What do you do with great works of art from horrible, terrible, nasty people?

Such as?

It would depend upon what their vileness was/is.

Murderer? Abuser (of the non-loafer variety), racist? Who is it that is being looked at here?

I don't know......all I know is I better not mention anime or anemone or whatever that animated stuff is....How about Hitler's paintings>? Is that what we are supposed to be talking about?

Well, I wonder how many great works are admired that are the works of those people, and we just didn't know it.

Are we going to penalize an artist of any type just for being found out?


Also, the terms horrible etc can be very subjective.

Off the top of my head, I think Frank Sinatra was a totally bad person, but a lot of people love him.

In the past I have turned away from artists who were not good people, until I began to realize that you could decimate huge swaths of wonderful works by holding their art hostage to these personal foibles. If you want to have anything wonderful you have to take it where it appears. Compartmentalizing human endeavors is what now works for me. I can now hate an artist for something but still hold in high regard at least some of their work.

Maybe Wagner, he was a right bastard.

Ill focus on some painters and sculptors

Caravaggio murdered another person, but that guy needed killing so Im not too critical. Keith Hering spread Aids around before it got him.

Frank Lloyd WRight was a real prick. (But he had a reason since his first wife was murdered).Moreover, he was a lousy engineer

Harry Bertoia always used to chase the kids off his lawn .

Jackson Pollock-how bout that one? nobody trusted him to drive cause he was always hammered.

If it's truly a "great" work of art there's no reason not to enjoy it. Nor is there any reason to think that a shitty piece of art created by a really nice person might actually be "good" on some level.

Bill Cosby (who here didn't grow up loving Bill Cosby)
Woody Allen
Roman Polansky

I never liked Bill Cosby or Woody Allen.

And Polanski is spelled with an I.

Typical, Farmerman talks about Caravaggio, who is pretty fantastic btw, and you talk about second rate comics.

Can’t say I’m remotely surprised.

Of all of the disgraced celebrities, Bill Cosby was the hardest for me to take. He was a part of my childhood.

I suspect there are other people (particularly middle-aged Americans) who feel the same.

I also loved Woody Allen movies. I find them difficult to watch now.

I think often times artistic people tend to be a bit different some just eccentric and others that seem mean or cruel to down right criminal.

Not sure if it is the artistic mind or maybe the fame that impacts them.

Maybe some express their troubled mind through forms of art. I don't think it diminishes the art - but I think it would bother me to think I supported a murderer or rapist through a purchase of some sort of art form.

And maybe it is just me - but a performer (actor/singer) some reason hits me more if the artist is criminal - maybe because in their art form you can directly associate it with the performer whereas say a painting - you don't necessary see the artists face in it.

Ok I am not crazy (pun inteneded)

The Link Between Creativity and Eccentricity

research has corroborated the connection between creativity and eccentricity. And it starts, interestingly enough, with schizotypal personality, a milder version of schizotypal personality disorder.

https://psychcentral.com/blog/the-link-between-creativity-and-eccentricity/

Respectfully, I would not make a comparison between being eccentric and being horrible.

I get what you are saying though 100%.

Mother was schizophrenic (somewhat mild, 3 clear persons and a few minor players). She was not particularly creative.

Never cared for Cosby. He was annoying as heck, he then showed himself to be a complete fake, and a scuzzball.

Woody Allen was never someone I found funny. Saw two of his films (Manhattan and Annie Hall). No others. Someone gave me a book of his once, I disposed of it without even opening it. He was annoying and even worse he is one of the lowest forms of scum and scuzzbaggery available. Cheating on his wife with his underage stepdaughter, he should have been thrown in a pit of venomous snakes. ....I take that back, why should the snakes have to suffer? Just shove Woody off a cliff into the waiting sea.

Roman Polanski. He sickens me and he was not responsible for the films he gets praised for. The actors deserve the credit.

Never liked either of them, and you’ve moved from artistic genius to celebrity. It’s not the same.

In that vein, I was upset by Rolf Harris and Chris Langham, Harris because he was part of my childhood and Langham because he was genuinely funny.

Not at all - just that some go beyond the eccentric into areas of true crazy even violent crazy so I wonder if some of these artists are so good as a result of how their mind works.

Or maybe I am just remembering a fiction novel I read.

Well that is inline with Psychology today - schizophrenics tend not to be more creative - but it can help if you are bipoplar.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/open-gently/201904/are-creative-people-crazier

"the latest science with large data sets demonstrates a slight tilt towards mental illness among creative people .... It may help to be "a little bit" manic or psychotic, but not enough that you're ill. "

"...researchers in Sweden conducted studies on the general population over a period of 40 years, they found that bipolar disorder—but not schizophrenia, depression, anxiety disorders, alcohol abuse, drug abuse, ASD, ADHD, anorexia nervosa, or completed suicide—was over-represented among people in artistic and scientific occupations. "


From reading the article it sounds like if you are a little "touched" then it is good for your creativity.

Have not seen anything that links horrible to creativity so maybe we are good there might just be enough nice people so we can get our creative stuff from them.