Good and Bad: Yes and No

Is the art of a ‘bad’ person, an immoral person any less acceptable than others? Should that artist’s punishment be that the art is hidden away, destroyed or vetoed? Should our disgust do this? How is our response coloured?

These questions are currently being asked at Ditchling Museum of Art and Craft with their exhibition, Eric Gill: The Body where my friend works and that I'm hoping to get to soon. Gill was a renowned sculptor and may well have created the typeface this is written in. He also abused his daughters. The person and the product, the artist and the art; where does the former stop and the latter start? With the gift of a glyph, a poem or a picture, thrown from the creator, cut free to go into the world. Other art forms are harder. Who listens to Gary Glitter anymore? And I felt personally betrayed by Rolf Harris, who I’d always seen as an avuncular uncle figure.

With a performer it’s tougher to separate. Their person is part of their art, we don’t want sexual predators whispering into our ears through our headphones. Digging deeper, who knows their ear piercer or their tattooist? I could be walking around with a murderer’s art on my arm, etched into flesh for my life span. I didn’t think to ask for a character reference.

Morals and ethics vary but some things feel inherently wrong and bad. They repulse, are reprehensible. This too is a line. I might be unkind, I might be a bully, I might have done unforgiveable things. OR I could have a different moral philosophy or ideology than you. To misquote The Big Bang Theory, ‘Some of my best friends are Tories. Well, not my best friends, but I know them.’

Are you not going to read Jeeves and Wooster? Can we disassociate? When work is out of the artist’s hands they no longer own it. J K Rowling may now regret that she married Hermione and Ron but she can’t undo it. That romance is owned by millions of other people. I buy an abstract painting, that painting is mine. I look at this abstract and see flamingos but the artist was inspired by the abattoir. However, I’m interpreting this story, and there’s no irritating little explanation card by my painting.

The only thing that remains is the name; the end credit. What is on Wikipedia for this font? Whose signature is in the corner of the painting? Even the face, the body, the voice; that is the work. And if you believe the work captures some of that cruel soul it is just another story spinning from humanity which is and always has been wonderful and terrible in more equal measures than we care to confess to.