Can a work of art stand seperate from the character of the artist?

[sandyRoe]

Imagine that Hitler had been a great artist. Would the works he produced adorn the walls of galleries despite his many crimes.

[pericat]

I think it could as long as it could benefit a charity in some way -

[vulcan]

Hitler's paintings are bought and sold, but whether it's to do with ability or notoriety is debatable.
http://news.bbc.co.uk...hropshire/8013945.stm

[woofgang]

umm Well the Kray twins paintings sell for decent amounts but i don't think anyone could call them great artists, its more for the notoriety. I can't imagine ever a circumstance where the work of art could be entirely divorced from the character of the artist and would expect there to always be an element of notoriety attached to the work.
Setting Hitler aside, what it the artist was Joseph Fritzl or Fred West?
On a slightly different tack, there has been a recent exhibition in London of Aztec art, which mostly depicted nasty ways of killing people. The Exhibition made great point of divorcing the artistry from the subject matter but as one of the newspaper reviews said, if the art had been of more recent origin, could that separation have been so easily made?

[saxy_jag]

I think they would, but because of, rather than despite who he was.

Some say that people's art can tell you a lot about their personality. There has always been a lot of interest in Hitler's personality - why he did what he did and why he was so convinced it was the right thing to do. People would buy his art (as I'm sure they probably do) in some attempt to gain an insight into the man.

Artistic merit is subjective. Who's the best landscape artist - Constable, Turner or Van Gogh? The latter two's work is far less realistic than that of Constable, and you either like them or you don't, but who's to say which has the highest artistic merit.

[jno]

Tarka the Otter is still pretty popular, as a book and film; and yet Henry Williamson, the author, was a member of the British Union of Fascists and a Holocaust denier.

[LeMarchand]

People still go to see Roman Polanski films, and Jeepers Creepers was fairly successful despite the writer/director's past crimes.

In my case, I've yet to enjoy a Polanski film and yet thought Jeepers (and Powder) were both pretty good films. So I guess that to some degree I did divorce the director's work from his past. That said, there were a couple of scenes in Powder and the sequel to JC that I found worrisome.

[Canary42]

E.G. Caravaggio - murderer, but paintings world-famous.

[Buenchico]

Lewis Carroll would, under present laws, have been imprisoned for taking hundreds of photographs of naked young girls but the stories he wrote for his favourite little girl still seem to be as popular as ever.

J M Barries 'fondness' for the five Llewelyn Davies boys raised more than a few eyebrows even in his own lifetime (and some of his photographs depict the boys naked) but 'Peter Pan' remains popular.

P G Wodehouse had Nazi sympathies but the Jeeves books are as popular as ever.

Many people didn't have much faith in the verdict of the jury at Michael Jackson's trial but his music goes from strength to strength.

If anything, your question is worded the wrong way round. It suggests that immoral acts might reduce the popularity (or the value) of the works of an artist. Surely the only reason that Hitler's works sell for quite high prices is because of his infamy, rather than despite it.

Chris

[Mosaic]

Could it be that time leads to the forgetting of deeds - I'm thinking of some of the ancient architecture in places like Rome, where we know certain bits were commisioned by murdering tyrants. Medieval castles in Britain, too.

The Victorian Richard Dadd painted while inside for murdering his father, very collectable now. He wasn't executed because he was deemed insane.

[andy-hughes]

This is an interesting debate - and has been aired previously on AB.

I still love Gary Glitter's singles - but he is utternly absent from any radio stations or mobile discos, which shows what the general feeling about him appears to be.

Likewise, Wagner's music is performed worldwide, with the exception of Israel - the last time someone attenpted to stage a cxoncert, it was disrupted by a Holocaust survivor whom jumped on the stage and brandished his tattoed wrist in outrage.

I personally believe you have to enjoy art in isolatiosn from the artist, otherwise, where is the line drawn? Yes we have Wagner and Gary Glitter at one end of the scale - united only by the height of their appeal as artists, coupled with the horror or their lifestyles as men, but whom at the other? Do we boycott someone because they don't like animals, or are prone to be short with waitresses?

It's a tough one -= so any more thoiughts are always interesting.

[Davethedog]

It is the apssing of time that "sanctifies" the work whilst Hitler's work won't be shown today in a hundred years or two his works will be curiosities one the generations and time "wipe the blood"

Wagner wrote what he did and it wasn't nice but he was only radically politixised by the nazis.

I don't think it has a definative answers.

[jno]

Chris, no, I think you're wrong. Lewis Carroll seems to have taken a handful of photos of naked girls, not hundreds; and other photographers of the time, such as Julia Margaret Cameron, did the same. The case for him being a paedophile is very much not proven. And P G Wodehouse didn't have Nazi sympathies. He was interned by them for a year and later made broadcasts to America suggesting he'd taken a light-hearted view of it ('If this is Upper Silesia, what must Lower Silesia be like?'). But it seems the famous sense of irony deserted the British at about this point and he was reviled for years. Undeserved, it seems to me.

[LeMarchand]

Another thought: I think that if people enjoy the artist's work, or find it useful, they are prepared to forgive.

There's a well-known site (in the education world) that provides free resources for teachers. The owner was recently sent down on child pornography charges (for the second time), but many teachers were more concerned about having to do more work than the "fruit from the poisoned tree".

[Khandro]

..and Francis Bacon wasn't exactly a pussy-cat!