[purple, happy]
You know how sometimes you don’t want to keep consuming media after finding out who wrote it?
[blue, a finger raised]
Sure, people would say you’re having a hard time separating the art from the artist
[purple, distraught]
Well the other day I was reading this book called “Mein Kampf” which was alright, then I looked up the author’s bio on Wikipedia and… damn
[blue, blasé]
…
https://thebad.website/comic/advanced_media_literacy
‘Mein Kampf’ isn’t art. It’s non-fiction, at least insofar as the writer believed it to be describing the real world. ‘Separate the art from the artist’ doesn’t apply to non-fiction.
Bruh. Not to defend that particular book, but non-fiction absolutely can be art.
Would you say a painting isn’t art if the painter painted a picture of something that actually exists, making it a non-fiction painting? Just because you’re describing the real world doesn’t mean it’s not art.
A painting of a real person is still to a degree fiction. It’s a facsimile of a real person. The subject is just as important as the skill when it comes to the actual worth of the piece. You can appreciate it for the technique and the skill being put on display while separating that from the artist itself.
Books on the other hand are a big harder to do in such a manner. You can appreciate a written work for its technical execution. But intrinsically a written work written as a non-fiction is going to be more linked to the actual invoked thought of the piece in the meaning of the piece than it is the actual technical execution of it.
So there’s less to separate from the artist.
Or more bluntly put, if a fascist draws a picture, that picture doesn’t inherently have to be fascist. But if a fascist writes a book about fascism from their own perspective and opinion that book’s fascist.