Opinion: Why we must separate the art from the artist

To the editor: Noah Berlatsky’s life would be impoverished were he unable to separate the art from the artist. Great artists, except for their grand achievements, are human in every other respect, abounding with imperfections and misdeeds. (“Should ‘The Birth of a Nation’ audiences care about Nate Parker allegations?” Opinion, Aug. 22)

Caravaggio was both a pimp and murderer; Fyodor Dostoyevsky, in the dead of winter, sold his wife’s winter coat for gambling money; and Paul Cezanne, an anti-Semite, broke off relations with his closest friend, Camille Pissarro, a Sephardic Jew, because of the scandalous Dreyfus affair.

Edgar Degas, another anti-Semite, broke off relations with a Jew even though he dined at his family’s home several times a week; both Cezanne and Pierre Auguste Renoir broke off relations with their close friend, Emile Zola, for Zola’s support of Alfred Dreyfus; and we all know of Richard Wagner’s views about Jews.

If Berlatsky wants to remain acculturated, he needs to draw a line.

Jack Salem, Los Angeles

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To the editor: As a woman and a filmmaker who values good movies, keeps up on the news and is aghast at the casual dismissal of campus rape, I was eager to read this piece. I found the writer’s examination of the separation of art and artist to be generally well-reasoned.

However, I am troubled by one aspect of its treatment of “The Birth of a Nation” director and writer Nate Parker.

Parker was tried for and acquitted of rape. I am not dismissing cases in which a perpetrator is let off easy for specious reasons or the possibility that the verdict reached in Parker’s trial was incorrect.

However, the possibility that Parker is indeed innocent is never even mentioned. This lack of balance casts the article’s entire premise in doubt.

Mindi White, Los Angeles

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