Philosophically, I think we should separate the artist/writer from the art/writing, since it would be the genetic fallacy to find fault with an artistic/literary product based on the character of its artist/writer. To give an example, it is a well-known fact that Paul Tillich was a notorious womanizer. But does that do anything, logically, to invalidate his theological system? The answer is clearly no. The quality of a work is independent of the character of the person who produced it.

Philosophically, I think we should separate the artist/writer from the art/writing, since it would be the genetic fallacy to find fault with an artistic/literary product based on the character of its artist/writer. To give an example, it is a well-known fact that Paul Tillich was a notorious womanizer. But does that do anything, logically, to invalidate his theological system? The answer is clearly no. The quality of a work is independent of the character of the person who produced it.

Dear Colleague Kirk MacGregor,

I think your reply well represents the negative answer both logically and persuasively. No, keep art separate.

But is this really so binary: up-down, yes-no for all situations?

What if, for example, the prejudice against a group of people with epithets and shockingly hateful descriptions is found both in the artistic text and in the letters of the artist/writer? Do we then ignore both instances of hateful speech?

Unfortunately, theoretically or practically, we can not because the society always has two categories of people. One of them asking for the purposeful art and and media another category of people asking for the other side of art or non-purposeful media. There are a group of teenagers who are not only young but also adults asking for that.

The writers write and authorize novels and stories for this and that.

If we do not have a religious or moral concerns, there is noway.

In rhetoric, we often use examples because the artists/writers and their art/writing may be far different one from the other in each of our minds. It seems rather simplistic to speak about this as if discussing gravity w/o knowing the art and artist in particular of whom we are speaking. The difference is the law of gravity, which holds everywhere and examples of politeness, which may vary in nature from place to place.

So maybe a call for some examples where the artist in question has a serious flaw or lapse in ethos is in order. Feel free to contribute your own example.

I have one: the Chicago mass killer John Wayne Gacy made paintings in prison of Disney characters such as the Seven Dwarves. They were being sold outside and he was starting to make some real money. Paintings were selling for a couple thousand dollars because of Gacy's notoriety.

Some people felt that he should not profit as an artist from his notoreity, even though the paintings had almost nothing to do with his crimes. Some critics said having the subject matter being the Seven Dwarwes going "Hi-ho" off to work with picks and shovels recalled his digging graves for the murder victims. in rhetoric, we say any work of art has its "illocutionary intent"--the meaning the artist intends to invoke in the viewer or reader. Did Gacy intend a joke in alluding to his crimes or did he merely want artistic expression?

And was the value inflated at the expense of other artists who might paint at a similar level because people were not buying the art so much as a safe way to impress people with being close to such a public figure?

A third complicating issue might be is this an artist whose art we are judging or a convicted murderer whose method of getting attention from public and press we are considering? That is, do you judge Gacy as an artist and by artistic standards or as a convicted multiple murderer where this is just one of his behaviors as a convict?

Now is it easy to say separate the artist from his work or a bit more of a challenge? I don't see this as such an easy question, but it does depend upon the example used. Always yes or no or is a more case-by-case approach more accurate and fair?

In my opinion everything that the author wanted to tell us, he said in his works. Gacy’s example, advised by Gloria Lee Mcmillan, does not work, because it refers not to creativity, but to the market (society, fashion etc.). A feature of modern culture is not the attitude toward a work based on its own evaluation of the person who reads, but the delegation of a significant part of the reader's rights to the critics. In fact, I do not care what the creator did in life, with whom he slept and with whom he was friends. The most striking example is Homer. We do not know anything about him, including even the fact of its existence. A certain discovery of the fact about him will not give anything in his perception. Apart from the all kinds of the buns that his researcher will receive. Does knowledge about Shakespeare give better understanding of his texts (or those texts that we consider as Shakespearean)? Most likely no. For me, the more important is in whose translation I read it (surprisingly, as a translators to Russian, I value much higher Shchepkina-Kupernik (nobody known her as a poet) than the little poet Lozinsky, and especially the great poet Pasternak). O. Henry was hard drinker, as many others, Nabokov and Hodasevich hate each other (as well as Dostoevsky and Turgenev … and many others), Flaubert, also as many others was syphilitic. So what? Do not confuse the history of literature with the case-record (it is not my claim).

What do I care, that Bunin called one poetess a hysterical woman with tin eyes? I know her verses:

The evening fields are wet with dew

Crows circle up above...

Unwilling I let go of you -

May God bless where you are!

(Translated by Dina Belayeva (and very untruly )).

The positive point of flawed artist/writer, when their novels and stories were read by their customers or readers, they (flawed customers or readers) may pay more attention to their life to avoid the bad events, behavior and bad end which mentioned in novels and stories of the flawed artist/writer in their live (flawed customers or readers). Flawed artist/writer may help flawed people to have the chance to turn their flawed customers or readers to live a good life and enjoy their inevitable eternal destiny nowadays and hereafter If they believe that there is God (ALLAH) will be punished people for their bad deeds and will be rewarded them for their good deeds also nowadays and hereafter.

All religions; the Jewish, Christian, and Islam reject those flawed people and punish them for their actions and for those who follow them.

Please read carefully the attached file, it represent chapter No.99 In QURAN (Muslim's Book) called Alzalzalh. Many issues you can be deduced and you may change many things in your daily life.

Art is not an instruction, but a reflection of the author's world (both internal and external). This does not exclude the fact that the recipient can draw any conclusions. However, this is the result of his inner work. As soon as the author begins to teach, he ceases to be an artist. This is a completely different specialty. Why I should not read the books of author if he is not-such-as-I-hope?

“The crowd eagerly read confessions, notes, etc., because in its meanness it delights at the humiliation of the high, the weaknesses of the mighty. When it opens any abomination, it is in admiration. He is small, like us, he is disgusting, like us! Lie, scoundrels: he is small and abominable – but not like you, otherwise”! A.S. Pushkin letter to P.A. Vyazemsky. 1825.

Thanks for your new contributions, Colleagues Eldenglawey and Gorshkov.

Rhetoric’s Reader Response Theory deals with the ability of each reader to make of a text what he or she consciously wishes, but I think floods of instantaneous memes can partially change that free reader/viewer response. This theory is pre-social media with its assault on independent thinking via cascading floods of memes. (See my question and posted essay about meme addiction.)

This Reader Response Theory first was outlined in 1987 by Kathleen McCormick, Gary Waller, and Linda Flowers study Reading Texts: Reading, Responding, and Writing.

Sometimes artists/writers do attempt consciously to sway people by teaching something. Literary theorist Mikhail Baktin in The Dialogic Imagination, says all novels do this to some degree and not just didactic texts. (The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays Univ. of Texas P, 1981).

Artists do not only “teach” consciously in their works but sometimes simply embody their unbalanced and unfair or violent ethos, believing it to be reality. Bakhtin's point is that “teaching” or “persuading" in texts is not something entirely conscious nor is “persuasion” avoidable.

So Bakhtin seems to argue that a clear separation of the artist/writer's view, flawed ethos and biases based on a conscious writer/artist intention is not possible, even in Homer. Whatever biases of his group Homer (whoever wrote as Homer) communicated were not pure art, by any means, but representative of some discourse community, its biases and needs to persuade.

Thanks colleague Gloria Lee Mcmillan for your feed back. I think the majority of artists/writers have a good reputation but commercially, writers may write some thing could be looked as unusual story or books disliked by the majority of people. In this case, the artist is just only read and act his job. So the word "flawed" belongs to the writer not to the artist. Finally, a lot of people may not have a high level of education and understanding. Those people whom are the victims of flawed writers and flawed artists as well.

Sometimes a writer's biases, prejudices, or personal views show through in a work yet are gratuitous to the work, so the writing is flawed because of the writer's flaws, and the two cannot be separated. A good critic can reveal this and can also give a reasoned judgement as to whether the work has literary merit in spite of those particular flaws.

Dear Colleague Karl Pfeifer,

Very thoughtful and along the lines I have also been thinking. Thank you.

Art was and is created by all kinds of people, nit just by good, loving, ethical and morally responsibly ones, but also by racists, murderers etc. Many great artists were a-holes in private live. A piece of art doesn't get less interesting or more interesting if the creator was/is a criminal. I guess we are still identifying the work with its creator, in spite of many theories on authorship that offer us a way more complex approach.

If one is satisfied with a naive aesthetic experience (which is a respectable choice, particularly for the non-specialist), the complex physical and sociocultural system of which the artist was a part, and from which the work of art emerged, can be comfortably ignored. If, on the other hand, one aspires to a deeper understanding of the work and the circumstances of its creation, the task is more complex. The payoff for doing the research is often a more intense aesthetic experience, as we have a heightened sense of connection with the work's creator(s). In the case of works created by authors whose ideas repel us, this connection can be uncomfortable, but attaining it is worthwhile, as this can broaden our sense of understanding of the human condition, stepping out of our usual feedback loops.

The D. W. Griffith silent film Birth of a Nation favorably depicting the KKK in the US south often is rated as only artistic. I would offer the opinion that a film that promotes such a racial agenda is not exactly merely art-for-art's sake. In this case, shrugging the shoulders as if to say it is just art and art is in Kant's region of the Sublime that does not intersect with us. Hm. Well, maybe or maybe not. This is not necessarily a less sophisticated reading of the art, but one that takes into account "reader" or "viewer" response, as in Reader Response Theory of Linda Flowers. Not a better or worse way to interpret art, just different than a blanket claim that art is "over here" and the world "over there."

I guess there are two topics here: 1. the artist as a problematic character, in the most extreme case even a murderer, who can nevertheless produce works of art we consider work watching, hearing etc.

2. works of art that are problematic because they are racist, sexist etc. Birth of a Nation is a good example for the manipluative power art can have. It is of course difficult to deal with it. I wouldn't show the film or any comparable example without any introduction about the racist content. But I do think that we have to deal with these works and not just forbid them.

Dear Gloria,

This is a very difficult question, indeed!

I think that first we should distinguish:

- The art object and the person related object.

The art object can stand on its own - the person related object cannot.

- If art, even by a flawed artist, the object still remains art. - But the problem remains : the benefit this artist gets out of it during his lifetime.

- If a notorious person related object, the object can get the attention related with the persons.

This is a media related problem. Our attitude towards validation by the media should be our first concern here.

here’s why:

What is the relation artist - artwork?

1 The symbolic order

It is a matter of life and dead.

When people are dead they enter into the symbolic order (Lacan) - they are no longer “people" they become “symbols”.

The artist is exotic by nature (not as ordinary people) and a dead artist is exotic by excellence. 
All good artist are dead artists!

While the artist is still alive he is only a famous person. Benefitting from the advantages famous people have - money, succes, privileges,…

An artwork is the product of an artist

(an artwork is not possible without the artist-maker, even if the artwork is an idea that was industrially realized.)

This artist can sign with the real name or use a pseudonym.

Women can sign with a man’s name and vince versa.

For some famous works of art in history the name rests unknown (“inomine").

And vice versa: The artist the product of the artwork. Because the social identity in being an “artist” only can be granted by public appreciation (Goodman).

Furthermore has the artist also a biological existence as a human being.

Does this take part in the artist as artist?

The artwork is separated from everyday life.

(It can be related to the artist’s life, taken out of a worldly experience but has to become an entity on its own: A picture, a sculpture, a movie, even after real life, even an autobiography has to stand for itself.)

For example the painting of a still life by Cézanne: There are appels on a table and some other objects around - But the painting clearly is not about “apples” or “tables” - apples become form and color on the canvas - they are not there for publicity reasons to engage people in eating more fruit!)

In Cézanne’s studio in Aix en Provence (France) you can recognize the objects he used in his still lives - but these objects themselves are not art - they are only related to the person of the artist, (as Chaplin’s walking stick).

Put otherwise : they are not chosen by the artist as object but as actors in the play of the canvas).

The same can be said of all art and writing.

A writer uses her or his experiences to write fiction.

To extract experiences of daily life and transform them to autonomous entities - to become part of a novel, a poem, a movie, - and by doing so “entering them into the symbolic order of art” (Derrida)

Even if an artist should represent his existential life as a work of art (some have done so) he or she is still in the need of finding the symbolic means to do so.

(realism in modern art) (body art, performances) (Maria Abramovic)

2- The symbolic and the real

- Can art be harmful? Yes it can!

art can be miss used

If art can be a social political vehicle to introduce changes in society, by introducing ideas, thinking otherwise, tackling real life problems, it can be able to provoke good things aswel as bad things.

Art can emancipate but can also do the opposite.

As all things under the sun can be misused - so can art.

(Leni Riefenstahl, Hitler propaganda).

- Can everything in life become part of a work of art?

No: all art has existential limits (Kundera, Le Rideau).

Theater needs of a stage to become a performance, Film needs a screen…

Things that are repulsive by nature cannot become art.

Art can only be within certain confines.

One of these limitations is the capability of our senses for example: sounds too loud, or too silent cannot become music, things that hurt physically, etcetera.)

Existential life can be represented, even cruelly, even hard, even at the limits of the supportable - but never can be as such in a work of art.

Existence has to find a way of representation in art - Even in a very lively form, using special affects, 3D real life situations etc - it always is in the need of a certain medium (never direct).

The artist is the one to provide this.

That’s called “style” - the specific way in which an artist shows things. (also called “idiom”)

3 What is real?

- How to read reality?

A problem here are the social media.

There are no social media poetics - that’s where it went all wrong!

Social media like Facebook and other precisely are missing style - often lack a way of representation, a medium, language: a lot of people are convinced that the social media show is “real”.

The problem “fake news”!

It becomes common today to think in the same way about other media.

For example: Lately a BBC documentary on animal life was contested because of “staging” - but all movies are crafted - and are not comparable with what people do with smartphones.

To distinguish fake from real is becoming more and more difficult to a lager audience.

An author speaking as “I” in a novelle can easily be mistaken for the biographical person of that writer.

Identification more and more seems to become a trend in reading - novelles are red as if social media posts. Movies as “enlarged smartphone footage".

In general we tend to over-personification nowadays, even on a dramatical high level.

Specially the younger generation artists presents themselves often as spokesman for ethnical (minority) group, a race, a social class, or even a gender.

The biographical author seems to move himself more and more to the centre of the narrative.

4 - the dead “flawed artist”.

so:

Art is separated from life, but can it be separated from the artist?

Can we separate the very flawed artist from the art?

- Are the children cursed by the sins of their father?

Problems specially regarding the living “flawed artist” - not so much because of what they make but because of the benefit they get out of it (and don’t deserve?).

The urgency of this problem seems to drop once the “flawed artist” is dead: From that day on, there is for the flawed no benefit to gain anymore - so the works of arts now can be relieved from their borrow and stand to their own account.

May be linked with a twisted history - the eccentric even wicked person-artist can even gain attractiveness on the market - it seems to add to their story.

And story today is called narrative.

Many Renaissance artist had a brush with the law, or even committed murder - to name one of them: the famous sculptor Benvenuto Cellini (the “Medusa” at the Loggia in Florence is his most famous work): to quote wikipedia:

• “14 January 1523 he was sentenced to pay 12 staia of flour for relations with a boy named Domenico di ser Giuliano da Ripa.[13]

• While in Paris, a former model and lover brought charges against him of using her "after the Italian fashion." (i.e. sodomy)[13]

• In Florence in 1548, Cellini was accused by a woman named Margherita, for having certain familiarities with her son, Vincenzo.[14]

• 26 February 1556, his apprentice Fernando di Giovanni di Montepulciano accused his mentor of having sodomised him many times.[15] This time the penalty was a hefty fifty golden scudi fine, and four years of prison, remitted to four years of house arrest thanks to the intercession of the Medicis.[13] (“)

5 - the object and the narrative

“A $7 million bid for the Mercedes owned by Adolf Hitler fell short of the seller's minimum price at a Scottsdale car auction.”

How could this be explained?

The brasier of Marly Monroe or the walking stick of Charley Chaplin .

A car, a brasier, a walking stick can become objects of special value by relating them to certain persons (same for the Micky Mouse paintings of the murderer mentioned in your response).

Here we have an object, produced in series, that becomes linked to the person solely by possession.

In this case, the object cannot stand on its own (as a work of art can), It has no autonomy - on the contrary - without the link to the famous -or notorious- person this object becomes ordinary.

7 -conclusion ?

Artworks have a life of their own (1)

If art - they are cut out of the existential (2)

Today under the influence of (social) media they often get mistaken for the real thing.

Fact becomes fiction becomes fact (3).

De living flawed artist got benefits out (4) the art - deserved or not.

Once dead this curse is broken - If art, even by a flawed artist, the object still remains art.

- If a notorious person related object, the object gets the attention related with the persons name. This is a media related problem. Our attitude towards validation by the media should be our concern in this.

Best wishes,

Willy

Dear Colleagues Tieber and Van Buggenhout,

VERY helpful thoughts from both of you.

I concur that we never should forbid art. But the rhetorical power of art to inspire both attitudes and acts is real , esp. in what Walter Benjamin called The Age of Mechanical Reproduction ( Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit ). So I would suggest that we benefit by taking into account the cultural effect of the instantaneous ease, called going 'viral,' of all kinds of art online.

My field is rhetoric, so I am always thinking of the Rhetorical Triangles 1 and 2. No doubt familiar to some if not all. Apologies for defining the presumably obvious.

(T1) (Gk. 'Pisteis') Means of Persuasion Triangle (may be prioritized differently in differing art works)

ETHOS (ethical character of art/artist) -------- LOGOS (logic)

PATHOS (emotion)

(T2) Active Agent, Text, and Receiver of Act Triangle

speech/art/writing ---------- speaker/artist/writer

hearer/viewer/reader

Triangle One from Aristotle does factor in the ethos of the speaker. In a different style of art criticism that posits an art "out there" in a self-contained sublime state or place, that may not matter so much.

T2 takes into account the effects (now so rapid and geographically broad online) in the audience.

Rhetorically, even the most abstract visual art is making a rhetorical appeal to audience, i.e., "Am I not beautiful and/or interesting and worth buying?" if nothing else.

The all-important context (rhetorical situation) was personal and local in Aristotle's rhetorical and aesthetic theories. Now the context and creator(s) can be diffuse and distributed globally

I found a couple links of relevance to this. And--reminder--this discussion touches on the use of mechanical means by artists of all varieties of ethos.

Cheers and best greeting to all (wherever you may be),

Gloria

Aesthetics of Distributed Digital Creation of Art/Text

LINK: http://kairos.technorhetoric.net/11.3/topoi/fleckenstein/distributed.html

Links bet. Ari's Aesthetic Theory and Rhetorical theory

LINK: http://kairos.technorhetoric.net/11.3/topoi/fleckenstein/rhet_poet.html

In case you missed it above, thank you Colleague Willy van Buggenhout for your thought-provoking answer.