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Thinking again about how the concept of "separating the art from the artist" often functions as a technique for fulfilling an *emotional* need (assuaging the disorientation of cognitive and moral dissonance), not as the intellectual position on hermeneutics it appears to be.
I'm not saying this to dismiss emotional needs! Situations like this can be very painful. Case in point: watching "Annie Hall" was the first time I felt a clear sense of Jewish cultural identity. I can hardly watch it now, knowing what I know about Allen. That's a real loss.
And the thing is ... I don't think cognitive and moral dissonance are actually escapable or resolvable in the long run. Especially not if you live in a country whose standard of living relies on the exploitation of the global south.
You can walk away from Omelas, but are you going to find something better?
Getting back to the arts, my impression is that there are vanishingly few people who actually consistently reject *all* art made by bigots and abusers. Most people are constantly negotiating a series of compromises. Miles Davis but not Basquiat. Carravaggio but not Gesualdo.
It's easy to point to any one of those compromises and say "don't you care about this?" It's much harder to exist in an world full of monstrous ideologies and abuses of power and keep all of it out of your artistic life.
