This topic gets reworked and reworked, most recently on the subject of
antisemitism. If we were to rid ourselves of all the remains of people who
committed despicable acts we'd have none of the ancient or medieval world
in any country and we'd be missing huge amounts of what's been produced in
more "enlightened" times. Moslems, who are enjoined never to pray on ground
where blood has been spilled, carry prayer-rugs on the assumption that most
soil is blood-soaked, and they're not, I think, far wrong.

There is of course the possibility of reading the work in the light of the
life. But humans compartmentalize behaviors. Gesualdo's music sounds no
more like the work of a man who killed his wife than does that of
Monteverdi, who famously was madly in love with his wife until the day she
died. And I defy anyone to deconstruct a typeface so as to see the child
molester in how Gill handles risers and descenders--if it were possible to
do so we would most of us shrink back in horror from books set in Perpetua.

Language is a special case (we're not talking about language in the case of
Gill, however). But should we deny ourselves the pleasures of Williams or,
worse, Celine, or the information their work imparts, because they were
antisemitic? Should we not read Virginia Woolf because mnuch of the time
she wasn't very nice to Leonard? Perhaps throw out the US Declaration of
Independence and Bill of Rights because Jefferson was an unrepentant slave
holder and persecutor of Indians? Does one need to proliferate examples? Is
it possible to live in a moral bubble, or do we have to cope, and
compromise, daily with the noxious elements not only in ourselves but in
the very dangerous world at large?


At 01:53 PM 7/13/2000 -0700, you wrote:
>
>"Gill was such a bastard he didn't deserve for his
>name to live after him, so I'd happily destroy what
>makes it do so. So what if it's good art; there's
>plenty more."
>
>
>I'm with Ally most of the way on this one. I am
>disturbed by people who want too readily to discount
>the relevance of a person's life to an assesment of a
>person's art. It bespeaks a failure to see the
>material roots of all artistic production - broadly,
>to see the fact that art doesn't fall from the sky,
>it's produced out of specific socio-historical
>contexts. Such a failure is for me exemplified in the
>disastrous and false dichotomy of form and content
>still wheeled around by many poets, and by the rather
>more discredited doctrine of 'art for art's sake'.
>Lokking at the life of Gill is all part of the
>necessary exercise of putting art in context. That
>doesn't necessarily mean we burn Gill's stuff, but
>that we try to understand it. From understanding
>repudiation may grow as logically as forgiveness (that
>all sounds awfully pompous, dunnit?)
>
>Cheers
>Scott
>
>
>
>
>
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>Date: Thu, 13 Jul 2000 17:26:55 +0100
>X-Mailer: Web Based Pronto
>Subject: Eric Gill
>From: "Ally Kerr" <[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
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>
>Dear Dave Lovely (is that a real name or is it
>impolite to ask?)
>
>Of course I'd rather "destroy the real man", be it
>Hitler or Gill, than an artefact, but they're both
>dead so I'll settle for what I can get. I admit I'm a
>reader, not an author, which is maybe why I don't
>think all books and works of art are holy and should
>be exempt from destruction.  The entire oeuvre of
>Barbara Cartland, for example, was pure waste of
>timber and should be pulped and recycled. Gill was
>such a bastard he didn't deserve for his name to live
>after him, so I'd happily destroy what makes it do so.
>So what if it's good art; there's plenty more.
>
>
>Ally Kerr
>__________________________________________
>Sent by Sofcom Mail - The world's coolest and safest
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>
>=====
>"Why is it not possible for me to doubt that I have never been on the
moon?  And how
>could I try to doubt it?  First and foremost, the supposition that perhaps
I have
>been there would strike me as idle.  Nothing would follow from it, nothing
be
>explained by it.  It would not tie in with anything in my life...
Philosophical
>problems occur when language goes on holiday.  We must not separate ideas
from life,
>we must not be misled by the appearances of sentences: we must investigate
the
>application of words in individual language-games"      - Ludwig Wittgenstein
>
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