Upon precuring a handsome two-edition volume on Pablo Picasso edited by Carsten-Peter Warncke and Ingo E. Walther (part of a deep dive that also includes John Richardson's A LIFE OF PICASSO— 550 pages and only 1 of 4 volumes!— and John Berger's THE SUCCESS AND FAILURE OF PICASSO), I showed them to another artist who then responded with "But you know Picasso was an asshole, right?"

I would assume that it'd be obvious to anyone— let alone another artist— that any interest I might have in Picasso wouldn't stem from his relationship with women or how he conducted himself in his personal relationships, but rather from his work. This isn't an argument for separation of art from the artist in as much as it's an argument for doing away with binary thinking.

If [Person A] does [bad thing X], therefore everything [A] does and has ever done must also be [X] just doesn't strike me as the kind of thinking worthy of an intellectual species. A close reading of human history can deduct that it is exactly that kind of thinking that has led to things like the "dark ages". It seems to me to stem from two rather dominant human traits:

1) An assumption that there are good people and there are bad people.

2) Virtue-signaling.

That first point is certainly exasperated by the kind of media we're enveloped in, cartoonishly good vs. evil narratives. Granted, modern fiction seems to be more okay with depictions of "flawed heroes" and somewhat "nuanced villains" than we see in olden stories, but the flaws in these modern heroes seldom have to do with their convictions and more to do lifestyle (being a drunk, hoarder, rude, etc.), and any nuance given to the villains may pertain to a specific inciting incident that might've led to their villainy. People like to point to STAR WARS and DUNE as examples of heroes who can become villains and vice versa, but these are still examples of binary-thinking at work: A becomes B, and B becomes A. Perhaps we might be better off if we did away with notions of heroes and villains altogether.

Now it seems to be common among those who work in popular media that entertainment is king and that's all that matters. Part of this conviction I think stems from a want for sociopolitical neutrality; that they can just create something fun that can be enjoyed by anyone regardless of conviction and as such have no real-world implications to speak of (other than making money anyway). The reality of life however is that nothing introduced into existence is without effect. And in the case of hero/villain narratives, they help shape the lense through which we view the world. The absence of such narratives, or at the very least a great decrease in such narratives, would in theory help us not apply such binary thinking to the world we live in. It is for that reason, at least partly, that when an agent once told me "I wanna see the villain on page 5" in regard to an early draft of my serialized graphic novel THE SOLAR GRID, that I rolled my eyes and decided to carve out my own path for the book's creation and release. Their advice may very well have been sound from a marketability standpoint, and as such they were very much doing their job, but that advice didn't quite apply to the type of story I wanted to tell.

In any case, I really don't believe in the existence of good people or bad people. The latter in particular may be hard to swallow when it comes to a certain type of person who consistently engages in very horrendously evil shit, but I still think the rule applies even to them. Some may find this outlook to be detrimental, in that it can foster inaction in a world that insists on side-ism. But it can also help us become more informed, more knowledgeable, and even more skilled, because it opens up our perception to information from sources that don't necessarily jive with our ethos. Even people who engage in behavior deemed to be very bad are probably skilled at something. And there's no reason one can't learn from that something and apply it to what they deem to be very good.

Virtue-signaling, the other popular trait, seems to me to be at odds with prevalent "binary-thinking" yet paradoxically just as common among binary thinkers. It is when a person adopts the position of what is popularly seen as virtuous in their community without applying the essence of said virtues, or the rationale of said virtues, to their lives in earnest. It is why Denver may be the capital of a "blue state" that holds major rallies for female reproductive rights by outdoorsy nature-loving types but also votes heavily in favor of fracking laws. It is why pro-Palestinian protestors might be booed at an anti-fascist rally in Berlin. It is why a gay, vegan, environmentally-minded person might join the U.S. military despite it being singlehandedly responsible for more greenhouse gas emissions than entire industrialized countries such as Sweden and Denmark. 

At its core, virtue-signaling is hypocrisy at work and a sign of inconsistent ethos, which in actuality is the result of the absence of ethos altogether. In other words, the absence of a genuine guiding principal, without which our moral compass becomes entirely susceptible to popular opinion (especially within our immediate community) and aggressive advertising. A dangerous place for anyone to be, but especially dangerous to those of us who might like to be engaged in making art and creative work more broadly.

Ganzeer
Houston, TX

10.05.24  

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