Can you separate art from artist? A silly lil guy's perspective.
So as more and more artists with dedicated fandoms are outed to be incredibly problematic people with histories a lot of us wouldn't condone, the question of separating art from artist becomes increasingly more important. And I guess I just wanna throw my hat into the ring and talk about my perspective on what the idea of separating art from artist can look like, when it is and isn't ethical, and how we can practice fandom more conscientiously.
Can you ethically separate the artist from the art? My checklist of things to consider:
Is the artist alive? If not, who, if anyone, receives the checks for their work?
Is the art public domain, creative commons, or otherwise incapable of generating profit?
How many primary names are on a work? (E.g., if it's a book, how many authors are there? How many of those authors are you trying not to give profit to?
If the artist is a bad person, does the money you give them generate additional harm, or reduce harm? do they use their profit to donate to bad charities, or do they donate to good causes today despite having a history or view you disagree with? Would them having more money be a net positive or net negative? (e.g., this movie exec did horrible things 20 years ago, but has discontinued the behavior and now donates to positive charities like homeless shelters and thus reduce harm with their dollar vs. another movie exec has never personally done anything problematic with their body or mouth, but they donate to the KKK so they generate harm with their dollar)
Is the problem with the artist on an interpersonal level (e.g., this musician is known to be a jerk, an absent/abusive parent, and difficult to work with, but they never actually support any negative charities or uplift bad political figures) or is the problem on a larger scale (e.g., this painter is lovely to your face but supports charities and political figures that actively do harm)
Is there a way to engage in the fandom community without giving money to the problematic artist? (e.g. can you participate in the fandom without buying something the artist made?)
Is the thing you're trying to separate actually from one individual artist, or is it from a giant megacorporation? (E.g. a game made by a single indie dev vs a game made by a AAA dev)
How easy is it to not consume or interact with the art? Is it as easy as not going to a particular store that there are many competitors to in your area, is it a product you can live without? Would it cause significant harm to you directly to not engage with this media due to immediate pressure in your life? (e.g. if you don't want to consume media involving a certain artist, but your family is actively going to mistreat you if you make that choice, and you don't have the resources to get away from your family, maybe you are safer not actively avoiding this artist)
Does the art itself cause harm, regardless of the artist? (e.g. is the content itself racist, sexist, homophobic, etc., and if it is, is it important to read it anyway due to being able to better debunk the ideology? For example, a nonfiction manifesto from Andrew Tate would be itself a terrible, harmful book, but does reading it allow you to better counter the ideology and arguments of people who agree with him?)
Can you acquire the art without financially supporting the artist?
Anyway, those are just the immediate conditions I thought of off the top of my head that could potentially sway your individual ability to separate the art from the artist. My personal standards are that if you can interact with the art without financially supporting the artist or people who do harm, and if the art itself isn't inherently harmful on its content or messaging, then I personally can see a world where you can separate art from artist.
Also, separating art from artist isn't always necessary to consume media if you're doing so conscientiously. For example, if you're reading a historical text written by a dead racist, who wrote it with the intention to further their racist ideology, then you need not ask if you can separate the two, the question becomes "why are you engaging with it?" Are you reading this hypothetical text to see how ideologies like theirs spread? Are you trying to learn more so that you can be a better ally to the minorities around you by being better educated on dog whistles and calling them out in their own terms? Or are you reading it to see if there's merit to their argument?
Anyway, have a nice day and remember that you can be an ethical consumer of art if you truly want to be
