E.G.

[For Weatherson readers: You may also be interested in my follow-up post here, which is the one at which Richard’s objection is aimed.  And by the way, while you’re here: If one of you happens to provide a way to solve this problem, I will be much obliged.]

Via CSOTD, I came across the website of Mark Takamichi Miller, a painter.  Miller has produced a series of paintings which have an interesting origin.  Costco, a retail store, offers film-developing services.  Apparently, at one time, you could claim a set of developed prints without having to provide any proof that they were yours.  So Miller just walked into a Costco store and claimed a set of prints at random.  Miller paid for the prints, but they weren’t his; he stole them.  Then he took the prints home and used them as a source for his paintings.

It is wrong to steal photographs.  Miller acknowledges this.  But Miller seems to think that, in this case, he was justified in stealing them because he needed to do so in order to produce his paintings.  The idea, I take it, is that stealing the photos didn’t do much harm, whereas producing the paintings did a lot of good.  So, when you tally everything up, you’re supposed to think Miller can be excused for his actions.

A problem arises, however, when we consider that the wrongfulness of stealing the photographs seems to be part of the value the paintings are supposed to have.  Consider this passage from Miller’s website: 

These are private photos not intended for public viewing. I looked at them very carefully as I reproduced them as paintings for public viewing. This was an invasive and hostile act and is inherent to the work. They are intentional. They expose as an unwilling documentary the private lives of the subjects and the social rituals they engage in. But they also invade someone’s privacy. There is no excuse for it except to say that the abrasive hostile act has always been one of the primary attractions to doing and viewing art. … But this does not excuse the action. After doing this project, even I am afraid someone will have done something with my photos I leave for development. However, within the hostility, the paintings marry the engaged to the mundane, and in doing so make something beautiful where it was not.

There’s a lot in this passage that seems unintelligible to me; I don’t know what it means to "marry the engaged to the mundane," for instance.  But I get the impression that Miller thinks that the paintings are interesting precisely because they represent a wrongful invasion of some random person’s privacy.  In other words: The paintings are good precisely because the way in which they were produced was wrong.

Here’s the problem.  If the value of the paintings really does excuse the way in which they were produced, then the way in which they were produced is not wrong.  This makes the paintings valueless, or at least quite a bit less valuable, since the wrongful "abrasive hostility" of the act is supposed to be one of the "primary attractions" of his art.  But since the paintings are now much less valuable, their value probably no longer excuses the way in which they were produced.  So now the way in which they were produced is wrong.  This wrongfulness gives the paintings back their value.  But now we are where we started.

I don’t know how or whether this circularity can be interrupted.  In any case, I think Miller is just wrong if he thinks that the invasiveness of his paintings makes them valuable.  I think their deliberate invasiveness makes them sort of depraved.  The fact that stealing people’s photographs is nearly harmless adds a pettiness to the act which somehow makes it seem worse.  I am reminded of this passage from Augustine’s Confessions:

There was a pear tree close to our own vineyard, heavily laden with fruit, which was not tempting either for its color or for its flavor. Late one night — having prolonged our games in the streets until then, as our bad habit was — a group of young scoundrels, and I among them, went to shake and rob this tree. We carried off a huge load of pears, not to eat ourselves, but to dump out to the hogs, after barely tasting some of them ourselves. Doing this pleased us all the more because it was forbidden. Such was my heart, O God, such was my heart — which thou didst pity even in that bottomless pit. Behold, now let my heart confess to thee what it was seeking there, when I was being gratuitously wanton, having no inducement to evil but the evil itself. It was foul, and I loved it. I loved my own undoing. I loved my error — not that for which I erred but the error itself. A depraved soul, falling away from security in thee to destruction in itself, seeking nothing from the shameful deed but shame itself.  (Book 2, chapter 4)