For me that’s one of the key factors: admitting to mistakes and trying to atone for them. Contrast someone like R. Kelly, who I disliked as soon as I knew what went down between him and Aaliyah- which was hardly a well kept secret. But rather than apologise, and keep away from 14 year old girls, he apparently decided that the best strategy was to keep on chasing teens, and also to pee on them as well.
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To some degree. It eliminates a number of issues, certainly. But then you have the problem of their racism (or whatever) impinging more directly on their works. It impacts how the work of art itself can be read.
HP Lovecraft’s bigotry, for example, makes it impossible to read his works as he intended them to be. As soon as the racism shows up in the text (or even if one comes into the text knowing that about him), the narrator suddenly becomes completely unreliable. When Black people are treated as scary as the “monsters,” then obviously neither are scary. Other bits of the narrative become questionable, and suddenly everything gets turned on its head. You’re sometimes left with a story where the only real monster is the narrator himself, which destroys all the intended meaning and tension. (Though, granted, there are a couple examples where Lovecraft’s stories are so much more interesting and ghastly than he intended as a result of this kind of reading of the text imposed by the author’s racism, too: “Shadow Over Innsmouth” becomes a tragic and horrific story of a fearful racist who condemns a town full of peaceful half-fish-people to a concentration camp… and only then realizes he’s one of them as well.)
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Indeed, it becomes impossible to read his works as he intended them. But you do not have to read his works as he intended them. You are free to read them or not read them as you please.
Reading his works as he intended him is not the “correct” way of reading them. I would say that reading his works with an understanding of his racism, knowing that he is “one of them,” is the correct way of reading them. It complicates the reading and it brings about a sense of queasiness, to be sure, but such readings are a necessary process.
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Do we REALLY need to spend so much fucking time trying to unpack what a guy still pissed off that Jimmy Hendrix was so much better than him that he can’t get over it? He was a dick then, he’s a dick now. The covid stuff is really just the shitty icing on the shitty cake.
Having a Black friend is always the same shitty excuse that every racist trots out.
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An array of jarred burnt Hitler paintings would make a striking artistic statement.
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Maybe a joint exhibition with some of Serrano’s work?
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Right, but the knowledge of the artist directly impinges upon the reading of the work (until it becomes the opposite of what the reading might otherwise have been). It becomes impossible to separate art from artist in a case like that.
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The knowledge expands and adds nuance to the reading. It impinges on the enjoyment of the reading, but reading is not just about enjoyment. Every reading is ultimately a compromise between the author, the reader and the work itself.
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Having talent and/or skill isn’t the same as being a hero, or even being a decent person. My personal line, today*, is drawn under my enjoyment. I can enjoy a song, a sculpture, a painting, or a dance without asking “what kind of person is making this art?”
I can enjoy a Stephen King novel while realizing he’s fat-phobic. I can appreciate that Eric Clapton led me to the blues, and shake my head at the hypocrisy. I can look at Picasso drawings and wonder if knowing his history gives me an excuse for not liking his style.
*But that’s today. In the past, I had different justifications and different opinions; tomorrow I may read something that changes my opinion through rhetoric or emotion.
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Wait, what?
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eta: The past few years have made me realize many people I admired had clay feet.
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Stephen King’s bad characters have almost always been fat or described as fat… and women especially get targeted by this. Meg Elison wrote about it a few months back.
She just picked out four or five examples, but there’s numerous more and they’re definitely a statistically significant number beyond what would be “average.”
EDIT:
And I was just THAT much too slow 
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And @anon85524460
Well goddammit. I hadn’t picked up on that.
I kept scrolling through the article thinking, “but that was earlier, he’s not like that anymore…” then got to the Billy Summers stuff.
Thanks for letting me know, at least. 
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As with everything there’s a lot of nuance to consider, and it doesn’t need to be a binary decision - it can be a sliding scale.
A few examples:
Phil Spector was a terrible person who murdered someone and abused many others. I can still enjoy the music he helped create because in the end he was just a conduit for the actual talent.
John Lennon was an insufferable asshole who abused women and was a shitty father. He was at least repentant for his past mistakes near the end. (I also give him somewhat of a pass in that he was still barely an adult when The Beatles exploded in popularity.)
Kanye West had always been pretty insufferable but he made such great music it wasn’t too hard to ignore his many eccentricities. Once he went full on MAGA, I swore him off. I can still sometimes listen to his older stuff, but I certainly won’t listen to anything new. Even the older stuff gives me pause.
Morrissey is a terrible person, but I still love The Smiths. (I can’t tolerate his solo stuff, though.)
With Chris Benoit I just can’t watch any of his matches without thinking about how he ended up. I can’t deny that he was incredibly talented, but beyond that, nope. I can’t do it.
Plenty of other examples like this for me.
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Doesn’t mean shit to me.
WORD.
Bigots can and do make ‘special exceptions.’
They’re still bigots, regardless.
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Just a few days ago I was playing a video of a certain song by an artist who I’d rather not name because it tends to summon awful arguments and it struck me how much I do now have to hold some space in my mind for some really sad thoughts now when I hear that music. And yet, I still shared the song with some one who hadn’t heard it before and talked about some of what I thought made it such a cool song to me. And we took a moment to both acknowledge that the song reminded us a little bit of some terrible things about reality too.
And… well… why shouldn’t those experiences co-exist? But if the thought is painful at the time, why should anyone have to bother listening either?
Commercially I don’t really buy anything related anyway, and I don’t have any influence over the ip or royalties, so all I can do is curate my day to the best of my ability really. Just like how I wouldn’t play a song that reminded me too much of a bad time in my own life if I wasn’t willing to take the chance my mind would drift there. At that level it’s just self-care.
Then when it comes to wanting rich and powerful assholes who are doing shitty things right now to face consequences… well… yeah.
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I’ve read a lot of good thoughts on dealing with shitty ppl making art. For me it depends on what the person did, how I felt about that art prior to knowing (easy to avoid something with no good associations already), if I can enjoy without giving them money, and if it was more collaborative or less. Most of the time, I just stop consuming what they made.
But the most important thing I do is actively consume and buy art made by decent ppl and go searching for art made by ppl from marginalized communities. John Scalzi is not the best author. But I enjoy his writing and he’s a decent person who has consistently used his fame to stand up to abusers and for people who have been hurt. I buy every book by NK Jemisin and Seanan McGuire. Our money and our choices do matter and amplifying the voices of artists who aren’t dumpster fires can, I think, help a great deal.
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