I like that as a position.
With regard to Gill
Quote:
- When the enormity is present in the work itself, with a little bit of adjusting for inflation (were they a monster by the standards of their time, like).
- When the enormity operates in the same realm as the art such that it ruins/taints it (as with Gill). (This one's a bit wishy-washy. Thinkers in the sociological/political sphere who owned slaves? Moral philosophers who were racists? etc.).
I think my visceral response to him is more the former - he sometimes used his daughters as models. So the eroticism reflects his own desire. Yuck! "We all have flaws, and mine is being wicked."
James Thurber, The Thirteen Clocks 1951
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