We Are Who We Are

We're in the middle of an issues discussion, which is unusual around here. First, I have to address the departing supporters, who have withdrawn their Patreon contributions: I'm sorry you were offended—the aim here is indeed for that not to happen, and I strive for that. I don't want anyone to feel the way you'd have to feel to yank back your helping hand. But I don't think it would be wise for me to submit to the blunt command, "No more politics," either. Sometimes, politics enters in, and I write about what I'm moved to write about. That's the way it has to be in a daily blog that's been chugging along for going on 17 years. Everything's fodder. The deal is, you pick: like a newspaper or a magazine. It's not homework. Read what you want to read, leave what you want to leave. I can't do it for everyone. Consider: with everything I ever write, there are at least a few people who love something most people hate, or at least a few people who hate something most people love. If I had to tailor everything to everyone—well, couldn't be done. The post previous to this one wasn't labeled "OT," because it wasn't off-topic: I related the "current event" to the question of untangling art from the morality of artists. Which led, I might add, to some reader comments that might be among the best this site has ever gotten. I'll re-read them at some later time I'm sure. (I still haven't gotten them all up, but I have little else to do this afternoon.) [UPDATE Fri. evening: One of the three readers who left has already come back. I'm glad. —MJ.]

As for the Smith-Rock affair, Mike Plews pointed to the best analysis he's seen, by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Kareem touches on all the repercussions we can know about, with crystal clarity. Short and worth reading. I truly admire that guy, by the way, and have for a long time. Not just because he's a deep jazz fan. And not just because he happens to be about the first celebrity I ever saw up close and personal—he used to come in to the Bay Point Pharmacy where I worked when I was 14 and 15, back when his name was still Lew. He's a role model, IMHO.

And finally, I did promise I'd share my own take on "untangling art and the morality of artists" before we move on to the important topic of the Leica watch  :-)  . So here it is. It's not a political position with me, and it's not even an intellectualized stance: I just have trouble enjoying art when I know the artist is a shitheel in some obtruding or offensive way. It's an emotional response, and I wrestle with it. It causes me anguish, too, because sometimes I want to engage with and enjoy art or entertainment made by people I no longer trust or like. Even before the MeToo charges later leveled at him, I already had left Louis C.K. behind, for instance, because of the vile (to me) things he would say about his children. (With me, as with Dickens, mistreatment of children is the cardinal sin.)

I have a particular problem with Woody Allen, because of Annie Hall, the transitional movie between the broad, Marx-Brothers-inspired schtick of his early career and his later, Ingmar-Bergman-wannabee serious films that in my opinion encompasses the best of both. Annie Hall is a singularly brilliant movie about what Paul Simon called, in the song "Hearts and Bones," "the arc of a love affair." As moviemaking, the ideas tumble out in a dazzling torrent almost offhandedly, like Jimi Hendrix moves from musical idea to musical idea in "Born Under a Bad Sign." The pathos/but the humor/but the pathos of that little boy saying "I used to be a heroin addict, and now I'm a methadone addict"...what a way to say that fate awaits all innocence. The movie is well written, full of Allenesque quips like, after Annie parks, "That's okay, we can walk to the curb from here," and there are a remarkable number of cameos and first or early appearances—the young Christopher Walken as the psycho brother, can't do better than that. But the things I like best are the gags and vignettes that can only work as film/video: the brief panning shot across the three people in the front seat driving to the airport, ending on Alvy's puddle-of-fear face. Can't do that in a theater or a book or in anything but a movie. Annie actually is what has become a movie-blurb cliché, a tour-de-force. It earns its bittersweet, elegiac feeling-tone. Maybe I just have too many failed relationships in my life. But then, I didn't when I first saw it.

At any rate I have resisted circling back to Annie since Allen took up with his adopted daughter [UPDATE: This is an error. See correction below]. It's been a long time now. Before I can do so I'll no doubt have to delve into the details of he and Soon-Yi Previn, and I'm not sure I want to. With eyes averted it's still possible to believe it's a wholesome coupling of consenting adults who happen to have an unconventional meet-story. They're still together, and he was never convicted of a crime.... On the other hand, it's possible I'll die before ever seeing Annie again. But I'll always want to.

Orwell
I'm not actually proud of my molten moral core when it comes to art. It's just a psychological fact of me that I deal with. It was never a decision. Didn't I write a piece once called "Never Meet Your Heroes"? I think I did. And that's why. Scott Abbey writes, in the Comments,

As to the question of separating the artist from the art, it depends. It depends on how close in time, space and culture the transgressor and their transgression is. I haven’t watched a Woody Allen movie in years, although I used to really enjoy them. Bill Cosby’s comedy albums were a source of joy to me and my friends as teenagers; I can’t listen to them. Certain current musical artists—giants in my mind—have robbed me of some of the enjoyment I get from listening to their artistry due to them going out of their way to encourage people to skip getting vaxxed. Picasso was a long time ago (to me), and he was never a favorite of mine. So I like his work about as much as I ever did. So, it depends. I don’t have a good decision-making framework here.

I sympathize.

As for Yoram Nevo's recommendation of Orwell's "Benefit of Clergy": know it well. And it does treat this subject better than almost anything. One of my touchstone books is Orwell's Essays (Everyman's), a thick brick of a tome that I habitually root around in to find a truffle. I read it like the pious read the Bible, in snips and pieces, and, like they, I'll never stop. Well, until I have to. I believe I could feel the truth of Orwell's judgment of Dali, unarticulated, directly from the art itself, by the age of 12 or so (I spent my youth engaging with painters, mainly)—the sense that the obscene immorality and surreal morbidness is the only thing that enlivens the otherwise conventional Edwardian draughtsmanship ("a dexterity that goes no higher than the elbow," writes Orwell piercingly, ever the master of le mot juste). Just as I read the essays of E.B. White aloud alone (and have always done) to steal a little reflected light from his cadences, I return time after time to the watering hole of Orwell to linger a little in the company of a mind like mine only better.

And an exquisite little touch about "Benefit" I only just learned: see the little note at the bottom about it being included in a collection of essays but then being physically cut out of all the copies because the publishing house changed its mind and decided the essay wasn't fit to print. To which one can only observe, wow, how...Orwellian.

Dead heads
Once when I was young, I attended a lecture by Joel-Peter Witkin, a photographer who once posed two severed human heads as if they were kissing. (He had worked out an arrangement with a Mexican hospital that allowed him to sort through unclaimed corpses and discarded body parts to use in his photographs.) He had a photograph he told us was of his own then-six-year-old son, naked or nearly so, with a collar on, and the collar was attached by a chain to the nipple of an naked obese woman. Witkin told us, with a delighted smile, that the "little guy" was "confused" and was crying. That's all I heard; I walked out, and have never looked at Witkin's work again on purpose, and never will.

It's just the way I am, can't help it. My first role model, age six, was Popeye, who said "I yam what I yam and that's all what I yam." Gotta be yourself, like you have any choice.

Your homework for tonight (I'm kidding, kidding, don't go all Will Smith on me): read "Benefit of Clergy." It's goooood.

Kindest regards,

Mike

CORRECTION: I did look into the matter of the Allen/Farrow household, a little, thanks to a helpful reader, J Lee. Moses Farrow, the adopted son of Mia Farrow and Woody Allen, who states he is a licensed therapist, has a web page which states that:

She [Soon-Yi] is not Woody’s daughter (adopted, step, or otherwise), nor is she developmentally challenged. (She got a master’s degree in special education from Columbia University!) And the claim that they started dating while she was underage is totally false.

In truth, Woody and Soon-Yi rarely even spoke during her childhood. It was my mother who first suggested, when Soon-Yi was 20, that Woody reach out and spend time with her. He agreed and started taking her to Knicks games. That’s how their romance started. Yes, it was unorthodox, uncomfortable, disruptive to our family and it hurt my mother terribly. But the relationship itself was not nearly as devastating to our family as my mother’s insistence on making this betrayal the center of all our lives from then on.  

I will admit that I'm in over my head here. Moses' page made me uncomfortable to read, and it appears various family members have a history of feuding. I'll leave this post up, but I think I'll watch Annie Hall again.

Book of Interest this Week

Home Fires Volume II: The Present. There is of course a Volume I: The Past.  TOP reader Bruce Haley has produced documentary work relating to conflict, humanitarian crises and environmental/industrial/land use issues for 30 years. He received the Robert Capa Gold Medal for his coverage of the ethnic civil war in Burma. This is his exploration of his home territories, and it's great.

This book link is a portal to Amazon.

Today at B&H Photo

Original contents copyright 2020 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

John Krumm: "The end of your post made me laugh, because my wife was recounting a bad meeting where someone made her angry, and she said ugh, I just wanted to Will Smith that guy. He (Smith) managed to verb his own name."

Nikhil Ramkarran: "I can speak only for myself, but it is one of the hardest things in the world for me to give credibility, or even just acknowledgement, to differing opinions on controversial issues where I sympathise with one side. And yet, I believe it is one of the most valuable skills I could possibly learn. I have recognised the value of dissenting opinions a long time ago, decades, but I still have to fight most times, first to even recognise my own intolerance, and secondly, to moderate it. Just as an aside, there's no opinion you express Mike, that will cause me to pull support. Your approach to controversial issues over the years have been a model (or, in other words, I wanna be you when I grow up, but rich 😆)."

Lothar Adler: "I would like to say something about your experience and reaction to Joel Peter Witkin. For many years I have been very impressed, moved and disturbed by Witkin's photographic work. I have seen much of his work, read things written by him, seen many large original enlargements, spoken with him personally at an exhibition.

"The story you have reported with his six-year-old son also strikes me as repulsive and unjustifiable. But: Mr. Witkin is Mr. Witkin is Mr. Witkin, whether he uses a camera or not. And he shares his personality and his view of life through photography.

"In my understanding, it cannot and must not be that only people who are morally, ethically, legally, politically ('political correctness') correct are allowed to express and communicate themselves artistically. With that we would be directly on the way to a superordinate censorship, even if this first takes place only in our heads, in the context of a self-censorship. Of course, everyone is free to decide what he wants to ingest or not. But is it in the concrete case really the very own decision or does one believe only to have to fulfill the current social norms?

"I admit, however, that also for me a border would be crossed, if a reprehensible action against a living, feeling being, against its will! takes place only because of it, in order to produce a product of the art. In this case I will rather renounce this art product, but would hesitate to reject the other life work of this artist altogether.

"In a video interview Witkin said about the content of his photography that his pictures would show 'conditions of being.' That seems very important to me. For me, art is a way to explore and communicate the human dimension of 'conditions of being.'

"The older I have become, the more I have experienced that human life, human existence considered in its entirety, is often far beyond what young people are usually taught in so-called education. This is one reason why it is difficult for many people to come to terms with the fact that many things are in fact quite different in the course of their lives.

"I would find it tragic if then also in the art only the well-behaved, adapted to social rules and venerable people were allowed to make their messages."

Mike replies: I appreciate that you've expressed your opinion of this photographer, with one little cavil: I didn't say that he shouldn't be allowed to express himself and communicate artistically. I just said I would no longer be part of his audience. It's not up to me to convict him of anything, but I do think it's wrong to mistreat a child the way he described.

Keith: "A number of years ago I was reading Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickle and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America. I found the book to be an intriguing, thought-provoking, and well-researched work on the challenges of the many unfortunate people who are trapped in a low income existence, and the rigged socio-economic platform that keeps them there. About halfway through the book I read the passage where the author casually mentions that she is an atheist. Having been raised in a very conservative Christian (Southern Baptist and Republican) family and community, I was stunned by the author's admission, and dismayed that I had supported an atheist by purchasing her book with my discretionary income. I immediately closed the book and laid it aside for a couple weeks.

"As the initial shock subsided and I pondered over my initial reaction, it occurred to me that the fact that the author was an atheist did not change the value of the content in the book. I picked up the book and continued where I had left off. Reflecting on my thoughts after completing the book revealed two things. First, it reinforced my concern of the pitfalls of properly regulated capitalism (whatever that may be), which can become a runaway freight train that can create an imbalance in wealth distribution. But more importantly, it became a turning point for me in that I realized that we do not have to agree with or condone an individual's personal morals or actions in order to recognize and learn from the value of their contributions. The content and delivery of 'Bill Cosby—Himself' is no less funny or brilliant now than when he first created it. Our perception and appreciation of the creator may influence our interpretation of the work, but it does not change the objective strength of the content."

Comments

[Stephen S. Mack]

At the risk of sounding sanctimonious, I'll post the entire quote by Alexandr Solzhenitsen: The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either, but right through every human heart --- and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside, it oscillates with the years. And even within heart overwhelmed with evil, one small bridgehead of good remains.

With best regards.

Stephen S. Mack

[Joe]

"First, I have to address the departing supporters, who have withdrawn their Patreon contributions"

I just doubled my (paltry) monthly Patreon contribution.

[Richard Tugwell]

I didn't get involved in all this earlier ( could see what was coming) but one thought always occurs to me when we need to make these kind of judgments. Is there a clear red line? Or just a broad range from 'saint' to 'utter pariah'?

[Rob de Loe]

Keep being interesting Mike!

[Henning]

Keep on writing, and stand by Popeye.

[darlene]

I am an Independent, always have been, always will be. I do not care for any party, but I do care about how I treat others. Mike, as soon as I can, I will be adding more to my Patreon pledge as well. You can’t please them all, but you are loved by many and never forget it.

[Zack S]

I too have conflicted feelings about Woody Allen. Some of his movies are sublime. Annie Hall, Crimes and Misdemeanors, Midnight In Paris, Matchpoint and Manhattan come to mind. But the storyline in Manhattan of him having a girlfriend in high school is very disturbing. However the cinematography by Gordon Willis in Manhattan is some of my favourite of all time. There is a lot of unique negative space shots in it. There are scenes in Manhattan where someone walks out of frame while they are talking and no one is in the shot.

[Rob L.]

Still a proud and very happy supporter. I'm pretty sure that if I wanted to dictate what you wrote, that would cost a great deal more, and likely earn me a foot in my posterior.

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is a helluva guy, and yes, a real role model. I find that it's important to trust your gut on who to follow, especially with art. I read and follow several people I disagree with, but I don't support someone that I feel is doing something wrong. And I don't want art from a bad well in my head, thanks.

Admittedly, I think that too much attention has been given to a millionaire slap fight in front of a lot of millionaires in a week where real news goes unremarked upon, but the reactions tell us a lot about our our feelings on a number of topics.

[Martin D]

Hi Mike. Your paragraph on Orwell and his Benefit of Clergy is the perfect prose. Supremely elegant, precision and nuance in every word. Beautiful. Have I read the book? No, it wasn't even on my list. Will I read it? Now I will.

[It's only one essay, an easy (well, short) read. And thank you for the compliment! --Mike]

[Ricardo Cordeiro]

No idea what's worse, if being offended and personally canceling a comedian because of a joke or canceling and being offended by other people's opinions about the matter.

After reading this I feel grateful to be able to separate the artist from the art. A lot of artists have doubtful personality traits and deviant behaviour, would be a shame to miss great works of art by Woody Allen, Tarantino, Louis C.K., Lars Von Trier, Richard Serra, etc.

Would be only bad if my attention or money helped in any way to perpetuate criminal actions of a individual, that's where I draw the line.

[JOHN B GILLOOLY]

We are in a sad time. FWIW, I know that Mike and I do differ on politics, sometimes the gap is very wide. But I do appreciate his opinions as they are always sincere and well communicated. It is also clear that he is an original thinker. His feelings are coming from life experiences, not last night's manipulative angle being pushed by Don Lemon, Sean Hannity or Laura Ingraham. We must remember that these people are not "newspeople" - they are entertainers.

As fas as the Rock/Smith debate, I do also find Kareem's to be the best single piece on the affair. He is an original thinker - not bound to any packaged ideology.

[Terry Burnes]

Woody Allen did not adopt Soon-Yi. She was the adopted daughter of Mia Farrow and Andre Previn. So, Allen was the boyfriend of Soon-Yi's adoptive mother. Whether that makes him a good or bad person I don't know. But I do know that Annie Hall is an exceptionally good movie.

[Bob Rosinsky]

I used to be a fan of Nicholas Nixon's work. Then I learned about his transgressions as a college professor. His work is notable, however I cannot look at anymore.

[Animesh Ray]

It is a pity some felt that way. Without current events (some say, it is politics) photography is without a soul. Even a benign landscape photo must have behind its vision a worldview shaped by events past or present. Who can separate the grandeur of a rising moon in "Moonrise, Hernandez, NM" from the reflections on myriad gravestones and the single cross jutting out behind the adobe?

[Robert Roaldi]

The addendum by J. Lee Moses Farrow is interesting. It should make everyone think twice about jumping to conclusions based on inflammatory media reports. We should all know better by now but the culture seems to have a low bar for outrage. Is this another facet of narcissism, we think too highly of our own opinions.

[HABS HAER Photographer Stephen Schafer]

Years ago, it seems there used to be a higher percentage of content about photography and cameras vs. other stuff. Maybe it's just that.

[Martin D]

Hi Mike. I have read the Orwell essay on Dali now, and I am glad you made me discover it. Orwell concludes by saying, He is a symptom of the world's illness. To me this sentence opens up a new way of thinking about the dilemma you explore in your own essay.

[Ernest Zarate]

Who gets to be the gatekeeper of acceptable/unacceptable behavior?

Who gets to define the line between human foible and egregious sin?

Who gets to determine which art/artist is allowed into the pantheon, and what/who is barred at the gates?

Who sets the statute of limitations, decides what “lens” is used to gauge the past, creates the paradigm by how society goes about bestowing the wreathe of greatness upon works?

For me, art is ALWAYS created by deeply flawed, imperfect, struggling artists. The same is true for how we all live our lives, great and small. Daily transgressions, ongoing repeated transgressions, all can be found in each life.

In the end, it’s a call each person must make, as you did. Some works transcend the mortal failings of the creator. Other works are forever bound to the maker's flaws, once known. The job then of the publisher, galleries, curators, repositories, and venues is to include known, substantiated, and truthful information, allowing others to decide for themselves.

Still, far from perfect (a la your info re: Woody Allen), but it might be the best to be hoped for.

[Not THAT Ross Cameron]

Hi Mike,
Interesting to have read so many views on this matter.
It seems that if someone is unable to separate art from artist, and doesn’t wish to view or engage with the art, who am I to pronounce if that is right or wrong - it’s simply how that person is.

For my own view, if someone is harmed in the making of art, without their consent - e.g. the details that have come out about Brando and Bertolucci’s Last Tango in Paris - that’s where I draw the line. At this point in time.

[Terry Letton]

Hi Mike
I am somewhat late to the party here. I was just reading John Banville’s piece in the New York Review of Books. It is titled The Imaginative Imperative. He is concerned with the core of the individual work of art which he quotes Jed Perl to describe as “the enigma of the work itself”. The point is the art has a message that is quite independent of its monetary value, the proclivities of its creators, or other social weights heaped upon it. To expand on this he points out that Guernica would have been an even greater work if Picasso had chosen a different title, there was no need to drag us by the nose to make its point.
So with this insight, we have to be careful about confusing an artists life with their work. After all as the saying goes even a blind squirrel will find a nut occasionally and it appears that some of them are actually quite good at it.
Sorry no link to the article, I read it on paper, that archaic replacement for papyrus.