Sure, I get it, but when you tap into your empathetic side this article smacks of insensitity and whining. Assuming, as Lionel asks us to, that some of these th

Sure, I get it, but when you tap into your empathetic side this article smacks of insensitity and whining. Assuming, as Lionel asks us to, that some of these things are true—should we really be complaining about the inaccessibility of these works or should we perhaps think about what the victims might have experienced, and that in many cases the abuse they suffered was in part enabled by the power the popularity of the so-called artist’s (many of the examples in this article art not in fact what I’d call art but rather entertainment) works bestowed upon the artists—a lot of these people got away with stuff precisely because the wide scale distribution of their works elevated them to a position of social immunity. That’s finally changing, and that’s a good thing. Just as it’s the consumers choice to refrain from consuming its the distributors choice to refrain from distributing—publishers aren’t some beacons of moral and political neutrality—they’ll do whatever benefits the bottom line. To hold them to this weird demand that they be neutral and toss public opinion aside is predicated on a much different reality than the one we occupy. Changing the nature of distribution is a separate economic and political issue. On the whole, this is a pretty infuriating article. So-called artists should not have some sort of special moral immunity—that’s precisely the problem that’s finally being solved with some of these banishments—and yes it is a problem initimately tied to the popularity and avilabilty of their works, as this is what gave them a veneer of invincibility in the past. It’s not some simple situation in which these people would have been served justice regardless—the dispatch of justice in these cases is often hindered by the artist’s success and notoriety. Common approaches to morality weigh the bad more highly against the good. And yes the ideas and actions behind the art matter. The extreme logical extension of this argument is that you should be able to enjoy nazi artwork in a sort of epicurean way without having to admit of any of the implications enjoying such work might suggest and basically putting history, reality, and thought aside while you indulge in whatever it is about the work that appeals to you—it’s a very shallow, one dimensional, solipsistic and childish approach to comprehending and consuming art.