No easy answers - When love affairs end
In Repossessed, the sequel to his cult autobiography Head-on, the musician and writer Julian Cope describes the moment that his love for the late singer Scott Walker came to an abrupt end. Lost and adrift following a brush with pop stardom as lead singer of the Teardrop Explodes, Cope found himself living in the midlands, making friends and sharing his musical obsessions with future collaborator Donald Skinner. After summarily blowing the young Skinner’s mind with all kinds of exotic sonic confections, there was some unexpected resistance when Cope cued up Walker’s Scott 4, a lushly romantic album of existential despair that features the high baroque drama of ‘The Seventh Seal,’ a track that channeled Walker’s love of the Ingmar Bergman film of the same name. To Cope’s surprise, a nonplussed Skinner simply shrugged and asked: ‘Did he just see the film and then write this song about it?’ Something significant shifted for Cope:
Put like that, it sounded ridiculous. Scott Walker had been to see an Ingmar Bergman film and been prompted to write this extraordinarily removed spaghetti western song. But Donald’s youth refused Scott his metaphor and, after years of Scott being glued to my turntable, suddenly he sounded too camp, too existential and too ponderous. I knew it was all over between me and Scott. And he was deposed that very day.
We’ve all been there: what once lit up our world and ignited our passions no longer seems so vital and is quickly ejected from our universe, or finds itself quietly fading over time as new obsessions take root. People change and, as they do, tastes follow. Art and culture that we’ve lived and breathed becomes tame, tepid, passé and, in certain cases, even a little bit embarrassing. Lots of big thinkers have pointed out how the meanings of art and culture change over time, that authors are ‘dead' and it’s all about active and engaged audiences and what they do with ‘texts’. But it’s perhaps in these intimately personal and emotionally real areas where we most readily feel this logic. How could something that was so central to my life suddenly seem so, well, crap?
It’s not always just a matter of the shifting sands of taste, and sometimes it’s moral and political issues that can bring about a shift in our relationship with art and culture that has held a special place in our affections. In a piece that reflects on the old ‘trust the art, not the artist’ adage, Adrienne Grimes asks:
Have you ever fallen in love with a work of art? A book, a painting, a song, a movie? Have you experienced that disappointment when you find that the creator of the work is not what you expected? Maybe they don’t share your values, your views on life or politics. Maybe, they’ve committed crimes so heinous that you question everything you thought you knew about your favourite things.
Art and pop culture history is full of creatives who’ve made work of dazzling brilliance but then gone on to alienate their audiences - and obliterate both their legends and income streams - through their misguided words, disgraceful deeds, baffling political stances, and by becoming something rather less appealing than their actual work. It can be a really difficult path for the fan to navigate, one that leaves us asking ourselves if the maker’s brilliance can remain untarnished when they have fallen from their pedestal, and whether we can continue to love the art while condemning the artist.
It’s also one of those issues that totally resists any sort of easy, one-size-fits-all resolution. For some, an artist’s crimes cast an immediate and permanent shadow across their entire body of work, adding a stain that can never be removed. For others, the art is always bigger and can’t be compromised. In some cases, fingers are thrust into ears and a policy of absolute denial is adopted, but all underline how our relationship with art and culture is fluid, subjective and deeply personal. Whether driven by an inevitable shift in tastes or a clash of moral boundaries, navigating that unusual space where artistic brilliance meets human flaw can be really hard, but it’s precisely this that makes us active and critical participants in the culture we consume.
Can - and should - we separate a work of art from the person who created it? Is consuming a problematic living artist’s work a form of endorsement? Is it possible to separate your emotional connection to a piece of art from your knowledge of the person who created it? When an artist's personal views contradict any moral dimension to their work, which one carries more weight? Are some artists above and beyond cancel culture? Is consuming art by a morally compromised living artist an endorsement of their behaviour, or can consumption be neutral? Have you gone through a messy divorce with an artist? Did you end up making peace and reconciling?
These are some of the questions that will no doubt come up when No Easy Answers returns from its summer slumber on Weds 16th September at 6pm.
Postscript: Scott 4 is a great album, but surely Scott 3 is his best?
'It was a real eye-opening moment for me when I realised that people who are part of subculture groups I identified with may not share my values. I always thought that people who are anti-establishment and/or anti-authority would also be allies to other marginalised groups.'
Absolutely. And this definitely appears to be something that informs a lot of the discussions / noise around a number of 21st century creatives - no doubt names will be named next Wednesday!
This is such an interesting conversation, and something I discussed with my friend from school last month. I struggle to seperate the art from the artist - despite how much I try. I've grown out of some music/fashions but the biggest motivation to make me stop engaging with something is knowledge that the creator did something reprehensible.
Me and my friend bonded over alternative music back in our youth, with a particular liking for David Bowie. I am not saying Bowie's music no longer has value (I still think it's wonderful) but later on when I found out the age of groupies hanging around him in the 70s I stopped being a fan.