Beatles even though John Lennon beat his first wife? Can you still watch the movies of Charlie Chaplin or look at Pablo Picasso's paintings even though they both had relationships with teenaged girls? What about listening to the music of some of the bands of the 1960's and 70's who had relationships with groupies that were sometimes as young as 14 or 15 (Ted Nugent even became the legal guardian of a 17-year-old so that he could marry her)? Can you read Lord of the Flies, whose author William Golding admitted, in an unpublished memoir, to attempted rape? What about anything by William S. Burroughs, who drunkenly (though accidentally) murdered his wife? Catcher in the Rye or other JD Salinger works, when Salinger is another guy who loved teenaged girls (once dating a 14 year old when he was 30)? Norman Mailer, who stabbed his wife twice in the chest? What about HP Lovecraft’s racism? What about Charles Dickens cheating on his wife with a teenager? Virginia Woolf, Ezra Pound, Patricia Highsmith and many other writers anti-Semitism? Where does it stop? Where does an artist’s personal life start to matter?

I think these are the questions that matter in this discussion because if you are inextricably linking art and artist, you goddamn better make sure that you know everything possible about every artist you enjoy and that they pass your moral judgment test. Good luck with that, by the way.

My ultimate point is that although an artist certainly puts themselves into their art, their art is not themselves. The art stands on its own. Unless Woody Allen makes a movie about how it's okay to start a relationship with your wife's teenaged adopted daughter, I will continue watching his movies when I feel like it. I will still read Patricia Highsmith’s Ripley novels despite her reported anti-Semitism because the book itself isn’t supporting anti-Semitism. That doesn’t mean that I support anti-Semitism. It means I like a good book. I can separate the book from where or who it came from. I don’t see any reason to not separate the two. What about you?