Good art, bad artist

MANILA, Philippines - Maybe it comes with age but I have been finding myself more judgmental of other people’s behavior.

With “common” people — acquaintances, neighbors, co-workers, the people on your Twitter feed, that woman you always bump into at events but whose name you can never remember, that guy at the counter of the 7-Eleven you frequent — judgment comes easy, and often.

But when it comes to someone I consider a creative genius, someone whose work I greatly enjoy and respect, judgment becomes really difficult but yes, it does come. Especially if that behavior is beyond what can be brushed off as mere artistic.

This is why it baffles me how so many people are willing to turn a blind eye and a deaf ear when it comes to the misbehavior of artists who are so influential, they have transcended the art world and became global celebrities. Here’s just a short laundry list of them, both living and dead, and some of their side-eye-worthy acts (to put it mildly): John Galliano, racism and anti-Semitism; Coco Chanel, sympathizing with and spying for the Nazis;  Pablo Picasso, womanizing; Terry Richardson, sexual harassment and overall misogyny; Roman Polanski, (take a deep breath) “rape by use of drugs, perversion, sodomy, lewd and lascivious act upon a child under 14, and furnishing a controlled substance to a minor,” as summarized in Wikipedia.

Chanel’s anti-Semitic slant has been, so far, only claimed in journalist Hal Vaughan’s 2011 book Sleeping With the Enemy: Coco Chanel’s Secret War, though her relationship with German officer and reported Abwehr spy Hans Gunther von Dincklage was quite well-known. Picasso was never prosecuted for his rampant philandering and the trail of wretched women he left behind. Polanski counts among his avid supporters Woody Allen, David Lynch, Martin Scorsese, and Whoopi “rape-rape” Goldberg, and he has yet to serve time for his crime. Richardson continues to do work with some of the most influential names in the fashion industry. And Galliano was taken under Oscar de la Renta’s wing for a three-week apprenticeship just last February, which concluded in a New York Fashion Week show that may not have credited the former Dior designer but still signaled to everyone his return to the industry.

Each of them received slaps on the wrists for their sins, pre- or posthumously and in varying degrees. The fact remains, though, that while they have displayed abhorrent behavior that would bring a lifetime of disgrace to any other person, these artists and a whole lot more like them continue to be admired and even revered because of their body of work.

Does good art, then, necessitate bad behavior? Does good art excuse bad behavior?

In his June 2012 New York Times article “Good Art, Bad People,” Charles McGrath posited that “the creation of truly great art requires a degree of concentration, commitment, dedication, and preoccupation — of selfishness, in a word — that sets the artist apart and makes him not an outlaw, exactly, but a law unto himself.” Because of how much a piece of art can affect the observer, we non-artists immediately assume how transcendental it might be for the one who created it, to the point where societal norms don’t hold sway over them anymore. They see more, hear more, feel more than we do. Artistic temperament, as we like to sugarcoat it.

There is also that romantic notion of how art is born out of the most troubled and sinister places of the human psyche, a sublimation of whatever darkness lurks inside the artist. That notion may be true but it also highlights how we have inextricably linked darkness with creativity. Art, after all, is a free-for-all arena where the most disturbing sh*t can be presented and played out in a manner that is palatable; if it’s not that dark, we’re not that interested.

Now, on our part as the spectator, do we or do we not separate the art from the person?

In many Chris Brown posts on Oh No They Didn’t, it isn’t just the terrible victim-blaming or his fans’ numerous justifications of his violent and misogynistic behavior that alarms me. It’s the fence-sitters, the ones who deplore his actions in one breath then say, “But his music is so good” the next. (Granted, they may be 14-year-olds in need of exposure to much, much better yet under-appreciated urban music.) A commenter on Historum.com on a thread about whether artists should be judged for their personal behavior, their art, or both wrote: “The personal behavior of all humans should be judged as humans. Any art should be judged for its unherent (sic) merit. Different stuff, different standards; there’s no reason to mix them.” The statement is reflective of the general sentiment in the thread, which is that people should like a work of art for its own sake and not bring into it the personal life and debaucheries of its creator.

But I find this separation of the person from the work potentially dangerous. It is a permissive attitude that enables egos already inflated by the public adulation, as seen by Polanski’s woe-is-me open letter “I can remain silent no longer” (which can be read on www.laregledujeu.org), written some months after his arrest in Zurich in 2009. Thirty years after he skipped town to avoid doing jail time for his crime, Polanski and his disappointing Hollywood supporters, which sadly include Tilda Swinton, Monica Belucci, and Wes Anderson, cry foul about the director getting held in jail for extradition. Between these talents and the millions of Beliebers who retweet Justin Bieber’s “Focus on the positive” rebuttals, I can hardly see any difference when it comes to enabling bad behavior — which could possibly tell a young, impressionable mind that if you’re talented enough or at least famous enough, you can get away with anything.

What really makes me indignant about these creative geniuses, or any person for that matter, getting a free pass is the presence of equally great artists who are (or were) also decent human beings. In the celebrity world, there are hardly any other actors more venerated than Meryl Streep and Tom Hanks, and yet they seem to be the nicest folks around. He may had been l’enfant terrible but the late Alexander McQueen never got to a point where he would taunt people that their mothers and forefathers should be “gassed.” Johannes Vermeer responded to the selfish call of his art, working slowly and meticulously to the economic detriment of his family and his artistic career, but by all accounts he was a faithful husband and a good father.

Of course, I do recognize that the world is all the richer for the significant contributions that great artists, both the good apples and the bad ones, have made all throughout the history of humanity. But is it too much to ask of our artists now to respect women and to refrain from slurring gays and any other race? And is it too much to ask of ourselves to make no one above not just the law but also the judgment?

Also, if they’re so good at what they do, why can’t artists sublimate the worst of their behaviors into their work, like some sort of Dorian Gray portrait?

McGrath puts into words the kind of question an artist (or a writer or a musician or a director or any type of creative) and a spectator should raise when it comes to art in relation to real life: how many stories (or paintings or songs or movies), however good, are worth the pain and unhappiness of others?

It’s a question that remains difficult, even impossible to answer.