Beltane and the Wu Wei Moon II
Tuesday gratefuls: Ginny and Janice. Annie and Luna. Luke and Leo. Shadow. Happy to be with Leo. Cool night. The last for a while. Tom and Rascal. That Lodgepole leaning. Rain. Possible Monsoons. Traveler’s Insurance. Ruby.
Sparks of Joy and Awe: Art Green
Week Kavannah: Zerizut. Enthusiasm. ?How do I reignite my enthusiasm for working out?
One brief shining: I went and got coffee; it’s cool to be independent in a place that is completely new says American Ruth on the streets of Songtan, Korea; a spot I knew well from my time with my son and Seoah.
Ruth’s on day 2 of her Korean trip. Sleeping in the same bed I slept in two years ago. Probably jet lagged, but leaning way in to the new world, Asia, so different, yet fully human.
Travel expands the range of the possible. Nope, knives and forks and spoons? Not everyone uses them. The language. The way of writing it. The gene pool. Sloping tiled roofs in the Asian manner. Food with all the sides typical in Korea. A world of difference. What the MAGA folks miss in their cultural chauvinism.
Here’s to Ruth. Adventuress.
A conundrum. Me, too, and art. And thought. And friendships. Do you still watch Woody Allen films? How about Roman Polanski? Attend Catholic mass? Do you admire Bill Clinton? How about Picasso? Art Green? Believe Anita Hill? Weinstein? Kevin Spacey? Bill Cosby?
Here’s the conundrum. Do bad acts taint everything a person has done? Is Kevin Spacey less good in American Beauty because he’s a sexual predator? Is the Catholic church defiled in toto by its wayward priests? Does Picasso’s notorious philandering make his painting less than?
I come down with confidence on all sides of this issue. Woody Allen slept with, then married the adopted daughter of his former wife, Mia Farrow. Does this make his films less funny?
Can we separate the maker from the made? Yes. No. First of all, look at the long history of art now represented in museums. Most of the works in any museum come with little information about the artist’s private life. Especially those works from antiquity.
Since we admire these works without knowing the peccadillos of the sculptor of the Doryphoros or the carver of the Jade Mountain, the potter who made the roku tea cups, it is possible, probably likely that some of them were miserable human beings.
Is that Greek athlete, a spear-bearer, any less magnificent if we would find his maker was a pedophile? Or, the potter a wife beater? Would the graceful and beautiful scenes on the Jade Mountain be less so if the maker were a thief?
In other words in cases where we have no idea about this information we find no impediment to our appreciation of the work on its own, distinct from the hands and the heart that created it.
This suggests to me that the work is independent of the maker, of the maker’s biography, whatever it includes.
On the other hand. Bill Cosby. I can’t see anything he’s made without carrying to it his drugging women for sexual predation. Even Woody Allen. Though less so for some reason. Picasso? I don’t consider his private life at all when I see his art.
What are the criteria we use? Do we condemn the bad act(s) and draw a clean line between, say, Polanski and The Fearless Vampire Killers, a favorite comedy?
I guess I come down on separating the made from the maker. Yet a taint on it, a principled revulsion, a pulling away from the work made also makes sense to me.
I do know this for sure. I would not want my work judged by the worst mistakes I’ve made in my life.