Is there an artist whose work you love but was a shitty person?
It can sometimes be hard to separate the artist from their art. Are there any artists who were bad people but whose work you still enjoy?
Feel free to answer if you're in the opposite scenario: an artist who you love personally but don't enjoy their artwork.
Feel free to respond more than just music artists!
Tom Cruise. I don't know what weird pathways cross in a brain to get that deep into Scientology without realizing what bullshit it is, but he is an amazing actor. He understands the craft, he is not shy about poking fun of himself, and by all accounts he is a consummate professional and treats the film crew well and has given gifts/thrown parties for them, etc.
But Scientology, yeesh....
I want to hate him so badly. But he is so good. I remember when he was cast as the vampire and I was pissed, having read the books it made no sense that Mr. Top Gun Fast Times at Ridgemont High as an undead vampire.
Saw the movie and had to eat my words, he had become a gaunt undead vampire. What the actual fuck. He was fantastic. Ever since that, I kind of trust he will be good in anything.
HP Lovecraft - great writer, horrible racist
Similarly, Orson Scott Card - Ender's game and its sequel are great, but he's a raging homophobe.
HPL actually repented his stark conservatism and racism in his later years but yeah.
I didn't realize this.
I'm convinced that Orson Scott Card suffered a traumatic head injury at some point. I don't know how you could go from writing something as beautiful and intimate as Ender's Game to shit like Hidden Empire, which is creepy right wing Christian disaster porn (from what I can remember of that trainwreck).
I mean, by present standards, most people historically would have been pretty racist.
Indeed, though Lovecraft has the distinction of being pretty racist even for his time.
He was certainly above that. Hell his story "Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family" also known as "White Ape". Is literally a book about the "one drop rule" to the point its actually funny because of how absurd it comes off as. Its so insanely racist, it fucking becomes funny based on the character's reaction. Its not a great short story but basically he find out his great great great great grandmother was a "white ape" (which is not human per say but lets read between the lines since the white apes come from the congo region), his response to this news was pouring gasoline on himself and burning himself alive. Like yes its fiction but the fact he made a fucking short story where the focal point is discovering that you are mixed race and learning that is so mind breaking, death was the only logical option is god damn hilarious.
Billy Corgan.
The music of Smashing Pumpkins got me through some very dark times as a teenager, but finding out he hates me because I'm gay snapped that personal connection. I'm usually able to separate the art from the artist and still enjoy good stuff made by bad people, but I'm not able to enjoy them anymore. The connection was too personal and the betrayal was too great.
Smashing Pumpkins in the 90s were so good, but yeah fuck Billy Corgan.
Billy attempted to sell an Alesis SR-16 that was used in his band for $30k. It's a $100 drum machine. He was selling it himself. No charity or anything; he just tried to hyper-inflate a very common drum machine that is still produced because he thought he added that value to it by owning it. That was pretty weird.
I mean, in the sense of music history it is worth more than any other random one you can find on the street. But maybe somewhere around $500 - $1000 if it was signed by the band.
Kanye had some real bangers early in his career. I still listen to them and have them in my playlist.
At a certain point, I acquired some CDs and just ripped the songs. If I'm in a Dropout mood, I've got the option to listen without him getting a cent. And I found the CDs secondhand too.
JK Rowling 😔
I really enjoyed Ender's Game, but even while reading you can tell there's some weird racist shit going on in Orson Card's head.
I missed it, but I was in my early teens when I read it. What did you spot?
It's been a while so I don't remember anything concrete, but I remember characters being described with a strange amount of detail in racial or ethnic features, like height or nose shape. I don't think he ever explicitly describes any race as superior to others, but some of the passages felt like it was going to devolve into some weird analysis of skull dimpling or something.
I searched it up a bit, and apparently Card is pretty vehemently homophobic. Which really sucks and is really strange. It sucks because i do enjoy his books, and they were honestly part of what got me into sci-fi. It's really strange though since the moral of pretty much every single book of his is understanding, empathy, and compassion.
Yeah he donates a lot of money to anti-lgbt (or "homophobia-adjacent") "special interest groups".
So that means a hard no for me paying for anything he gets royalties for.
JK Rowling
Joss Whedon
I would say Kevin Spacey. The man can act: Usual suspects, Seven, first season of House Of Cards. Shame how he turned out.
Johnny Craig, the former lead singer for the band Dance Gavin Dance. Dude has repeatedly fucked up and ripped off fans, but damn did he have a great singing voice.
And for the opposite, T-Pain and Post Malone. Both of them just seem like the coolest, and most chill people but their studio music is just not for me.
Yeah, Johnny Craig definitely has an history of messed up stuff. It makes me glad I prefer Kurt Travis' vocals.
Marilyn Manson - he had a slow slide from alcoholism to lecher creep to serial abuser. he spent 2009-2011 doing the worst shit to women that you can imagine.
Brand New - turns out that Jesse was a groomer of underage girls.
Arcade Fire - Win Butler is a sex pest.
Smashing Pumpkins - not at all in the same category as the others, but goddamn does Billy Corgan suck. he was always known as a first-class egotist, but he just kept being an asshole long after his prime had become a distant memory. then the weird shit started: crackpot conspiracy theories on Myspace, palling around with Alex Jones on Infowars, dropping alt-right buzzwords in interviews. the latest album is an extended allegory on cancel culture. worse, it's mostly unlistenable.
palling around with Alex Jones on Infowars, dropping alt-right buzzwords in interviews
That saddens and actually kinda shocks me.
I would have expressed ZERO surprise to news of him going so far to the LEFT that he ended up miles beyond hippie dippie new agey and founded his own Heaven's Gate cult (The central belief of the which was that followers could transform themselves into immortal extraterrestrial beings by rejecting their human nature, and they would ascend to heaven)...but this is...honestly weirding me out.
Wasn't he going so far into eastern spirituality that he was recording himself reading the entirety of the Bhagavad Gita at one point or something?
I love Tom Cruise. The man is an amazing, committed actor. He doesn't need flashy CGI or visual effects and he does insane stunts for our entertainment. Too bad he's a fucking nutjob.
Except his movies use a lot of flashy CGI and visual effects. Sure, he does his own stunts, but there isn't any less CGI in his movies than any other.
Oh, Ayn Rand!
Wait a second, no, I hate her work too.
I'm out of the loop, what did she do?
Roman Polanski - great director but its also a pedophile scumbag
Woody Allen, too.
Sometimes I wonder if he became pedophilic because of his sad life. Between losing family in the Holocaust and losing more family and friends in the Tate/LaBianca murders by the Manson family, he must felt like his life was out of control. But it's easy to control teenaged girls into having sex with you. Or maybe the genocide and murders he experienced had nothing to do with his sins. But it's something I think about occasionally. I've seen only a couple of his movies so far but I notice some themes from his life, like the death of babies or babies being evil, and I feel like it's some personal allegory.
I don’t care what makes someone a pedophile they deserve no sympathy.
A lot?
Tom Cruise is the easy answer for obvious, cultist, related reasons. And as much as I love Donnie Yen in basically everything he has ever done, he is a hardcore CCP shill at best and there is a LOT of really creepy and questionable shit in his casting and "writing" that makes me wonder when he fucks up so bad that even China cares.
But, generally, the rule that a friend "coined" is: How bad are they compared to Mel Gibson? And while that is mostly a "funny" way to look at stuff, it is also useful to keep in mind regarding the different scale of assholes. And it also depends on what they are bad about.
Also, I still like pro wrestling. That shit is a minefield.
But to provide an answer that didn't seem to come up yet:
Nobuhiro Watsuki. Creator of Rurouni Kenshin and such a pedophile that even the Japanese government gave a shit (and... just spend five minutes on the fifth floor of any manga shop and you'll understand how massively fucked of a scale that is. Or walk down the streets of Akihabara at night).
But also? The Rurouni Kenshin anime is still one of the GOATs... for the Kyoto arc. Even if there is a lot of shit in the arcs surrounding it and the overall story of Kenshin that REALLY makes a lot of sense when you understand how evil the creator is... And the live action adaptations are a must watch for any fan of action movies because it is probably still the greatest blend of wire work, fight choreography, and "style" to ever exist (I hear the Yu Yu Hakusho live action taps into the same vein).
One of those things where I will be a lot happier when that piece of shit is dead and unable to benefit from sales.
I saw Bassnectar perform 24 times. Then we found out he likes to fuck underage girls. That killed all respect I had for him immediately.
Oop. That's one I didn't know. That's gonna recontextualize Beauty Vs Noise for me.
Graham Lineham was controversial for years before he was 'cancelled'. A prime example of a talented writer who needed a PR team to keep him away from the general public.
Father Ted, Black Books, IT Crowd. These are all gems that I always enjoy rewatching.
This one is really a shame. Anything with his name on it used to be guaranteed laughs, but now I see the name and it feels tainted.
Bill Cosby
I'm currently watching We Need to Talk About Cosby. It's extremely well-done, but predictably brutal.
I am a huge fan of black metal so often I have to filter out the ones with white supremacists members. But one I can't help myself going back to is Burzum. What he brought to the atmospherical BM scene is huge and I hate that I love his early records so much...
Yeah I love black metal but it has some problematic people. "The Somberlain" by Dissection is a great album but I genuinely can't enjoy it because of the person behind it...
I know what you mean. Personnally I prefer Storm of the Light's Bane, but I feel less bad about listening to Dissection cause the guy's dead so not like he gets any money from me lol
Joss Whedon
why?
Apparently he's a massive asshole and has pretty much abused people on every set he's worked on.
Idk if its authors count as artists, but I’m a fan of the US Constitution. A lot of its authors were slave holders though, so nearly the worst a person can be.
This is probably a controversial one. As someone who studied modern political history, the U.S. Constitution is - taken completely subjective for its time, authors, situation, etc. - an amazing piece of human achievement. It's a shame that so many people view it was some static command from the past, rather than the living document that it's authors intended it to be.
John Lennon was pure asshole. He abused his first wife, who he only married because his manager didn't want one of these new starts to father and illegitimate child. And that child, he tormented and ignored. Second wife, second child, both wanted and given everything.
Not saying he’s a saint, but isn’t an alternative interpretation that he was young, inexperienced, and had a bad relationship, then grew up, learned some things, and had a better relationship later? Julian Lennon was on Bill Maher’s podcast recently and described a reconciliation between him and his dad right before he died.
Again, not trying to excuse all his bad behavior in his first marriage, but I also don’t think that a failed relationship is enough evidence to judge a whole life by, especially one that was under extraordinary pressure.
He himself admitted he was an abuser of people in his life. Both male and female. Sure, people see that as him atoning for those past abuses. But it is clear he wasn't this nice person people think of when they think of his anti-war and peace stance in life.
Iirc, while Beatles management did encourage Lennon and Cynthia Powell to get married, they were instructed to keep the marriage and child private for a
period of time. They were trying to lean into the "boy band" desirability, and they must have figured a married father isn't someone young women feel comfortable pining over. Of course, Cynthia and Julian didn't stay a secret forever though.
This thread has already mentioned a lot of artists I was already going to mention...and I'll add a semi-recent one for me, Scott Adams. I started reading Dilbert while I was still learning to read and my exposure to it helped me recover from my literacy anxiety (which I sometimes still have to an extent). I've mentioned a bit of my associations of it in previous posts but to recap, my mom worked at another "Baby Bell" company, Nynex, later Bell Atlantic then Verizon, (like Scott who worked at Pacific Bell and Dilbert and friends who worked at an unnamed company implied to be in the telecom sector) I liked the simplistic designs a lot, as well as the introduction of new vocabulary. I soon started making my own comic strips. Scott Adams' views on race, medicine, politics and several other subjects are perplexing. If I could logically follow them, I'd be offended. My dad's high school experience was diminished by segregation apologists during Boston bussing mandates of the 1970s when they would protest at school campuses. The fact that Adams was on board with such a stupid practice in that infamous vlog is upsetting. Then again, Adams is a contrarian so I can't be sure if he sincerely feels that way, especially since he tweeted something afterwards saying "I'm not actually bothered by black people. I am actually just annoyed by white people who advocate for black people" (paraphrase). Maybe it's a true clarification or maybe he's just trying to walk back his statements. He needs help. There's probably something traumatic in his life that made him snap. Off hand, I know his wife filed for divorce from him and his stepson died of an overdose, and he may still be mourning in a strange way. Still, if I see Dilbert merch at a secondhand shop or in the library, I'd gladly take them out. I will not subscribe to his new pay-walled comic, but if his distributors and publishers ever decide to re-sign their contracts with him and start printing new Dilbert books again, I may buy them. Anecdotally print publishers seem to do more vetting than web publishers, so I'd hope that if they ever reunite he'd be in the right headspace. Anyway, great comic, troubled person. Hope the guy gets some help.
I got in to Dilbert Young, too. I don't know why it appealed to me exactly, but I started reading his comic strips around 8 or so, and even got some compilation books. I also read some of his non-comic books... They were largely hippy woowoo bullshit, but still good reads. Then he came out with God's Debris which I thought was genuinely interesting.
So I don't think he was always this way, or maybe he hid it better. To teenage me, at least, he seemed pretty logical and fairly progressive. A bit of a hippie at times, a bit of a look at times, fairly anti-corporate and pro-little guy, overall his writing made him seem like a decent person. Maybe some vaguely problematic takes here and there, but nothing all that bad.
It was like some combination of success and wealth and Twitter access broke his mind. Or maybe it was always there and I just didn't recognize it and I'm blinded by nostalgia. It was just a wild rollercoaster ride watching him melt down.
Behind the Bastards did an episode on him. Honestly I think from what I recall he was just drawing what got good feedback, but then he had a few issues with health, one that made him unable to speak for years and iirc ended his marriage?
So one of their takes is maybe this trauma did some damage to him mentally as well. I'm grossly oversimplfying, so I recommend checking the episode. You can also find statements and articles about his Spasmodic Aphonia and him attributing his divorce partially to it.
They do have some arguments against his anti-corporate rep though.
Crystal Castles. Keith is an asshole.
Pantera. Maybe it was Dimebag's death that caused it, but holy shit Phil is fucking awful.
Whatd he do?
Nazi shit
My wife honestly loves the paintings of the war criminal george w bush.
Aren't they all just portraits of military men?
No idea. It's the style she appreciates. Ironically, she finds it very innocent.
Most of the Bush paintings I've seen are of dogs, lol.
I thought his most famous one was a portrait of himself being sad in the shower
That Putin painting is so hilariously bad lol
Robert Heinlein. His works were all over the place, and it would be a mistake to assume that he believed in something just because he wrote it in a fiction novel, so on that front I think he gets a fair amount of undeserved heat. He was pushing the limits of progressivism for his time, tossing out and seemingly defending everything on all sides from fascism to anarchy to direct democracy.
If we discount his fiction, though, since it can be hard to tell from that what he actually believed, then he still falls pretty short by modern standards. A homophobe, almost certainly racist, and although he was practically a feminist by the standards of his time I would have to admit that he's pretty misogynistic by our standards.
I wish this was more talked about, when people mention classic sci-fi. I'm an avid SF reader, particularly older stuff, and it could almost be a drinking game of how few pages it'll take before you find an offensively outdated reference, no matter how great the book. But every time I've picked up a Heinlein, hoping to find more positive points in classic stuff, I'm left just...feeling ooky. An easy example being the lesser known Friday, with the "happy" part of the extremely unrealistic female protagonist's journey: marrying one of her gang-rapists. I haven't been able to make a dent in my stack of Heinlein's since that nonsense. Too many other great and interesting authors that weren't horrid shitbags.
Back in the day I used to love many of the fantasy novels by David Eddings (e.g. Belgariad, Mallorean) but after learning about the terrible child abuse he and his wife were prosecuted for, I can't look at them the same way.
goddamnit, TIL
That's the problem with threads like this - you meet your heroes.
Well... Shite. I read those books. I liked those books. Just a few days ago I was wondering if there were any more books set in that world.
Now I don't wanna...
Oh, I just learned something new 🙁
Cee-lo Green. He's brilliant, and has an amazing voice, but dude is a rape apologist and doesn't believe that an unconscious partner is unable to consent. An article from the Guardian where he apologized, but it's still out there.
Asimov, from all accounts, was quite a creep but dammit if his writing isn't good.
It's the an artist that doesn't fall into this category?
My favourite book is Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. My edition has a foreword about how Lewis Carroll wasn't really a pedophile. He just had so many pictures of naked kids, spent so much time with them and wanted to marry the real Alice while she was young solely because he had soooo much love for children. Not in a creepy way at all. No no, not at all creepy.
Okay, so this topic is moderately amusing to me. The truth is we still don't actually know for sure, but it's WEIRD.
He had a long and apparently well-documented history (letters he wrote) of multiple relationships with adult women. So much so that his family attempted to cover it all up because, by victorian standards, it was absolutely fucking scandalous. Like, wreck the surname for generations scandalous (which admittedly didn't take much by victorian standards). This makes it look like he had NO relationships with adult women, because being an oddball that way was LESS of a freakshow publicly than sleeping around was.
The victorians also had this weird thing (by today's standards) about nude children being the very symbol of innocence. Like, so much so that you'd wonder if they thought the mere sight of naked babies restored an adult's innocence or something.
And these people had WEIRD hangups about sex.
We're talking they supposedly covered the legs of tables and chairs in cloth so they would less resemble actual people's legs, lest someone accidentally think of what's at the TOP of legs on people. (genitalia! scary!)
The schism with Alice's family may just have been that SOME people were POSSIBLY gossiping behind closed doors about the man and they refused to be associated with even the POSSIBILITY of scandal, especially if that scandal was that he slept with multiple women. There's also mention that he was interested in Alice's older sister, and something about a maid.
The whole thing is just straight up odd, but apparently most of the pedo rumors didn't start until after his death. I'm not sure what, if anything, that means.
So, who knows. an oddball dude in a SUUUPER sexually repressed society, it honestly could go either way on coin flip odds.
Thanks, didn't know these things.
Definitely not shitty-bad, but it seemed like a Seinfeld moment. Looks like he's still a small artist so I won't name him here - but a guy I sat next to on a plane turned out to have drawn/designed the shirt I wore that day. We were having a nice chat when the discussion turned to the CCP and his admiration for their authoritative actions.
I definitely Noped out mentally from the conversation, but we still kept talking for a while because.... well we were on a plane. Was still a nice guy (to me) - just ...interesting.. views.
Micheal Jackson and his songs had a massive influence until the child abuse allegations came out. Then I didn’t care about his songs.
I like the music by Demons & Wizards, a metal band, which was formed as a collaboration between Blind Guardian's Hansi Kürsch (vocals) and Iced Earth's Jon Schaffer (guitar). Their first album from 1999 is legendary imo.
So let's see what Jon has been up to since... Oh. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-55626148
I was a huge Iced Earth fan before that day. Fuck that guy.
Great fucking band, shitty person lol
Aside from dictators (who are by definition very, very shitty people, but almost always have an art career for some reason), assuming actors don't count as artists, I'd have to say the only example I can think of is Butch Hartman, not shitty because of his character but because he's like the other JK Rowling.
To answer the second question, literally all the e-artists I've ever met, though art is relative enough I don't feel like art can have a "negative" value. I trust they will never see this.
If by "e-artist" you mean "artist/illustrator that makes art digitally and posts it online" then... Uh... Well, one artist has seen this. ^^;
This thread is bumming me out.
Like many mentioned, lots of examples. First one to come to mind for me was Exurb1a. Sarcastic and witty videos about science, philosophy, futurism, etc. I remember one video had a joke about tossing an ex out a window I found uncomfortable, but he also used a bunch of self derogatory humor etc, and his style did include exaggerated characters etc.
Then some convincing evidence came out that he was an abuser and iirc also raped someone. I don't have the link now and as usual don't believe stuff a random anonymous person says on the internet, but it was disappointing to say the least.
His paintings were mid
At best.
Are you a fan of his earlier or later work?
It's kind of a big list. Mostly actors and filmmakers, but also game designers and developers and executive producers. Some of the biggest pieces of shit have played a role in some great movies and other artistic projects. 🤷🏻♂️
Lostprophets were one of my favourite band during my formative years, and I still love the music, but any time I hear it now I can't get past the fact that the singer was a literal baby rapist.
I enjoy a lot of books written by Larry Niven. But in real life he seems to be a bit of a pro-government totalitarian.
Eric Gill. Great sculptor and of course typeface designer but would be better regarded were he 'sans' the sex with his sister, both his daughters, and the family dog.
Roman Polanski comes to mind.
nekozuna, turns out she's a child predator. yeah i no longer listen to the music since i don't wanna support her.
Tom Otterness, the sculptor. He might not be a shitty person anymore, though (it's really up to you).
Pablo Picasso was apparently a misogynistic shitbag who preyed in young girls
MCA Chris Avellone, turned out to be a sex pest or something, kind of broke my heart a bit with that.
That one appears to have turned out to not be the case, fortunately. He wrote up a very long post with a lot of receipts (which is worth a read). He filed a libel suit against his two accusers, which ended up being settled out of court with a large payout in his favour and with the accusers retracting their accusations, categorically saying he had never sexually abused either of them (or any other women to their knowledge).
It was satisfactory enough for me, personally.