I remember reading some time ago an article written around the topic of “Can you continue to enjoy art after coming to realize that the artist behind its creation is problematic?” It was a fairly long and in-depth piece, quoting from interviews done with a number of prominent critics, and the only conclusion it came to in the end was “Well, I don’t know. That depends on you. Can you?”
It’s a complicated and multi-part question, and the answer varies depending on which part of the question you focus on: Can I continue to buy the art or otherwise financially support the artist? Can I keep, physically or digitally, copies of this art that I have? Can I share it and interact with others on it? Can I continue to let it matter to me? Can I continue to love it?
An artist, or an author, pretty quickly learns a couple of things about making art. The first is that, as John Rogers says here, there is almost no art that is solely the province – legally, financially, or morally – of one single artist, and that becomes truer and truer the more complicated the art form gets. It is a pretty solid guarantee that in any given movie or video game or comic book someone involved in the making of it, someone who received remuneration from its development, is going to be a pretty shitty person for one reason or another – whether it’s the person who gets a lot of high-profile publicity or not. Searching for art that has never been touched by tainted hands is, in this world, going to be a pretty lonely endeavor. There is no ethical consumption of art under capitalism; whether you are personally touched by feeling of unease or unhappiness to think of your money going to support, say, OSC, is an entirely inward and personal feeling and nobody else is really in a position to give you shit for such things.
The other thing an artist learns pretty quickly on is that the art that exists in the head of your audience is not the same art that existed in the artist’s head when they made it. A good artist comes to accept that early. A bad one may expend considerable effort and cause a lot of grief attempting to control their audience’s interpretation – but won’t ultimately get any further towards making it so.
I’ve said, many times over, that you cannot know what other people are taking away from a piece of art. It is many times something completely to the left of whatever you took away from the art. Sometimes it can seem entirely converse to the purpose of the artist – I remember not too long ago reading an essay by a POC about finding things deeply meaningful to them in the works of Lovecraft, an author infamous for his disgust towards POC. But the themes of addiction and heritance in his work still spoke to them – why should they deny themselves an experience of art that helped them, just because of the failings of the author?
The experience of art is not only idiosyncratic to each person, it’s unique to the person you were at the time and place you experienced the art. Just for example, a story about a woman going through a bad breakup may speak to you entirely differently at a time that you are struggling in a relationship yourself, than when you re-read it five years later while peacefully single and lonely.
The context of the art changes as you find out more about it, and the context of you changes, too. There can be a hundred reasons why a piece of art that once helped you isn’t helpful any more, whether because the context changed or because you did. To borrow a Marie Kondo concept, if this art no longer sparks joy for you, then let it go. Grieve it if you feel the need, but don’t let it weigh you down. And contrarily, if the art does still bring you joy, then you don’t need to excuse yourself to anyone or anything for that.
At the end of the day, the only reason to be aware of other people’s expectation of art is so that you don’t let your own interactions with the art barge all over other people’s space – but you should perhaps not be doing that anyway? Being mindful of not being cruel or intrusive towards other people is something that is a constant practice, really, not only when a controversy is trending.
But in the end, every interaction between art and audience is unique and idiosyncratic. The author’s motives, good or bad, are a twinkling distant consideration. Don’t let your experience of art be controlled by expectations – anyone else’s or your own.
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