George Orwell’s famous essay (by famous I mean I have read it) ‘Benefit of the Clergy’ about Salvador Dali chides his audience for not being able to separate the artistic ability of the painter from the morality of the subject matter and the moral actions of the painter himself. At best what I want to say here might be considered an unworthy footnote to that essay. Specifically I want to pick at the connections between the moral conduct of an artist and to what extent she owes ‘good behaviour’ to either her fans or her academic disciples. I am not denying our freedom of choice in our artistic heroes, if we want to choose a writer, painter or musician on the basis of their happy family, charitable good works or benevolent aspect rather than the pure quality of their work then of course that is our right and equally many artists deliberately cultivate a personal relationship with their audience for reasons that I am sure span genuine gratitude to shifting more units. What I want to address is the sense of grievance and artistic downgrading that comes about when an artist (often retroactively) fails to live up to current social mores.
At its simplest I would say something along the lines of ‘render unto Caesar’ specifically that an artist owes his family, loved ones and society a duty of good moral behaviour as we all do and she owes her audience the words, images or performance she has created in the artistic space in return for monies paid. Artistic genius does not entitle someone to fail as a parent or give carte blanche to criminality but rampant misanthropy or nasty prejudices do not makes the notes less sweet or the image less beautiful unless we choose to let them. Even if we make that choices (as is our right) I am not sure we can impose the same discount on other people’s enjoyment.
Specific cases are more interesting, for example I love the poetry of T.S Eliot at the same time as I acknowledge his (even for the era) quite obnoxious anti-semitism the things coexist in my mind without hope of resolution but I am fairly sure that I would be unaware of the prejudices of a bank clerk were that clerk not also a great poet. At the time I think it would have been worth his friends and colleagues remonstrating with his disturbing views but I am not sure what it achieves now, so far as I can tell the views do not pervade his poetry so if critics didn’t keep bringing them up they would be consigned to the oblivion they deserve. Would we be better of knowing Homer was a bigot?
Michael Jackson is a more testing situation, clearly his fame and wealth as an artist blinded many people then and now to his obvious mental issues and highly questionable interest in relationships with children. That is something his fans should come to terms with and the legal system stands accountable (once again) for its failure to hold rich and celebrated people to the same standards as the rest of us. You could have made a reasoned argument at the time for not providing him with more wealth with which to thwart justice but now we are left with some traumatised children and some beautiful songs – there is no cosmic ledger to balance such things but in the imperfect world we live it, we owe the first love and counselling and the songs the right to bring pleasure and beauty to millions of lives in their own right.
In this world, if we were all to be judged on our worst qualities we would almost all be failures and if were all entitled to a pass on the basis of our best attributes many of us would be monsters. Sometimes all you need is the music or the words and to be thankful for that and leave judgement of the man to the people he lived amongst.
6moreSleeps 