You cannot judge the artist by the art. The art always betrays the artist. Both of these statements are true.
Which doesn’t necessarily mean he believes or agrees with it. It may have just been a discussion prompt as he asked for comments on SG.
My reply was:
No. Both statements cannot be true. It’s a basic error of logic to think so. If the art always betrays (or shall we say informs on) the artist then it provides information on him to some degree and therefore that information can absolutely be judged and therefore, by extension, so can the artist. The fact it’s not an exact science does not make it invalid.
I also added that over the years I have noticed that I tend to have a rather instinctive sense about artists, based on my reaction to their art.
It definitely refined over time, so while as a teenager I read most of Arthur C. Clarke’s SF books and a lot of Asimov’s I was left increasingly disappointed by Clarke’s work, finding it obscurely unsatisfying and unrelatable at a human level, and Asimov’s too dry to really be applicable to humanity.
Turns out Clarke was a pedophile and Asimov raised one. Which i only discovered on the last decade or two.
I never bought a book by John Scalzi or Neil Gaiman either because I read a paragraph or two of their books and had a visceral reaction of creepy nerdy vibe. I knew nothing about either man and their work was being pushed as being good at the time. I bought and never could get past the first few pages of the Mists of Avalon by Zimmer Bradley, even though I knew nothing of the abuse her and her pedophile husband had inflicted on their own daughter at the time.
I have never eead a single page of anything George R.R. Martin has written, and I never will.
There are paintings, architecture and styles of writing that give me an instant sense of disgust on some level and that I want nothing to do with.
I cannot claim any deeply conscious aspect of this. In fact I put it down to the same unconscious sense I may get from first meeting a person, when that sense is similarly negative.
With living humans in the flesh, I know it generally is an effect of thin slicing, which I think was about the only real aspect that Malcom Gladwell defined in his book Blink. His other work is really not very impressive and perhaps Blink too could have been reduced to an article length concept. The point is that I have travelled a lot, observed a lot of different people from different cultures and studied obsessively things like various philosophies, hypnosis, what little is known of the human brain and mind, done martial arts for decades and worked in life or death close protection for a number of years.
All things that will tend to expose you to many different human behaviours, and it is inevitable you develop a certain ability to spot deceptive or otherwise negative behaviour or intent.
But when it comes to art, absent the artist in the flesh, I think any ability I may have for discernment is likely tied to a sense of beauty that is, at least on some level, connected to the divine.
Beauty is one of the classical virtues, and also the most subtle, and in a way, the one closest to love. It was by noticing sunsets and flowers, on hikes, in the city, generally in life, that I first understood at an experiential level, that creation was indeed created, and not accidental, as well as that it was created both with a vast intelligence, and a loving one.
I had done the math years earlier, when still a teenager, so I knew the atheist theory was nonsensical, nevertheless, I remained essentially Zen-Agnostic for many years since, because all i could tell was that it was intelligently and apparently mostly benevolently created, but little beyond that. You can verify this if you read my The Face on Mars, where I stated that I was aware of an intelligence behind creation, even as I discussed things from an almost entirely secular scientific perspective.
In short; the art ALWAYS exposes the artist, and as such, the observer, whether consciously or not, and wether correctly or erroneously, always judges the artist.
On Art
Vox posted this on his blog:
Which doesn’t necessarily mean he believes or agrees with it. It may have just been a discussion prompt as he asked for comments on SG.
My reply was:
I also added that over the years I have noticed that I tend to have a rather instinctive sense about artists, based on my reaction to their art.
It definitely refined over time, so while as a teenager I read most of Arthur C. Clarke’s SF books and a lot of Asimov’s I was left increasingly disappointed by Clarke’s work, finding it obscurely unsatisfying and unrelatable at a human level, and Asimov’s too dry to really be applicable to humanity.
Turns out Clarke was a pedophile and Asimov raised one. Which i only discovered on the last decade or two.
I never bought a book by John Scalzi or Neil Gaiman either because I read a paragraph or two of their books and had a visceral reaction of creepy nerdy vibe. I knew nothing about either man and their work was being pushed as being good at the time. I bought and never could get past the first few pages of the Mists of Avalon by Zimmer Bradley, even though I knew nothing of the abuse her and her pedophile husband had inflicted on their own daughter at the time.
I have never eead a single page of anything George R.R. Martin has written, and I never will.
There are paintings, architecture and styles of writing that give me an instant sense of disgust on some level and that I want nothing to do with.
I cannot claim any deeply conscious aspect of this. In fact I put it down to the same unconscious sense I may get from first meeting a person, when that sense is similarly negative.
With living humans in the flesh, I know it generally is an effect of thin slicing, which I think was about the only real aspect that Malcom Gladwell defined in his book Blink. His other work is really not very impressive and perhaps Blink too could have been reduced to an article length concept. The point is that I have travelled a lot, observed a lot of different people from different cultures and studied obsessively things like various philosophies, hypnosis, what little is known of the human brain and mind, done martial arts for decades and worked in life or death close protection for a number of years.
All things that will tend to expose you to many different human behaviours, and it is inevitable you develop a certain ability to spot deceptive or otherwise negative behaviour or intent.
But when it comes to art, absent the artist in the flesh, I think any ability I may have for discernment is likely tied to a sense of beauty that is, at least on some level, connected to the divine.
Beauty is one of the classical virtues, and also the most subtle, and in a way, the one closest to love. It was by noticing sunsets and flowers, on hikes, in the city, generally in life, that I first understood at an experiential level, that creation was indeed created, and not accidental, as well as that it was created both with a vast intelligence, and a loving one.
I had done the math years earlier, when still a teenager, so I knew the atheist theory was nonsensical, nevertheless, I remained essentially Zen-Agnostic for many years since, because all i could tell was that it was intelligently and apparently mostly benevolently created, but little beyond that. You can verify this if you read my The Face on Mars, where I stated that I was aware of an intelligence behind creation, even as I discussed things from an almost entirely secular scientific perspective.
In short; the art ALWAYS exposes the artist, and as such, the observer, whether consciously or not, and wether correctly or erroneously, always judges the artist.
Which is as it should be.
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