Monsters
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Description
What do we do with the art of monstrous men? Can we love the work of Roman Polanski and Michael Jackson, Hemingway and Picasso? Should we love it? Does genius deserve special dispensation? What makes women artists monstrous? And what should we do with beauty, and with our unruly feelings about it?
Claire Dederer explores these questions and our relationships with the artists whose behaviour disrupts our ability to understand the work on its own terms. She interrogates her own responses and behaviour, and she pushes the fan, and the reader, to do the same. Morally wise, deeply considered and sharply written, Monsters gets to the heart of one of our most pressing conversations.
'A blisteringly erudite and entertaining read . . . It's a book that deserves to be widely read and will provoke many conversations' NATHAN FILER
'Wise and bold and full of the kind of gravitas that might even rub off' LISA TADDEO
'An incredible book, the best work of criticism I have read in a very long time' NICK HORNBY
A spiky and insightful consideration of how we - the fan - should respond to good art made by bad people***BBC RADIO 4 BOOK OF THE WEEK***
'Funny, lively and convivial... how rare and nourishing this sort of roaming thought is and what a joy to read' MEGAN NOLAN, SUNDAY TIMES
'An exhilarating, shape-shifting exploration of the perilous boundaries between art and life' JENNY OFFILL
Claire Dederer is the author of the New York Times-bestselling memoir Poser: My Life in Twenty-Three Yoga Poses which Elizabeth Gilbert called 'the book we all need'. A book critic, essayist, and reporter, Dederer is a long-time contributor to The New York Times, and has also written for The Atlantic, Vogue, Slate, The Nation, and New York magazine, among others. She lives on an island near Seattle with her family.
Book Information
Posts
A stands for art criticism and for "Ah man, I don't know where to start with this one." Oh, how the title backoned me. "What Do We Do With Great Art By Bad People?". The by now age-old debate. What DO we do? With Woody Allen's films? With Picasso's paintings? With all the filmmakers and musicians and painters who we know have done terrible, terrible things. Can we separate the art from the artist? And if we can, does than automatically mean that we should? Claire Dederer has written a wonderfully timely (and also enjoyably readable) essay on this conundrum, yes. But before you go out and spend your hard-earned money on this book in hopes of getting answers to your questions: You won't. And you know what? I personally think that this is the book's biggest strength. Its ability to navigate a difficult topic that moves us all in one way or another without coming from a moral high ground, without telling us what is right or what is wrong. Instead, Dederer find's a wonderfully human way of laying out her thoughts, of describing the difficulties and pitfalls that lay in consuming art by monsters and (and that is the greates achievement of the text) she points out the monster that is in all of us. Chapeau I say. 4/5 starts and quiet applause from the last row of the lecture hall. Well done, well done.
Description
What do we do with the art of monstrous men? Can we love the work of Roman Polanski and Michael Jackson, Hemingway and Picasso? Should we love it? Does genius deserve special dispensation? What makes women artists monstrous? And what should we do with beauty, and with our unruly feelings about it?
Claire Dederer explores these questions and our relationships with the artists whose behaviour disrupts our ability to understand the work on its own terms. She interrogates her own responses and behaviour, and she pushes the fan, and the reader, to do the same. Morally wise, deeply considered and sharply written, Monsters gets to the heart of one of our most pressing conversations.
'A blisteringly erudite and entertaining read . . . It's a book that deserves to be widely read and will provoke many conversations' NATHAN FILER
'Wise and bold and full of the kind of gravitas that might even rub off' LISA TADDEO
'An incredible book, the best work of criticism I have read in a very long time' NICK HORNBY
A spiky and insightful consideration of how we - the fan - should respond to good art made by bad people***BBC RADIO 4 BOOK OF THE WEEK***
'Funny, lively and convivial... how rare and nourishing this sort of roaming thought is and what a joy to read' MEGAN NOLAN, SUNDAY TIMES
'An exhilarating, shape-shifting exploration of the perilous boundaries between art and life' JENNY OFFILL
Claire Dederer is the author of the New York Times-bestselling memoir Poser: My Life in Twenty-Three Yoga Poses which Elizabeth Gilbert called 'the book we all need'. A book critic, essayist, and reporter, Dederer is a long-time contributor to The New York Times, and has also written for The Atlantic, Vogue, Slate, The Nation, and New York magazine, among others. She lives on an island near Seattle with her family.
Book Information
Posts
A stands for art criticism and for "Ah man, I don't know where to start with this one." Oh, how the title backoned me. "What Do We Do With Great Art By Bad People?". The by now age-old debate. What DO we do? With Woody Allen's films? With Picasso's paintings? With all the filmmakers and musicians and painters who we know have done terrible, terrible things. Can we separate the art from the artist? And if we can, does than automatically mean that we should? Claire Dederer has written a wonderfully timely (and also enjoyably readable) essay on this conundrum, yes. But before you go out and spend your hard-earned money on this book in hopes of getting answers to your questions: You won't. And you know what? I personally think that this is the book's biggest strength. Its ability to navigate a difficult topic that moves us all in one way or another without coming from a moral high ground, without telling us what is right or what is wrong. Instead, Dederer find's a wonderfully human way of laying out her thoughts, of describing the difficulties and pitfalls that lay in consuming art by monsters and (and that is the greates achievement of the text) she points out the monster that is in all of us. Chapeau I say. 4/5 starts and quiet applause from the last row of the lecture hall. Well done, well done.