on separating artists and their art

It really depends on what one intends to convey or connote when one poses the question. De jure (ie. in principle) one can separate the form of expression from that which expresses it; de facto (ie. the nature of things) we never find one without the other existing. If art reflects and expresses the artist's sensibilities which in turn have been shaped by both personal history and culture, we won't be able to understand their meaning if we simply lack the context in which they were made possible, and of a different context which foregrounds our understanding of anything at all. Personal beliefs, desires, history, culture, etc. all serve as sources of inspiration for art's creation - which partially explains why we appreciate the works made by persecuted artists; artists who created in spite of the odds against them. The degree to which one chooses to bracket out such background conditions would depend on the audience's own relationship with the artist and artwork. For example, how far are they willing to share the political beliefs of the artist before they begin to affect their appreciation for the art? How significant has the art been in shaping the audience's sensibilities prior to awareness of the facts that surround the art itself? Such considerations are always already at work in our minds on a pre-conscious level with their shifting inclinations and tendencies, a struggle that plays out before we are able to rationalize and resolve these conflicting micro-impulses within us (Nietzsche was the first to recognize this). This is what one finds in the philosophy of ethics - the real "trolley problem" isn't about the attempt to universalize an ethical system but to demonstrate how our ethics is already prefigured before awareness of it, and subsequently justified but that justification only comes in retrospect. We must resist universalizing any ethical system, not only because it is impossible to meaningfully do so without falling into contradiction but because to universalize requires conscious justification, thereby ignoring the genesis of ethics.