“Separate the art from the artist” is a phrase thrown around frequently in creative fields and the world of academia. Countless opinion articles across hundreds of platforms have debated whether it is possible to separate an artist’s work from what we know about the artist. The conversation is messy and full of ethical implications and incredibly high stakes. The idea of separating the art from the artist is a key component of big ethical arguments, including the issue of book banning and censorship. This argument is crucial for education and has been debated for centuries.
Separating the art from the artist entails evaluating a piece of work without being influenced by the personal details of the artist, positive or negative. As the world is full of imperfect people, plenty of incredibly influential works were created by more than problematic artists. Here is a short list of authors many of us read in high school and the immoral issues we must grapple with.
J.D. Salinger (“The Catcher and the Rye”) repeatedly pursued young teenage girls. He wrote about his infatuation with them throughout his life. Most prominently, he pursued 14-year-old Jean Miller while he was 53 years old. William Golding (“Lord of the Flies”) wrote an account in his unpublished book entitled “Men & Women & Now” of his violent sexual advances toward a fourteen-year-old girl.
Roald Dahl (“Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” and “James and the Giant Peach”) gained the nickname “Roald the Rotten” because he treated the people around him with no respect. In multiple of his stories, there were very clearly Jewish-coded characters. There are many anti-Semitic and other incredibly racist quotes from Dahl that can easily be found, and I will not quote them here. Other authors that could easily make this list include H.P. Lovecraft, Ernest Hemingway, Jack London and Hunter S. Thomson.
These authors are not one-time offenders who made a mistake. They were deeply flawed people with incredibly harmful ideas that were sometimes not just said but acted upon. Yet, they also wrote literature that has influenced the world of writing. How do we hold these two things together?
We have to resist the two extremes in this scenario. The first is to throw out their art completely and avoid teaching it in the first place. The second extreme would be to completely neglect these sides of the authors’ lives completely. It would avoid any recognition of their harmful ideologies and actions. We can recognize how artists’ work has influenced the realm of their art and current culture while still acknowledging these large issues. This will involve talking publicly about the issues of some of these authors instead of avoiding them when teaching these texts to high schoolers.
The separation of the art and artist becomes messier with artists who are still alive and creating. Often the phrase is used by modern creators as an excuse. They enjoy a person’s work but ignore their blaring moral issues. I have heard this quote applied from Kanye West to J.K. Rowling. It is entirely possible to recognize that a person is talented and their art is good while also recognizing their faults and holding them accountable.
Accountability is not the same as cancel culture. There is nothing productive about writing a person off completely before allowing them to make amends.
Plenty of creators have had consumers bring to light some of their issues. They acted on them to make reparations.
An example is another children’s author Rick Riordan (“Percy Jackson”). Some of his fans expressed frustration at the lack of representation in his books during the early part of his career. He recognized the issue and worked to implement the representation of multiple minority groups in his future groups.
“Separating the art from the artist” can be a helpful phrase, especially when addressing artists from the past. We can recognize art’s impact and the lessons we can learn from it. Yet, we also need to recognize the artists’ messiness. We can’t continue to brush the issues under the rug when talking about their art. But we also can’t allow it to push us to ignore the art and its effect on us as individuals and culture as a whole.
For the artists who still have artistic power, we can’t empower their bigotry or harmful ideals and behavior. “Separating the art from the artist” should be used as a tool, not as an excuse.
