In Issue 143 of Philosophy Now, "Art & Morality: A Bittersweet Symphony", Jessica Logue conducts an investigation into their relationship and informs me that Kurt Cobain was a musician.1
Kurt Cobain, a musician? From the NIRVANA website,
October 30, 1988 Kurt smashes his first guitar.
Surely a musical act, no doubt performed with great artistry! But I digress.
Further along Jessica insists,
Clearly I would not be a fan of Cobain if he had been a rapist or pedophile.
and
I have abandoned watching Woody Allen’s films, amongst others.
Jessica concludes,
So does it matter what the artist did or did not do? Their moral failings? Yes! These things do matter, morally speaking.
They may matter morally or ethically but do they have any bearing whatever on whether the artistic creations are valuable, perhaps of a class way above most of the rest, perhaps destined to be a part of that repertoire we believe to be eternal?
Aldous Huxley, long ago in one of his fine short essays (Gesualdo: Variations on a Musical Theme)2 comes to the conclusion,
[The facts of Gesualdo's life*] confirm an old and slightly disquieting truth: namely, that between an artist's work and his personal behavior there is no very obvious correspondence. The work may be sublime, the behavior anything from silly to insane and criminal. Conversely the behavior may be blameless and the work uninteresting or downright bad. Artistic merit has nothing to do with any other kind of merit. In the language of theology, talent is a gratuitous grace, completely unconnected with saving grace or even with ordinary virtue or sanity.
It may well be less than ethical to ask others, or even yourself, to downgrade, to ignore, or maybe to actually ban works of art based on the life deeds of the artist. Such a thing has been typical of fascist regimes.
* On the night of October 16, 1590, accompanied by three of his retainers, armed with swords, halberds and arquebuses, Gesualdo broke into his wife's room, found the lovers in bed and had them killed. After which he took horse and galloped off to one of his castles where, after liquidating his second child... [In later life], apart from music, which he went on composing with undiminished powers, his only pleasure seems to have been physical pain. He would, we are told, submit ecstatically to frequent whippings. These at last became a physiological necessity.
Recommended recording:
https://philosophynow.org/issues/143
http://www.psalience.org/Files/AldousHuxley-CarloGesualdo.rtf