Thank you, Alex Impey, for a great question!
Let’s first try to understand the question a little better before attempting to answer it. The question involves two deeply loaded concepts: ‘art’ and ‘separation’. I will stick to an intuitive, common-sense understanding of ‘art’ and will take ‘separated’ to mean ‘treated independently’. It is also important to note that the question is not asking “Can art be separated from the artist?”, which would concern merely the possibility of separating art from the artist. The question uses the word ‘should’, which makes it a normative question. An affirmative answer to a normative question results in a prescription. A prescription could be offered for a host of reasons – prudential, moral or epistemic, to name a few. So, it is important to ask for what purpose this prescription is being suggested. For instance, an affirmative response to the question “Should one respect one’s ancestors?” is likely to be for moral reasons; correspondingly, a “Yes!” to “Should I tie my shoelaces before going for a run?” seems to be motivated by prudential reasons. It is also possible that there is more than one kind of consideration at play. With this background, let’s ask ourselves what kind of considerations are at play in the art-artist-separation question.
Perhaps it is for aesthetic purposes. I treat the a piece of art independently from who created it because it helps me to objectively evaluate it. If we are talking about a painting contest, maybe it is (or should be) a requirement that we do not reveal the identity of the painter and judge the painting on its own merit. But it’s much more complicated than that. Art is an expression of the artist’s inner workings – their feelings, beliefs, attitudes and values. Every work of art says as much about the artist as it does about its object. Therefore, some scholars believe that a complete understanding of an artwork can only be had if we understand the artist and their motivations for creating it. If this is right, we should not treat the art independently of the artist. However, you may disagree and say that it doesn’t matter and you can enjoy just what you gather from the art alone. There’s another concern, though. Since art embodies the artist’s inner workings (especially values), an evaluation of the art gets partly attached to the artist themselves. Praise of the art is partly praise of the artist and so too for criticisms. In this case, you might want to be more careful, because here moral considerations are coming into play, and you might not want to unwittingly praise a morally reproachable person. For instance, it might be a little revolting to know that the landscape painting your friend adores was in fact painted by Hitler.
So, should we separate art from the artist? Perhaps not. What about separating philosophy from the philosopher? Let us know in the comments.
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Image: A landscape by Adolf Hitler (credit)
I have a Bachelor's degree in Engineering and a Master's degree in philosophy. I am currently pursuing a PhD in philosophy from the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, India. I am interested in ethics and epistemology and especially in areas at the intersection of these fields. My favourite philosophical idea is Wittgenstein's notion of family resemblance, which claims that when things appear to be similar, instead of sharing one essential feature, there might be a host of overlapping similarities. The idea really helped me work out definitions better and not get stuck at necessary and sufficient conditions.