This Wednesday, Dec. 4, the Cleveland Museum of Art (CMA) will host memoirist, essayist, and critic Claire Dederer to discuss her best-selling book “Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma.”

The book explores how we make and experience art in the age of cancel culture and the link between genius and monstrosity—asking the question, “Can we love the work of controversial classic and contemporary artists but dislike the artist?”

At CMA’s “Monsters Among Us with Claire Dederer,” Dederer, a native of Seattle, will explore the problem of separating the art from the artist, sparking a wide-ranging discussion of the central question: What do we do with great art made by bad people?

Dederer’s lecture walks audiences through several additional questions: Is monstrosity a key ingredient in the making of great art? Are all monsters men, or do audiences have to balance greatness and terrible behavior when appreciating art by female artists? And what happens when we put ourselves in the middle of the conversation and acknowledge our own failures?

Author Claire DedererFreshWater Cleveland asked Dederer a few questions to prepare for Wednesday’s discussion.

FreshWater: How and why did you come to write “Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma?”

Claire Dederer: I became interested in the topic in 2014. I had been working on another piece of writing that dealt with the director Roman Polanski. As I researched that project, I came to know a lot of information about Polanski’s rape of a 13-year-old. And yet—I found I could still watch Polanski’s films. Still loved “Chinatown” and “Rosemary’s Baby.”

This seemed like an interesting problem to me, and a vital one. A couple years later, of course, came the #MeToo explosion of 2017, and then my concern became everyone’s concern.

FW: Of the people you write about, who, in your opinion, had the most interesting story? Who was most despicable? Most sympathetic?

CD: To me, Polanski is unendingly fascinating, truly despicable, and surprisingly sympathetic. He’s the ultimate dilemma. There is no other contemporary figure who balances these two forces so equally: The absoluteness of the monstrosity and the absoluteness of the genius.

Polanski made Chinatown, often called one of the greatest films of all time. Polanski drugged and raped thirteen-year-old Samantha Gailey. These two facts sit next to each other, immovable.

Also in the mix is Polanski’s own extraordinary history: his mother was gassed at Auschwitz, his father held in concentration camps, his wife Sharon Tate and his unborn child were murdered by the Manson family. There’s no denying the horror of Polanski’s backstory—after all, two of the terrors of the 20th Century happened to him, personally.

FW: Do you think artists’ acts in their personal lives truly do influence the public’s perception of their creative expression?

CD: Absolutely! But also: It depends! Some people, like Bill Cosby, never recover from the revelations about their behavior. Watching “The Cosby Show” becomes impossible. Other people, like Louis CK, seem to be able to pick up their career to some degree.

FW: Can you overlook how they act if we love the art they produce?

CD: This is the exact question that it takes me a whole book to answer … the love of the art and the hatred of the behavior are in opposition. How do we reconcile these two things?

It’s my belief that the answer to how to balance these two things changes from case to case and person to person. And that’s okay. We don’t have to solve all these problems as audience members.

FW: Who are you most disturbed by, and why?

CD: I’m probably most disturbed by the rock stars who preyed upon preteen groupies in the 1970s. I grew up in this era and the stories about musicians passing around very young girls feel like it hits very close to home. I think each of us responds to different stories in different ways—our own experience shapes how we respond to different art and to different stories of bad behavior.

FW: “Picasso on Paper” opens at the Cleveland Museum of Art on Sunday, Dec. 8. Can you comment a bit about his personal life and abusive behavior, as it related to his art? Do you look at him and his work in a different way?

CD: This will be the topic of my talk on Wednesday—an exploration of the intersection between Picasso’s biography and his work.

It’s my opinion that Picasso was not just a genius artist—which he was—but also a genius of image construction. His career ascended at the exact moment of the birth of mass media, and he made the pop culture idea of “artist” in his own image: womanizing, violent, brutal and yet sensitive.

FW: In the age of cancel culture, should these people all be dismissed? Couldn’t it be argued that there have always been talented/famous monsters among us, and there will always be? Or have we evolved to the point that we as a society should not elevate people who may create beautiful work but are, in real life, ugly people?
CD: I really try to avoid using the phrase “cancel culture,” which is simply a way of framing the problem to diminish the strength of accuser’s voices. The very term “cancel culture” is hopelessly non-useful, with its suggestion that the loss of status for the accused is somehow on a par with the suffering endured by the victim.

Of course I know that the pointing out of wrongdoing can become, has become, virulent. Of course I know that because of the way we process accusations, there now exists a culture of fear, a sense of imminent exposure. And yet: how on earth can we improve unless we listen to people saying what’s wrong?

FW: What are you looking forward to in regard to your lecture at CMA on Dec. 4?

CD: It’s always amazing to be at the museum among fellow art lovers! That’s the core of this whole problem—our connection to the work itself, our belief in the power of the work. If we didn’t love the art, none of this would matter.

“Monsters Among Us With Claire Dederer” takes place on Wednesday, Dec. 4 from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m. in the Gartner Auditorium. A book signing with Dederer immediately follows the lecture with limited copies of Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma available on-site. Guests can preorder a copy through the CMA store.

This lecture is made possible with support from Case Western Reserve University’s Baker-Nord Center for the Humanities.