The following is a post I read while looking something up online this morning (the question follows it):
-----
"It is important to be able to separate the artist from the art. They have nothing to do with on another. If you read some of the Ezra Pound, TS Elliot and John Crowe Ransom essays on literary criticism, their main point is that the only person who is unfit to actually interpret a work of art is the creator of said art, simply because there is no way to separate ones self from your art enough to keep all of the underlying psychological influences from your life from affecting ones own interpretation of a piece.

It is sort of analogous to the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle in Quantum Mechanics. The observer cannot observe a system without altering the system he is observing. Thus, the artist cannot give an interpretation of his work without obfuscating the true meaning (if there be such a thing) because of a lifetime of psychological factors that cannot be looked at independently without changing the meaning or interpretation of the work in a way that does not reflect the work itself apart from the psychology.

Anyway, the meaning of art is based solely on the observer and not on the artwork or the artist, only on what the work invokes in the observer."
-----
I know this isn't a new topic, but what do you think? Do you agree that the artist should be separate from the art? That the artist and art "have nothing to do with one another"? Do you let your opinion of the artist influence your opinion of their work? Is that a concious choice?

What does that mean for the artist?