Can you love art made by terrible people? Claire Dederer’s Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma tackles this question head-on, exploring why we feel conflicted when artists we admire turn out to be abusers, bigots, or otherwise morally compromised.
This guide walks through Dederer’s framework: the three most common types of monstrous artists (abusive men, rebellious women, and bigots), why these figures trouble us so deeply, and three possible responses to their work. We’ll also explore Dederer’s three core lessons about human complexity, drawn from her examination of figures like Picasso, Doris Lessing, Richard Wagner, and J.K. Rowling.
Overview of Monsters
Great art can change your life—but learning about the artist’s sordid past can change how you view their art. So argues Claire Dederer in Monsters, published in 2023. As a memoirist and art critic, Dederer offers an insider’s look at the thorny question: Can we love the art if we loathe the artist? She doesn’t offer easy answers. Instead, she examines how our emotional responses to art are shaped by our knowledge of the artist’s behavior, and what that says about our own morality, identity, and desires.
Dederer is the author of Poser, a reflection on yoga and motherhood, and Love & Trouble, a memoir about middle-aged womanhood. She’s also an essayist, former film critic, and book reviewer for The New York Times.
What’s a Monster?
Dederer says that when we call someone a monster, we mean that they’ve violated a moral boundary so profoundly that they no longer seem fully human. She explains that this term signals our desire to distance ourselves from their misdeeds—actions so grave we believe we’re fundamentally incapable of doing the same thing. In this book, she isn’t concerned with everyday monsters—average people who commit terrible crimes—who are easy to condemn and forget about. Instead, she focuses on great artists who are also monsters. These people are harder to dismiss because we’re simultaneously moved or inspired by their art and repulsed by their private actions.
Dederer lays out three categories of monstrous artists: abusive men, rebellious women, and bigots. In this section, we’ll explore each category and some examples she provides of each.
Abusive Men
Perhaps the most recognizable kinds of monstrous artists are men who abuse women and children. Often, this involves physical or sexual abuse (or both). Dederer writes that art history is littered with examples of abusive men—in part because it’s an incredibly common dynamic, so common that it almost feels mundane. Culturally speaking, she says, we expect violence from men because masculinity is often defined in terms of physical power, dominance, and superiority.
We also expect violence from men who are artistic giants. An artistic giant is someone whose talent is so extraordinary that it overshadows everything else about them, including their bad behavior. To become this talented, Dederer explains, artistic giants must innovate—they do surprising, often socially unacceptable things with their art, and these experiments are so successful that they redefine the genre the artist is working in. Many take similar risks in their personal lives, too, breaking social norms and moral boundaries with the same audacity they bring to their work. This can make them dangerous—but because we associate brilliance with transgression, we often accept and excuse their misdeeds as the price of exceptional talent.
However, Dederer notes, this leniency generally only applies to white men—women and people of color face harsher judgment for far lesser offenses. They’re also less likely to become artistic giants in the first place: Structural barriers and violence often prevent them from taking risks, developing their talents, or even living long enough to achieve lasting recognition. So, when they do break social norms and moral boundaries, we don’t justify or romanticize the bad behavior like we do with white male artistic giants.
Pablo Picasso
Dederer says Pablo Picasso is a quintessential example of an abusive artistic giant. She explains that the painter’s physical power is part of what made his art great—he imbued his paintings with the same intensity that marked his presence. His forcefulness on the canvas and in life became a hallmark of his style, which revolutionized modern art. But this forcefulness also manifested in his relationships with women and girls. He manipulated and abused them physically, sexually, and emotionally, and he often subsequently discarded them.
Rebellious Women
The second type of monstrous artist Dederer discusses is the rebellious woman. She explains that if we associate masculinity with power and violence, then we associate femininity with just the opposite: Women are supposed to nurture others—often to the detriment of their art—and remain docile, even when they feel trapped by society. Our culture considers female artists who reject these expectations to be monsters.
Dederer names two rebellious women as examples—let’s explore each.
Doris Lessing
Doris Lessing, a writer, left two of her three children behind when she moved from Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) to London in 1949 to pursue her writing career. She wrote about what it means for a woman to be free, exploring the resentment women feel toward family obligations that stifle their ability to do creative work.
In exploring Lessing’s choice to leave her children, Dederer notes that family obligations put female artists in a double bind. They’re expected to be wholly devoted caregivers, but that devotion often comes at the cost of their creative potential. If they prioritize art over family, society condemns their selfishness. But if they prioritize family, their work is dismissed or diminished—or it never gets done in the first place because they simply lack time for it. Further, the judgment isn’t just external; women also judge themselves harshly, regardless of where their priorities lie. They either feel like bad mothers or failed artists.
It may seem like the solution is to strike a balance between both family and art, but Dederer points out that any attempt by a mother to carve out time for her creative work—even if it’s only for a few hours a day—seems like neglect. She also notes that there’s a double standard here: Fathers aren’t scrutinized for setting boundaries between work and family. They’re expected to work, and their dedication to it is often praised. They can also more easily offload mundane responsibilities, like child-rearing and housework, onto their wives.
For these reasons, a female artist might choose to not have children at all. But Dederer notes that our culture judges female artists for this, too: We deride them for valuing art over motherhood and for lacking the capacity to balance both.
Valerie Solanas
Dederer says Valerie Solanas exemplifies another kind of rebellious woman—one who not only rejects traditional gender roles but actively attacks the systems and men that uphold them. Solanas was a radical feminist and writer during the 1960s who became famous for attempting to assassinate artist Andy Warhol after a bout of paranoia—she feared he would steal the play she wrote and presented to him, which he’d refused to produce. This act cemented her reputation as a monster in the public imagination.
Dederer explains that Solanas believed her most important work was the SCUM Manifesto. It argued that men are responsible for most of society’s problems—they invented capitalism to preserve and expand their own power, and now use it to dominate, abuse, and destroy the world. Therefore, Solanas argued, the only way to save the world was by eradicating men (SCUM stands for “Society for Cutting Up Men”).
Dederer argues that the manifesto’s violent rhetoric made it easy to dismiss—and that it would never have inspired meaningful change because it oversimplified the world’s problems. By painting men as the sole source of all societal ills, Solanas ignored the complexity of systemic oppression and offered no viable path forward. A viable path would look like working together with men to improve the world, according to Dederer.
Despite its flaws, Dederer sees the SCUM Manifesto as an artistic act of defiance. It offered a biting critique of patriarchy and capitalism and an expression of rage that has resonated with generations of feminist readers. In this way, Solanas fits the mold of the “monstrous” woman not just because she shot Warhol, but because she refused to remain docile in the face of systemic oppression.
Bigots
Bigots are the final category of monstrous artists Dederer discusses. Bigoted artists hold prejudiced beliefs against certain groups—often based on race, religion, gender, or sexuality—and express these views openly in their work or personal lives. She cites two examples of bigoted artists—one from history and one from the present day. Let’s explore both.
Richard Wagner
To explore our perceptions of bigoted artists throughout history, Dederer turns to German composer Richard Wagner. Wagner was a musical genius, but he was also openly antisemitic. In 1850, he wrote a virulent essay condemning Jewish people, and his values were so prized in Nazi Germany that the government used his music as cultural propaganda.
Dederer writes that we often deal with figures like Wagner by excusing their bigoted beliefs and behavior as ignorant. We tell ourselves that people used to think antisemitism (and other prejudices) were well-founded and acceptable—implying that if artists like Wagner were alive today, they’d think differently. However, we can’t apply this thinking to Wagner; Dederer explains that he knew the arguments against antisemitism and chose to double down on his bigoted beliefs.
Further, she argues, this justification is inherently faulty. We like to believe the present is morally superior to the past because if that’s true, then we’re fundamentally incapable of committing the same wrongs. This belief provides comfort, but it’s misleading. It prevents us from recognizing how similar our world still is to the world that produced artists like Wagner—and how easily we might participate in harmful systems or beliefs ourselves. For example, she compares Wagner’s antisemitism to what she sees as Donald Trump’s expressions of racism. She argues that both figures frame their bigoted beliefs as commonsense conclusions most people would own up to if they were honest—and if progressive politics didn’t suppress these conclusions.
J.K. Rowling
To explore how we respond to bigoted artists in the present, Dederer turns to J.K. Rowling, the author of the Harry Potter series. In recent years, Rowling has received widespread criticism for her statements about transgender people—remarks many view as transphobic. Rowling’s bigotry feels personal and painful for many people because Harry Potter was such a formative part of their childhoods. Furthermore, some of the people who grew up reading Harry Potter are queer or transgender—the books championed themes like love, belonging, and resistance against oppressive systems, which deeply resonated with marginalized readers seeking refuge. Dederer says this makes Rowling’s statements feel like a betrayal to that community.
Unlike historical figures such as Wagner, whose bigotry feels distant, Rowling is alive and continues making public statements about transgender issues. This makes her actions harder to justify—so we rely on public shaming. Dederer connects this impulse to cancel culture and artist boycotts, arguing that these practices allow us to assert our values and create distance from present-day monstrous artists. However, she also questions whether these practices actually address a root problem—why monstrous artists trouble us. They may merely offer us a self-serving sense of moral superiority, much like our response to historical figures like Wagner. We’ll explore both of these possibilities in the next sections.
Why Do Monstrous Artists Trouble Us?
Dederer argues that the cultural conversation about monstrous artists is misframed. We believe that we’re debating whether it’s morally acceptable to consume their work—but actually, we’re more concerned with the emotions their work stirs in us after we’ve learned about their misdeeds. These emotions are complex for two reasons—first, because of the personal nature of our roles as fans, and second, because contemporary politics are highly charged. In this section, we’ll explore each of these reasons in greater detail.
Our Roles as Fans
Dederer argues that our emotional turmoil over monstrous artists stems from two interlocking roles we play in relation to art: the emotional admirer and the ethical consumer. These roles often conflict, which makes it hard to decide what to do with art made by flawed people.
The Emotional Admirer
Dederer explains that when we fall in love with a piece of art, it becomes part of us on a deep, emotional level. It shapes our tastes, memories, and identities. It also helps us form communities. For example, consider Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight books and accompanying movies. At the series’s height, Twilight fans turned these pieces of art into a cultural moment with emotional resonance. They formed teams—Team Edward or Team Jacob—that favored certain characters, attended midnight premieres, wrote fanfiction, and created a shared world of inside jokes and passionate debate. In doing so, they built a strong emotional connection to the art they loved.
Dederer notes that this emotional entanglement is often intensified by parasocial relationships—the illogical illusion that we know artists intimately, and that they know us in return. This illusion leads us to emotionally invest not only in the art we love, but in the artists who created it. So, when an artist turns out to be a monster, their behavior can feel like a personal betrayal—even if their misconduct or prejudice isn’t evident in their art. Their actions don’t just tarnish their legacy; we worry that consuming their art reflects badly on us, too.
The Ethical Consumer
In addition to admiring art, we also consume it, and we want to feel good about ourselves as consumers: We try to make ethical consumption choices because society tells us we have a moral obligation to do so. But, Dederer says, consumers in capitalist societies have little real power to challenge the larger systems that monstrous artists uphold and depend on—more radical, large-scale changes are needed. Still, the pressure to make “ethical” choices remains. The internet compounds this pressure by broadcasting artists’ bad behavior, so you’re always confronted with information you didn’t ask for—and forced to decide what to do with it.
The Conflict Between Emotions and Ethics
Dederer explains that the two roles we play come into conflict when we learn that an artist whose work we love is a monster. We can’t forget what we’ve learned about them, and it changes our relationship with their work: Every time we engage with their art, we’re flooded with opposing feelings. On the positive side, we feel awed by their creativity, and their art brings to mind memories that evoke warmth, nostalgia, or inspiration. On the negative side, we feel disgusted at their actions and guilty for enjoying their work.
Then, to reconcile these conflicting feelings, Dederer writes, we feel like we must make one of two choices: We can continue to engage with their art, pushing aside our discomfort with the artist to focus on the art’s merits. Or, we can reject their art entirely, distancing ourselves from both the artist and the feelings of guilt their work now evokes. Either way, we lose our emotional connection to the art. So, neither option feels fully satisfying—but the internal conflict we experience is so uncomfortable that it seems to demand a resolution anyway.
Hyperpartisan Politics
Emotions are at the root of our responses to monstrous artists—and Dederer argues that hyperpartisan politics have intensified those emotions. She traces this political scene back to two US developments: the MeToo movement, which brought sexual violence against women into the spotlight, and mass protests against the 2020 police killing of George Floyd, which spurred national discussions about racism. These developments heightened awareness of two forms of injustice: systemic racism and sexism. In turn, they made pursuing justice feel urgent.
Because we want justice, we want to hold monstrous artists—particularly abusive men and bigots—accountable. But, because of the conflict between our emotional attachments to art and the ethical obligations we believe we have as consumers, we struggle to decide whether and how to engage with their art.
This struggle is also, in itself, contentious in this political context. Some people believe we should put aside all our feelings about art and evaluate it through an objective lens of aesthetic or technical value. Dederer argues that this is impossible—we all bring our identities, experiences, and emotions to our encounters with art, whether we acknowledge them or not. This is true even for those who think they view art objectively—which is mostly white men, according to Dederer. What they call neutrality, she suggests, is actually just comfort with the status quo. Since they typically don’t experience racism or sexism, they’re not as invested in combating these issues, and they don’t see why they’re relevant to art.
How Do We Respond to Monstrous Artists’ Work?
As we’ve discussed, our complicated emotions about monstrous artists make it difficult to know how to engage with their art. We’ve covered a lot of ground so far, so let’s review the two most common solutions to this problem and the problems Dederer points out with each. We’ll also describe the third option Dederer introduces and explore three lessons to keep in mind if you choose to take it.
Three Options
The first option some of us choose is to judge the art by its own merits, stifling our horror at the artist’s behavior. But the emotional repression this approach demands negates part of our connection to the art—the feelings of anger, betrayal, or grief it arouses in us. And Dederer points out that for many people, especially those whose identities or experiences are directly impacted by the artist’s wrongdoing, this kind of detachment isn’t possible or fair to expect.
Second, some of us choose to reject the art entirely. Dederer argues that we do this because we don’t want to support or enable the artist’s bad behavior, but it’s an ineffective strategy. It won’t have much of an impact, if any, on the larger systems that promote that behavior, and it robs us of the sense of meaning and connection the art once provided.
Dederer says there’s a third option: We can continue to engage with the art we love, embrace all our complicated emotions about it, and use those emotions to reflect on the contradictions of human nature. This approach allows us to appreciate the art’s beauty and power without ignoring the artist’s flaws, fostering a more honest and nuanced relationship with the work.
Dederer clarifies that the option someone chooses is up to them—though she leans into the third option herself, there’s no single right way to respond. Also, someone might respond to different monstrous artists in different ways, depending on how their art makes them feel. For example, someone who’s never read a book by Neil Gaiman might feel so horrified by the allegations against Gaiman that they decide never to read any of his books; at the same time, if they’re attached to the work of another controversial artist, they might continue to engage with and appreciate it.
Three Lessons
As you consider which option to take, Dederer suggests that you keep in mind the three lessons she learned while she did research for Monsters. These lessons are that anyone can be a monster, that some monsters change, and that love is complex. Put together, these lessons help her hold space for complexity, which allows her to stay in relationship with the art she loves. Let’s explore them in more detail now.
Lesson #1: Anyone Can Be a Monster (or a Victim)
The first lesson Dederer discusses comes from Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov’s novel about a man who sexually abuses a young girl. Told from the abuser’s perspective, the novel exposes how predators justify their actions, deny their victims’ humanity, and silence their victims. In the beginning of the novel, the abuser thinks of himself and his victim as unique—as star-crossed lovers in a relationship no one else could possibly understand. But over time, he realizes that his story isn’t exceptional; he’s one of countless abusers relying on the same justifications, and his victim is one of countless victims whose lives rupture in similar ways.
Some readers view Nabokov himself as monstrous for writing from the abuser’s perspective. But Dederer argues that he took this approach not because he was a monster, but because he wanted to show that monstrosity is a disturbingly common human experience. She writes that this understanding helps her appreciate people’s complexity. When we call people monsters, we imply that they’re fundamentally different from the rest of us—inhuman, aberrant, and beyond comprehension. Lolita shows that this isn’t the case. Monstrous behavior often comes from ordinary people, which means anyone is capable of thinking and acting on monstrous thoughts. Similarly, ordinary people can become victims of everyday monstrosity.
Lesson #2: Some Monsters Change
Dederer learned a second lesson by comparing her life with that of short story writer Raymond Carver. Both she and Carver struggled with alcoholism before confronting their darker behaviors and recovering from their addiction. She explains that in recovery communities, she saw herself as a monster among monsters—she could empathize with other people’s everyday wrongdoing and with their desire to change. This reaffirmed her idea that monstrosity is part of ordinary human nature and taught her that people can grow beyond it. She contrasts this perspective with cancel culture, which often leaves little room for the complexity of personal transformation.
Lesson #3: Love Is Complex
The third lesson Dederer imparts was inspired by Black feminist writer Pearl Cleage’s essay on jazzist Miles Davis, where she describes the pain of learning that Davis—whose music she loved for its beauty and emotional depth—had physically abused women.
Dederer explains that as a Black woman and a survivor of abuse, Cleage wrestled with conflicting desires: to hold Davis accountable and to protect Black men from the kinds of racist narratives that depict them as inherently violent.
Ultimately, Cleage never stopped listening to Davis’s music. Her love for him became more complete because, instead of oversimplifying his identity, she could love him for who he truly was—someone who was both immensely talented and deeply flawed. Dederer argues that this complexity mirrors the love we feel for people we know in real life. Many of us have complicated relationships with people who hurt us and who we love anyway. Sometimes we have to remove them from our lives because they make us feel intolerably unsafe. But other times, we decide to keep engaging with them because, despite the pain they’ve caused, they still add something valuable to our lives—just as we might continue to engage with a monstrous artist’s work.
