Can You Really Separate the Art from the Artist?

It seems like recently, particularly with the heightened frequency in the emergence of documentaries focused on the underbelly of our species, people once considered the best of the best are being exposed as terrible facets of humanity. Recently, many music stars are being thrown into the arena of public discourse (and in some instances, criminal investigations) with major accusations placed on them. For some, like R. Kelly and Michael Jackson, these allegations have been consistently following them since the 90s. For others, like XXXTentacion and YNW Melly, accusations and allegations are recent and widely public and publicized, to no avail of their fanbases.

 It seems with all of this happening, an ethical question that has been plaguing art since society decided to develop a conscious is whether it is possible to separate the art from the artist—to view each independently of each other. Is that something that can happen? Is it unethical to support the work of someone that does terrible? Are the art and the artist intrinsically linked?

I think that it is possible to separate the art from the life of the artist. That being said, I think many would agree—myself included—that almost all aspects and life experiences of the artist strongly influence the art. Although the influence of those terrible things may be present (either surface level or buried deeper), I don't think that disqualifies the work from still being technically and objectively good.

However, I think that separating the art from the artist is extremely hard to do—especially with someone that is still active, still alive and still a bad person (Chris Brown comes to mind). I think the biggest obstacle to overcome in doing this is making sure that the engagement or support of the art does not directly correlate with the support of the artist. If the engagement or support of of the art inherently supports the artist, then the two clearly are not separated—as the artist is benefiting due to his art.

I also think the "benefits" of society supporting a bad person's art are a lot more than just financial or monetary. I think a lot of the time this leads toward a protection from prosecution, which is inherently tied to money. An artist makes themself and the industry they work in a lot of money, in turn, the industry will work to protect an artist (or ignore allegations) because of the fact money will be made. This is wrong.

It is wrong to give a free pass to an artist just because their art may be good.

The fact that the industry decides to protect a bad people (many of which continue to do bad things) for the sake of profit is wrong.

Yes, bad people can make technically and objectively good music, paintings and movies etc. but a lot of this “good art” in our current society almost always automatically entails economic gain and the furthered ability to continue with abhorrent behavior, which ultimately is wrong.

Furthermore, what image does that project about, for example, abusers? In my opinion, one of western (and perhaps global) society’s continued avoidance of domestic abuse & essentially saying “if you abuse someone & make good art and/or money, it’s OK because I like said good art and/or money.”