Monster artist/monstrous art?

Published: May 8, 2023, 8:45 a.m.

What to do with the art of monstrous men? That\u2019s the question Claire Dederer grapples with in Monsters: A Fan\u2019s Dilemma. She wonders whether she can or should continue to love the work of Roman Polanski and Michael Jackson, Hemingway and Picasso? And if it\u2019s possible to divorce the art from the artist.

How do we now view the glorious, technicolour paintings of Paul Gauguin\u2019s works from Tahiti? The writer Devika Ponnambalam has imagined the life of one of his muses Teha\u2019amana in her latest novel, I Am Not Your Eve. Gauguin was 43 when he first arrived on the island in 1891 and made numerous teenage girls his \u2018unofficial wives\u2019.

The science writer Michael Bond is interested in the psychology behind fandom. In his book Fans he looks at the pleasure of tribalism and sense of belonging, but also what happens when one\u2019s hero falls short, and the cognitive dissonance needed to continue to stay true to a monstrous genius.

Producer: Katy Hickman