The artist in the art.
Does it matter?

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Someone I follow on Instagram made an interesting comment after visiting a Picasso exhibition. She said that she resented gallery space being given to artists who had treated women so badly. She set me thinking:

 

In what way is the artistic value affected by the artist?

 

Is the construction, the composition of form and colour any less or more beautiful, less or more worthy of being taken seriously, because of the personality or thoughts or actions of the artist? 

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There are notorious examples which come readily to mind.

 

Caravaggio produced dramatic and engaging images which many find intensely spiritual.  Does that change when we know that he was a drunkard and a gambler, a brawler (perhaps even a murderer), a debtor and a frequenter of brothels? And how about Eric Gill? His typefaces are still popular (Gill Sans et al), and his sculptures and base reliefs can be found in places of worship. So how do we view his work when we discover details of his personal life - (I quote Wikipedia) 'His personal diaries describe his sexual activity in great detail, including extramarital affairs, sexual abuse of his two eldest teenage daughters, incestuous relationships with his sisters, and sexual acts on his dog'?

 

In one sense the work is the same after that knowledge as it was before. Nothing about it has changed. What has changed is what we bring to the work.

 

We always bring something to a piece of art. This is what Ernst Gombrich called 'the Beholder's Share'. All the values, attitudes, and judgements we hold; all our experience and education; our gender, our politics, the state of our liver ... all of these combine to affect how we receive a piece of art. They affect the value we attach to the piece.

 

So what of Picasso and his work?

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How we receive Picasso's work will depend a lot on us, the viewer. For each of us, the value of his work will be determined by what we bring to it - or by how much of what we bring we can temporarily put aside.

 

I am a man viewing Picasso's work. I find myself drawn to the sensuous curves of much it. As someone moved by colour, I respond to his palette. As an art historian, I have some sense of where he sits in various histories of art. And at the moment, I find I can put aside some of the stories of Picasso's use and abuse of women.

Why?

Because I am a man? Because I don't care?

In truth, I think that my delight in his line and colour outweighs other considerations. Perhaps if I listened more closely to the voices and experiences of women such as the person I follow on Instagram, that delight might weaken. Perhaps it should.