You Can Never Separate the Art from the Artist
The Artist can't even separate the Art from themselves!
Hi,
I've been thinking a lot about art about art.
I finished reading All Fours by Miranda July last week, which features a lot of characters who are artists - while not being directly about making a specific work of art, it is very meta and feels like a story about what living as an artist can be like. I also finished playing Lorelei and the Laser Eyes - a game that is entirely about art, expression and how even the person making the art can be unaware of what it means or represents.
I don't think I can even pretend to start to list the number of works of art that are, at their core, about making art. A big part of that is because creating anything is a statement about creation. You could have made anything, and you made this. Why? Why make anything at all? It's all pretty heady stuff.
Art about making art isn't made in a vacuum, though. It's made by artists. By people. The one true fact about every created thing's existence is that it was created by someone. It doesn't just appear spontaneously like the universe probably did. Art - as well as anything else that is created - is created by people.
And that really seems to get to us sometimes, doesn't it?
I loved the TV show Louie. I felt deeply and profoundly inspired by it. More than Louis C.K.'s stand up comedy, I thought his show captured something so honest and vulnerable about being a person and showcased it in such a refreshing, experimental way. Then we all found out that Louis C.K. is... not a great guy. And then we found out a lot of other artists aren't great guys... I'm sure I'm not the only one a bit tired of this feeling normal.
It's all a bit embarrassing, if I'm honest. Admitting what a silly show like Louie meant to me when the person who made it turned out to be a predator. It's yucky. I don't like it. But I still liked his show. Am I bad for liking it? Should I pretend I never did? What are we supposed to do about this?
This is all just to set up the debate that comes up every time another artist turns out to be a piece of shit: Should we separate the Art from the Artist? Is it ethical or moral or even just "okay" to enjoy the work of a person who you don't believe is ethical, moral or even just "okay?"
Some people believe we should discard the artist and their work - they've failed the test and everything they've done is forfeit. We don't want you or your ideas in this world anymore, thank you very much.
Others see this as an outrageous overreach. We're throwing the baby out with the (admittedly disgusting) bathwater! We don't need to hate the work just because we hate the person. I like that movie! I don't care who made it!
The debate comes up again and again and it seems to me that it varies case-by-case. Well, just how abusive was he, exactly? Could we maybe not support his writing but still watch things based on his writing? It's like some kind of social negotiation, where we're trying to both pass a purity test and hold onto some kind of contraband at the same time. It's exhausting. It's also a complete waste of time because the question is completely meaningless to begin with. Separate the art from the artist? You can't. They can't even separate it from themselves.
I feel like I always understood this, to some degree, but it became clear to me recently when I was catching up on some music. I grew up listening the Gorillaz, the fictional concept band created by Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett. After some time away from their latest releases, a few years ago I caught up on their work and noticed something interesting. In their earlier albums, there was a commitment to the bit: the fact of the artists behind the music was tucked away. Not a secret, exactly, but also not up front. Now, though, the high-profile guest artists on each track are featured right in the song name. Reality is bleeding into the fiction, like Damon Albarn wants you to understand that, while it's a fun idea to pretend Gorillaz is a band of cartoon characters, he also does in fact know and work with Snoop Dogg.
When I say the artist can't even separate the art from themselves, this is what I mean. Artists are constantly pretending to be separate from their work - that it is disposable or that it doesn't matter to them as much as people think. I did this in art school to fool myself into getting through critiques with my ego intact. Commercial artists are the most guilty of this. They'll claim objectivity and detachment from their work - "I don't mind the critique, I don't take it personally, it's just part of the job" - but they'll also become frustrated with clients, celebrate winning awards and dedicate their lives to things like commercials. It seems like it might be a bit personal, doesn't it?
I don't think there's anything wrong with this, to be clear. The thing I find funny is how obvious it is that creativity is deeply intertwined with our humanity and how we still try to pretend that isn't the case. Whether you care if an artist is a predator or you don't, they're both feelings you have about the artist and your relationship to their work. You can't opt out of that part. That's all that art is.
Creativity and art are, at the most basic level, ways of communicating. When you create anything, you're creating it knowing that other people will have a reaction to it. As artists, we work to learn how to curate the reactions, guiding the work to suit the intended reaction we want to create. But there isn't art without a dialogue between the creator and the audience.
To me, imagining you can separate the art from the artist is like wanting to separate speech from the speaker, touch from the toucher, or thoughts from the thinker. It’s a complete impossibility. If the sound of a tree falling in a forest rings out and nobody is there to see it, is there a tree?
The "problem" with art is that it’s incredibly effective at sharing how we feel. We can't help but connect deeply with it. In the same way we connect with art, we connect with artists. And that is where the real problem lies. Artists are human and humans are messy and awful, so no wonder we feel like it would be better to just connect with the art, the artist be dammed!
So much simpler. So much safer. So completely impossible.
Even when we encounter art by unknown artists we know the artist exists. There’s no question - where else could it have come from? Artwork deliberately created in isolation also has a relationship to its (non)audience. The same way a hermit is in relation to society by being removed from it (you can't be a hermit if society isn't down the trail from your cave), art hidden on purpose is saying something about who doesn't see it. The relationship still exists.
Art is often experienced in this way, though. Artists, for many reasons, tend to hide their role in the art's existence. The name of the artist is rarely painted in bright red across the middle of the painting, and with some exceptions most of the names of the people making movies come after the movie is over. This is how we experience so much art - in isolation from the creators, where we don't tend to think about who made it at all. Most of us don't seem to mind this. You might watch a movie and have no idea who did the VFX, or read a book and forget the author's name while you remember the story beats fondly. The art shifts into this space of just existing for you, even though we know it was made by someone.
This is why, I think, once we know more about an artist - maybe things we don’t like - we feel we can suddenly pretend the artist doesn’t exist. Because, for a lot of us, we're used to thinking that art just is.
This only seems to come up when someone has done something wrong, doesn't it?
We don’t ask to separate the artist from art we like, if we know nothing about the artist.
We don’t ask to separate the art from artists we like, if we know little about the art.
It’s only when we have a problem with one of the two that we want to split them apart. But art is an expression of humanity. The only way to separate art from artist is to dehumanize the art - to symbolically remove the humanity from it. It’s unnatural and confusing and that's why we argue about it.
I'm of the opinion that arguing about what is or isn't art is a waste of time. Ai Weiwei says "Everything is Art. Everything is Politics." I couldn't agree more. Our lives are dictated by our place in the world and everything we do or don't have access to is a part of the politics driving the society we live in. Similarly, everything we do as humans is creative at its core - we make things and fill them with meaning. That's art. Everything is art. Everything is politics. An iPhone is equal parts art and politics. So is a muffin. So is a song. Once you accept that, the idea of debating what is or isn't art feels pretty silly.
That same mentality helps me with understanding the inseparability of art from artist. Arguing about what is or isn't art is just as ridiculous to as arguing that things that were created were created by nobody, or that the fact of the creator doesn't matter. When I was a kid, the debate was around if video games are art. Before that it was Television. Before that it was film. Before that, the novel. AI Art is now the most recent conundrum entering this space.
Is AI art art? Well, yes. Because everything is art.
Given my general skepticism around generative AI, you may be surprised to have me argue that AI art is art, but that's my point about why we can't separate art from artist - it has to be art because it was created by someone. It just wasn't created by the person you think it was.
The reason AI Art is so confusing here is because the artist isn’t the person generating the art, it’s the designer(s) of the model. It’s a kind of art by proxy - someone made a tool that generates things (words, images, sounds) and other people use it to generate things. It might feel like the person clicking "generate" is the one creating the thing, but the intentions, beliefs, biases and ideas core to the creation of the model didn't come from the prompter. The prompter is a part of the audience, playing with the art to see what comes out.
This may seem like a bit of a rambling piece because this concept touches so many places. I haven't come close to exploring all the places this touches. It's a big idea. My goal with writing this is to get us to move deeper into discussions about creativity and art. We keep getting hung up on a pointless argument when it turns out someone like Neil Gaiman is probably a really bad guy. While we debate if it's still right to read his books or like them, we're avoiding discussing the real problem we're wrestling with.
What does it say about you if you connect with art made by a bad person? Does that mean part of you is bad? Or does it mean some of them is good (or, at least, that they aren't completely bad)? Forget about throwing the whole person out, because you can't. You're stuck with them. Now what?
For me, I try to dig into my feelings about bad people who make art I connect with and see what I can learn from that. Often it isn't very complex - it turns out your morals may have little bearing on how you approach making art. Other times, though, it changes the way I feel about the art. I can't watch Louie anymore without seeing that vulnerability as something different... I can't watch The Shining without thinking that the movie only exists through the harm it did to its actors - that an abusive man did a pretty good job making a movie about abuse. I can move forward and grieve the loss of something I liked - like learning something horrible about a dead relative you admired as a kid - but I can't pretend it doesn't affect me. Even if I didn't care, that says as much about me as it does the artist.
Everything is art. Everything is politics. And everything that's made is made by people, whether you like it or not.
Have a great day!
Lots of love,
Simon 🐒
Banner artwork from Giovanni Battista Bracelli’s Bizzarie di Varie Figure (1624) via The Public Domain Review