There are “art monsters,” a term she borrows from Jenny Offill’s Dept. Particularly when it comes to the cultural personages Dederer labels “monsters,” a term that has multiple meanings here. Vasari’s clout has grown bigger than he could have envisioned, to the point that intel about an artist’s behavior now supplants aesthetic judgment altogether (still regardless of factuality).Ĭlaire Dederer’s Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma embraces the new biographical supremacism, though it leaves her with a set of quandaries. The behavior exemptions are being clawed back, charisma has started to seem sleazy, and “genius” smacks of elitism. Or such has been the modern conception.īut penetrated boundaries feel dangerous to the more fragilely constituted selves we’ve become. Bad things follow, because artists are also, not infrequently, smug pigs or insecure creeps who suck up all the adulation on offer in a futile attempt to repair the cavernous emotional wounds that made them into artists in the first place. Artists often being men, many of those doing the worshipping are women. People worship them, want to sidle up to, bed, or marry them. If great art penetrates, does aesthetic experience entail feeling a little penetrated by the artist himself (it usually has been him )-does something of his being or soul infiltrate yours, breaching the usual human boundaries? Isn’t that the whole frisson of the thing?Īesthetic pleasure isn’t unrelated to religion, both being in the transcendence business, meaning that sometimes artists have been mistaken for or moved through the world like gods. It gets “inside” and lingers there it excites emotions, makes you feel elated, vulnerable, mortal. Great art penetrates, for better or worse.
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