The Art And/Versus The Artist- Neil Gaiman

There’s been an ongoing discussion in society about whether or not you can separate art from an artist. Is their essence fully imbued into the art? Is it completely separate? Are they combined or split entities? It’s a conversation that everyone has an opinion about. 

Recently, more news was released about the allegations against the infamous author, Neil Gaiman. After reading several articles, I knew I had to write about it. 

I have been a fan of Neil Gaiman’s all of my life. I grew up reading his book, Coraline, and later fell absolutely in love with the stop-motion film adaptation. I’ve adored several of his books, graphic novels, and series including: Neverwhere, Good Omens, The Sandman, and Troll Bridge among others. His dark-fantasy style and witty humor has inspired my own writing and art and I’ve looked up to him as an artist and as a person. Not only am I very familiar with his work, but I have also seen Neil Gaiman talk in person twice. Once in Washington D.C. and another time in Virginia at one of my favorite venues, Wolf Trap. I’ve taken his course on Masterclass and I refer back to things he has said so many times as it has helped guide me in my journey into adulthood. I didn’t want to believe he was another person that has committed disgusting things against other people, but unfortunately, it seems as if the news coming out against him is indisputable. 

It’s hard to see someone that you’ve looked up to throughout childhood and beyond show their darker sides. I am still completely devastated from learning about the allegations against my more musically-aligned idol, Marilyn Manson (a.k.a. Brian Hugh Warner). So witnessing Neil Gaiman’s fall from above is just another dagger to the chest. These men, among many others, are multimedia artists with incredible creative talent, knowledge, influence, and power, and have provided me with inspiration to pursue my own artistic path and dedication to personal self-expression. But, it seems at least “allegedly” that they are also abusers or people who have used their status against others, and I cannot support that. 

As a woman who has endured abuse and is a domestic violence survivor, it is so hard for me to grapple with the reality that the people I have looked up to have possibly committed similar acts of brutality to those that have done it to me. I listened to Manson’s music as an outlet for when I was being abused. I read Gaiman’s stories to escape my imprisonment under vicious men. How could they like the people that hurt me? 

This is where the more nuanced conversation needs to come in about art and/versus the artist. All art is up to the viewer’s interpretation. I know this as an artist and as an art consumer. What I may want the viewer to take away from my art may not be anywhere near to how they interpret it themselves. Same as the ways that I interpret other people’s art.

This is the third-dimension so to speak to art and/versus the artist. There are actually three things at play: artist, artwork, consumer. 

• The artist is the person behind the project. They have their own lives, opinions, behaviors, biases, and intentions for how they present a piece and how emotionally involved they are in their creation. 

• The artwork is the piece that is made. The parameters for an artist’s role in the piece varies. Sometimes the artwork can be an outpouring of their soul, a window into their experiences, desires, and fears. Sometimes it can be a commission, influenced more by what they’re told to make- a simple job. An artwork can also be a fragmentary project- for instance, focused on only a section of the artist's internal selves like a landscape painting inspired by their love of nature, rather than something deeper. 

• Lastly, the consumer is the person connecting with the artwork and the artist. The consumer will never fully know the intentions of an artwork or the internal world of the artist, they moreso experience the work in the context of their own lives, emotions, experiences, and knowledge of an artist’s portfolio and personality. The consumer makes their own connection towards the artwork and the artist based on these cyclical interactions.

This is why the fall of an artist can be so difficult for consumers- me, you, us as people. We have connected to the artworks that speak to us and therefore can sometimes project our experiences and emotions onto the artists that created those pieces. We’ve interpreted their words or pictures in ways that we might start to think that they have intended for us to, but in reality, it’s hard to know anything for sure. Artists could be compartmentalizing parts of themselves into their artwork, or they might be throwing themselves completely into it. It's a spectrum, a range. When the artists fall, then we can feel responsible for not seeing their darker interiority, and some look at the artworks from a new angle, trying to decipher their more nefarious personality traits out of the artwork, shunning it forever despite loving it at some point. 

Well, what’s next? What do you do when you find out your artist has fallen from favor, revealing something possibly unforgivable about their actions or personality? 

That’s up to you. 

You could give everything made by them, away. You could stop supporting any of their past or future work. You could remove them from your life. You could continue to support them. You could continue to interact with their artworks in a different way. I think that is a completely individual decision, even if in the socio-political climate of today there is a pressure to completely separate oneself to the “bad artist” in question. There have been a lot of important or infamous artists who have committed gross or terrible acts in a myriad of ways. If people really wanted to achieve a level of moralistic consumerism then it would be incredibly difficult and stressful to interact with most examples of culturally-impactful artwork. The best mode of moving forward is doing what is the most comfortable for oneself. 

For me, I don’t regret loving Marilyn Manson’s music and Neil Gaiman’s books. Both of these artists have given me so much inspiration and wisdom that I am grateful for, and my interpretations of their artwork have empowered me in times where I needed it most and still need it today.

But recognizing the nightmarish allegations against them and choosing to be more mindful of how I’d like to support or not support them in the future is something that I think about and reevaluate depending on what other information is released about their actions. I still have my decades of Manson merch and Gaiman stories, I don’t want to give away such important artworks to my life. But I also cannot in good conscience support men who dominate, abuse, and terrorize others. I don’t know how much of their darker sides are imbued into their former artworks, those pieces I hold onto my personal interpretations of them, but moving forward, I can’t see anything new they create or say without recognizing fully that they are the monsters that they’ve been revealed to be.

It's not just art and/versus the artist- it is art and/versus the artist AND you.

~Anastasia S. Razumova