Its important to separate art from the artist

Earlier this week, I learned that my favorite poet, Allen Ginsberg, was a member of an underground hate group during much of his career. 

Naturally, this was extremely disheartening. Ginsberg was one of America’s most celebrated poets as well as my personal hero because I have identified with so many of his struggles. 

Essentially, I felt I had to make a decision between enjoying his work while ignoring him personally or doing away with him altogether. In the end, I chose the former. 

This is a terrible yet common occurrence in pop culture. Nearly every popular creator has been subject to intense scrutiny from the public; such scrutiny often brings ugly attributes to light. 

Frank Sinatra, for example, was a beloved singer onstage, yet was later proven to be short-tempered, violent, and abusive to his family. However, that has not stopped us from enjoying his music decades after his death. 

That said, Sinatra’s shortcomings are not isolated. Debauchery runs rampant behind the closed doors of the media, but many (if not all) of us have chosen to ignore it in favor of supporting our favorite artists. 

At first glance, this ignorance seems wrong or immoral, but it may actually be necessary for several reasons. 

First and most obviously, we are human. Despite what their publicists would have you believe, celebrities are not perfect people. Flaws are what make us unique and capable of producing meaningful art. This is not a defense of bad behavior, but an acknowledgment of human duality.

Second, it is impossible to completely attach artists to their work. Artists are people who have made significant creative contributions, and we owe much of our culture to them. To purge wrongdoing from all inventive endeavors is to remove them completely. The unfortunate truth is that we cannot have art without also having the ugliness that inspires it.

Although Allen Ginsberg was a subjectively bad person, I still choose to admire his poetry because it is subjectively good work. Overall, separation of art and artists is vital to the pursuit of creativity.