“Can we love the work of artists such as Hemingway, Sylvia Plath, Miles Davis, Polanski, or Picasso? Should we? Dederer explores the audience’s relationship with artists from Michael Jackson to Virginia Woolf, asking: How do we balance our undeniable sense of moral outrage with our equally undeniable love of the work? Is male monstrosity the same as female monstrosity? And if an artist is also a mother, does one identity inexorably, and fatally, interrupt the other? In a more troubling vein, she wonders if an artist needs to be a monster in order to create something great. Does genius deserve special dispensation? Does art have a mandate to depict the darker elements of the psyche? And what happens if the artist stares too long into the abyss?
Highly topical, morally wise, honest to the core, Monsters is certain to incite a conversation about whether and how we can separate artists from their art.”
–Summary from publisher.
Can you still love the art now that it has been tainted by the artist’s actions? That artist who you feel personally connected to because they created that piece of art that helped you define yourself. Can you live comfortably with that love still coursing through you?
Dederer has given us a beautifully empathetic view of the emotional conundrum of loving an artist but learning of horrible things they have done. After reading through Dederer’s own emotional struggles with this topic and her personal conjectures, I think that ultimately it may not be easy to balance those contradictory feelings of love and shame/disappointment, but we are all flawed beings – your favorite artist/musician/celebrity/content creator is not immune to the inherited weaknesses of all human beings. Still, I believe, any love you bestow on anyone or anything is not given in vain.
Your connection to that art, your interpretation of it, makes it yours as much as it is of the artist who created it. Art is a form of self-expression for an artist. Still, when shared, it is also for the people, and the people can nurture it despite whatever stain the artist may leave on it. I personally believe nothing and no one is truly irredeemable. But ultimately, this conundrum is not one that has one true answer. Each person must make their own decisions about what is forgivable in their eyes.
For All Story Lovers! 