Is art the person or can they be separated?

[Karldar]

I mean, if an artist is deemed worthless/deviant by society, does that make their art worthless, as well? Just looking for opinions. There are many controversial artists out there, but is there a line that, when crossed, renders their works as rubbish?

Here are a few names that come to mind:

Gary Glitter
Marilyn Manson
Micheal and Janet Jackson
Madonna
Marquis de Sade
Sigmund Freud
Bill Clinton

Hmm, well, I guess that shows that my mind's in the gutter. Anyway, what do you guys think? Do a person's "evil" words, actions and/or inactions make their "good" works immaterial?

[timwat]

No, the art is not identical with the artist. Nor is it inherently, and eternally, an extension of the artist (along with the artists presuppositions, convictions, ethics, morality, etc.)

With some forms, such as music, sculpture, and painting, the original intent of the artist can be so easily enveloped by the work itself that words like "intent" become an anachronism. Chopin's Revolutionary Etude, for example. Others, however are so vested with emotion that while the original locus of the artist is removed, vestiges remain - i.e., Picasso's Guernica.

Songs, however (as much of what you've listed is pop music), often betray the artist's setting, intent and worldview in ways that other genres may not. Also, some works may be questions whether they are to be defined as "art" at all...or whether they have been miscatagorized entirely. This is not to devalue their cultural significance, simply to argue they are in the wrong library shelf, so to speak.

To put it the other way from your question, a person's "good" words, actions and/or inactions do not make their "evil" works of higher value either.

[timmhaan]

works of art also mean different things as time goes on. the line that is crossed now may not be so important in the future. you see evidence of this all the time. many artists die pennyless because nobody wants their work. but later on, someone finds value in it and it becomes popular again.

[lala]

Not artists: Sigmund Freud
Bill Clinton

I do not think artists can be separated from their work. Still thinking on it, though.

[Cromulent]

Take Shakespeare. A lot of people who analyze Shakespeare don't care what Shakespeare was thinking when he wrote his plays and sonnets. Author intent isn't helpful. Shakespeare is dead. Who cares what he meant to say when he wrote Hamlet?

Taking the Author (read authority) out of the artist's work leaves you free to look at what is going on in the text (or the painting, or the sculpture, or the symphony, or whatever the work of art is).

Critical analysis of a text requires that you look at what's going on in the text. You, as reader or critic, can form very different ideas of what the author is doing. This isn't the same as intent, though.

Some critics think that authors don't know what they're doing, so the critic knows more than the author. Some critics believe that an author writes very deliberately; each word and phrase is chosen with absolute care (Nabokov comes to mind). You look at what the author is doing, not what the author is thinking.

From what I can remember through the smoke and fog of my major in English "would you like fries with that" Literature, this take on textual analysis is decidely Modern. But I could be wrong. Actually, since we're talking interpretation, no one is wrong.

Man, I wish I had chosen Engineering.

[Cromulent]

And to try and answer your original question...

There are many controversial artists out there, but that doesn't mean their art is worthless. That is, of course, if these artists will be remembered at all. Andy Warhol meant to shock us, and maybe he did at the time. Maybe it was just him. Now his work is pretty pictures of Marilyn Monroe and soup cans. Pop Art has eaten itself.

What do you find in art? Meaning, beauty, ugliness, truth, the sublime, realism? All art is useless, as Oscar Wilde once said. But he said a lot of stuff, and a lot of it didn't make any sense. So if you remove the artist from the art, you're free to attach whatever value or meaning to it that you want.

[Stacey]

Kaldar, just what's wrong with the Marquis De Sade? He's my kinda guy! :D

[Karldar]

Not artists: Sigmund Freud
Bill Clinton

I do not think artists can be separated from their work. Still thinking on it, though.


You see, this is where perception comes into play(which I conveniently forgot to mention). I think of those two(and others) as performers even though they don't fit the typical definition of "artist". I'm not trying to pick on those two gentlemen, either. It's just that Freud founded psychoanalysis-which I find to be both a help and a hindrance. This is partially due to my idea of him as a nutjob. Politicians lie(all of them, as far as I can tell), but Clinton was damn good at making it entertaining, in my opinion. I don't see why psychoanalysis and lying can't be art. It might not be high art, but it kept my attention for a bit, at least.

I do think that artists can be separated from their work, but, as with most things in life, it's not cut and dried or black and white. It depends--on a lot of things....