Separating the Art from the Artist

When the Art is Memorable but the Actions Are Despicable

Is there a celebrity (musician, writer, actor, artist,…) whose work you like, but whom you boycott because of his/her ideology/beliefs/preferences?

The question is one of great importance in these times. For context, I watched the Allen vs. Farrow mini-series, which also asks this question, and recently read Yellowface by R.F. Kuang. (Yellowface is about an author who submits another’s work/identity as her own.) Pablo Picasso is also now described as an abusive bully, together with being described as a genius.

Francoise Gilot, his 40-year-younger lover, the mother of Claude and Paloma Picasso, and an artist, says of Picasso: “I did not put my narcissism in being represented by him.”

Perhaps, said a different way, Gilot did not want her identity to be subsumed by Picasso the artist, but wanted her identity constructed by the achievements of her own life.

I have loved the works of Woody Allen, as a film master, and Picasso as an artist in several media. I have long accepted that one can separate the work and the person. I think it is problematic, however, when the artist is living and continues with the behavior and continues with the art. The regrets of actors/actresses who worked recently with Woody Allen gave me pause. The behavior of Mia Farrow, the actress and mother of Dylan, gives me pause.

The continued request to be heard, asked by Dylan, his adopted daughter, gives me pause. (Woody Allen is accused of sexual abuse by his adopted daughter.)

Would we be as judgmental over unsuccessful artists? Would a failed would-be filmmaker or painter be subject to our derision? No, but perhaps the behavior alone, if known, would be regarded as abusive or bullying with appropriate consequences.

For example, I love Annie Hall and Manhattan, two films that Woody Allen made at the height of his fame. Manhattan is a lush, black-and-white, Gershwin-scored movie. Adding to my personal touch with it, the very end scene took place on my block. I lived on the Upper West Side of New York City, and together with my neighbors, I watched Woody Allen filming on the block. I remember the morning I obliviously started from my building towards the subway, and there were the lights, the film crew, the cast.

Recently, someone asked me, “What about the plot of Manhattan?” I responded that it was problematic.

Woody Allen plays the nebbishy character — in his 40s — who is in love with a 17-year-old girl in high school. My friends and I swooned over this movie at the time. Now, forty years later, I am not so sure. It is hard to watch Manhattan without judgment. Woody Allen, as did many accused abusers, hid in plain sight. Our social mores have changed.

When I was seventeen and in my early twenties, I liked older men. They were more interesting. Some had done heroic things. Perhaps, for them, hero worship came more easily from students and younger women than from age peers who saw through the bullshit or had lived experience with them. Or older women got tired of the “new year, new model” routine.

From 17 to 22 is not a great maturity leap, if deemed a legal leap.

I enjoy the historical novels that resurrect women of accomplishment from history’s dustbin. Marie Benedict’s novels, like The Other Einstein, about Einstein’s first wife, do this.

On the other hand, I don’t listen to or read musicians and writers who have appealed to the MAGA crowd. I automatically discount that they would have anything to say to me. I still believe the art should stand alone, but it is problematic, isn’t it? It taints or enhances or predisposes how we think about an idea, or a style, or a person involved in that work, whatever it is.

When Francoise Gilot was asked about her famous lovers and husbands, she responded. “Lions mate with lions.” It is a more accurate and not a diminishing notion — not that women would be enhanced by the identity of a famous man, but rather a woman and man of accomplishment and ideas would choose each other.