The New Puritans: How the Religion of Social Justice Captured the Western World

by Andrew Doyle

Then there is the question of the morality of artists themselves. I have always maintained that we should not judge a work of art on the basis of the behaviour of its creator. The curators of the Queer British Art exhibition at Tate Britain, for instance, were happy to include pieces by Kenneth Halliwell, in spite of the fact that he beat his lover Joe Orton to death with a hammer. And there is certainly no shortage of talented artists throughout history whose conduct was inexcusable. The celebrated writer William S. Burroughs shot his wife in the face. The novelist Anne Perry helped to bludgeon her best friend’s mother to death with a brick. Lord Byron committed incest with his half-sister. It is said that Caravaggio murdered a man while attempting to castrate him. Should we therefore hurl his Bacchus and his Judith Beheading Holofernes onto the bonfire? For over a hundred years it was believed that Brahms strangled cats in order to replicate their dying cries in his symphonies. If this had been accurate, would we be justified in consigning his music to the abyss? And what of the rumours that Michelangelo crucified a model in order to precisely reproduce the muscular contortions and agony of Christ on the cross? Even if this turned out to be true, only a philistine would delight in seeing the Sistine Chapel given a fresh lick of paint.