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Roman Polanski's Lifetime Achievement reminds us that art should never be judged by the morality of the artist

Remember that bit at the end of The Pianist where the character of Adrien Brody plays the piano by his Nazi sensor? Would not it make you feel a tingling on the skin? You can not crush your soul at the thought of all the cruelty and destruction of the Holocaust, and the juxtaposition of the flood of music that hopefully in the field of art lifts us all? Or maybe you were too busy thinking about the effect that the person who directed the movie was guilty of having sex with a minor and was unable to take advantage of something he had created.

director Roman Polanski films such as Chinatown and pianist, visiting Zurich to finally get his Lifetime Achievement Award, two years after they gave him. Its late acceptance is due to the fact that he was arrested and remanded in custody first time, with the intention of extraditing him to the United States and have him serve his sentence, he fled more than 30 years.

I think it's wonderful to receive this award, but in no way defend as a person. Many people try to justify their behavior, encapsulated famous by Whoopi Goldberg "It was not rape-rape", but irrelevant. I do not know and I will not comment on his apparent intelligence or grace solemn. If he did rape or seduce the girl in 1977, while it's disgusting, despite his pregnant wife was murdered in 1967, or the survivor of the Holocaust in Poland as a child, when nearly 90% of the Jewish population was killed, including his own mother.

None of this really matters to anyone but him, regarding the prize, his personal history is completely irrelevant. Art should never be judged by looking at the artist. It is essential to separate the two, otherwise it would have disastrous consequences for creativity. If you wiped out all the art created by people morally reprehensible, we lack some of our most treasured songs, paintings, buildings and books.

I think people in general are good at doing that. Amy Winehouse was a drug user self-Harmer and had a notoriously violent marriage. Not exactly a good role model, but is simply praised for having one of the best voices of his generation. TS Eliot was an anti-Semite, but has been studied in my university, where teachers unapologetically called him a genius. Einstein was a womanizer, but this week has been discussed with affection and admiration for his contributions to physics.