Monsters

I wrote a while back about my internal conflict in that I love the music of Wagner, even though there is plenty of evidence that he held some abhorrent views. I never met him so I only have what others have written to go on. It is no defence but his opinions were shared by many others at the time and I fear are still shared by many today. As they say, the past is a foreign country, they do things differently there.

I’ve always wondered if it is ‘acceptable’ to admire an artist’s work but not the person, to take a more impersonal approach, an opposite of ad hominem? Acceptable is doing a lot of the heavy lifting here as the question remains to whom?

As is often the case, it was a book that got me thinking about this again. I borrowed ‘Monsters’ by Claire Dederer from a friend. Oddly, we had had a discussion about the very same subject only a few months earlier. The book posed the question ‘What do we do with great art by bad people?’ Through its pages, the author discusses the work of greats such as Woody Allen, Joni Mtchell, Miles Davies among many others and of course, Wagner. 

After reading the book I listened to Mitchell and Davies. They are indeed great artists (as is Wagner).

Dederer is as conflicted as I am. It turns out that many great and famous people are not very nice at all, or simply downright nasty. It turns out that bad people can do good things. The converse is also true in that good people can do bad things. 

There is a monster in all of us. We all have the capability of doing good and bad. Some people are able to control their urges , whilst others cannot or are happy to give them free reign. In the end though, it is quite black and white, good is good and should be celebrated, while bad is bad and should be condemned. 

The question remains unanswerable. The word acceptable is important here. There is no magic formula and only you can decide what is acceptable to you. No justification is necessary.

Great artists can be awful people. It’s true of all of us. Perhaps we just need to suck it up?