Monstruos

Can we appreciate the work of artists such as Hemingway, Sylvia Plath, Miles Davis, Polanski, Woody Allen or Picasso? We should? The writer Claire Dederer set out to investigate the relationship we have with the work of those artists whom we admire, while we morally deal with their sometimes monstrous personality. From Michael Jackson to Virginia Woolf, the author questions how to reconcile our indignation and contempt with the deep love we feel for art. And she goes further: is male monstrosity equivalent to female monstrosity? If an artist is also a mother, does one identity fatally break with the other? This book, preceded by great critical success, delves into the cognitive dissonance typical of an era in which we have stopped compromising with genius for the mere reason of being one, but it also raises important reflections on the survival of his work and on its very conception: since art has the imperative to portray the darkest elements of the psyche, is it not exposed to appropriating them? Furthermore, what happens when the artist contemplates the abyss for too long? Can't she be a victim of her own genius? With insight, brilliance and the honesty of someone who faces her own moral dilemmas, Dederer has achieved a transcendental and complex work that elevates the intellectual debate.