Can a work of art be separated from its creator? The question that has engaged some of the greatest philosophers is soon to engage a Channel 4 studio audience in Britain, which is to be presented with works by such artists as Adolf Hitler, Eric Gill and Rolf Harris. Decisions are to be mediated by Jimmy Carr via a hammer.
Before discussing the TV show, over which much outrage has been generated, one theory is worth advancing: You can quite easily separate art from its creator — as long as the art is bad. Hitler’s postcard watercolors are perfectly safe to consume as there is nothing of him in them. They might have been created by any number of sentimental daubers who failed (twice) to get into art school.
When art is good, though, the artist has transferred some of their soul into it. They cannot help but reveal themselves. Gill’s stuff is very dangerous.
Illustration: Mountain People
So it is with any number of great, but corrupt artists. Paul Gauguin was a pedophile who took underage Tahitian girls as his sex slaves; his paintings invite the viewer to join him in gazing lustfully at these same teenagers, naked and in sexualized poses.
Caravaggio, genius and murderer, produced art that makes violence beautiful. His bright spurts of blood and clear fascination with the expression on a dying face give you a taste of what it might be like to want to kill someone. He converts his audience into, at the very least, morbid rubberneckers.
Salvador Dali’s raging narcissism and cruelty to animals and people is imprinted deeply on his art. His famous short film Un Chien Andalou, written with Luis Bunuel, shows a closeup of a woman’s eye being slit open with a razor and invites the viewer to enjoy the spectacle. It is an act of persuasion.
This is inevitable. What separates good art from bad is that good artists say what they really mean. When people talk about genius they are not describing technical skill or the labor of construction, block by block. They mean something more like inspiration: a dart of instinct straight from the soul onto the canvas.
The darkest urges of a great artist will, of course, echo in their art, and the self-justifications of the criminal or pervert — that everyone secretly shares their tendencies — is channeled through their works. Great art is great because it has the power to corrupt, should that be the artist’s wish. It is dangerous.
Bad art, on the other hand, is very safe. It thoroughly obscures the soul of the artist — nothing is revealed at all. A thick layer of plexiglass cliche lies between the soul of the artist and the viewer so that no darkness can seep through.
This insulating property is so integral to the genre that it has often been put to a practical purpose: Fascists tend to promote and surround themselves with bad art, now known as “totalitarian kitsch,” because it helps disguise them from themselves. There are tales of brutal dictators weeping at sentimental films after a hard day’s genocide.
This throws up a bit of a problem for modern moralists, not to mention gallery curators. Current sensibilities demand that artistic heroes be good people too: Seeming to endorse the “problematic” ones, even by discussing them, appears newly risky. This explains some of the outraged reaction to Channel 4’s show Jimmy Carr Destroys Art, which might have delighted audiences in the 1980s and 1990s.
People have also been brought up on the idea that all great art should be revered. That explains the other half of the outrage to the show.
Witness the outcry after a pair of climate change protesters threw soup on the protective glass surrounding a Van Gogh painting last week. The picture was unharmed, but the justifiably mocking, negative reaction said more about the ridiculous, self-important stunt than anything else.
So how should great art by bad people be dealt with? The solution that people have tended to reach for in the past few years is that art is essentially “harmless.” The artwork of corrupt people can be consumed and it will not touch us.
That accompanies a similar modern urge to see all great art and literature as “improving.” Judges have taken to prescribing criminals reading lists, as if all books, from Lolita to The Picture of Dorian Gray, were written with the express purpose of turning us into law-abiding citizens.
However, this does art a disservice. To treat art as harmless is to fail to take it seriously and reduce it to mere decoration.
If one wants to argue that some art can be good for us, one needs to consider that some can also be bad for us. How should immoral art be dealt with? It is still a question worth grappling with.
Martha Gill is a political journalist and former lobby correspondent.
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