This week, I finished reading the fantastic, enthralling book "Monsters" by Claire Dederer. In "Monsters", Dederer grapples with the question: can you separate the art from the artist? With the #metoo movement and victims' increasing ability to shed light on abuse suffered at the hands of people in power, this question has emerged as a way to deal with our society's collective shame at supporting the careers, and by extension, actions of monstrous people.

It's a broad question, and so, for the book's 257-page length, Dederer turns the question over, dissects it, puts it under an electron microscope, brings it into confessional. I was excited to read the book because it ponders seriously a question I'm obsessed with, yet a question that deep and shallow thinkers alike seem to dismiss as distracting, a moot point, and irrelevant. 

"evaluate the art on its own terms", they cry; "well, where would you draw the line", they scoff, "no one's perfect, and no artist could be appreciated if we equate everyone to their most horrible action", the most thoughtful of them reason. In my experience, this is how the discussion ends most of the time—tidily, dismissively, and in some cases, triumphantly.

Here's the thing: separating the art from the artist in the case of their "monstrous" actions is the most convenient viewpoint to have as an art enjoyer. And this attitude has been the norm for most of cultural criticism's history. It is by no means a brave approach. When someone shuts down the question, they are boldly announcing they are choosing the path of least empathy, a path well-trodden, and the one society generally takes when it comes to victims of famous, and non-famous people, alike.

The next gripe of the dismissers: they claim it is more intellectually pure or honest to separate the art from the artist, i.e. "evaluating the art on its terms".

However, I would contend that evaluating the art alongside its artist constitutes the entire practice of art appreciation and cultural criticism. Looking at who made the art, in what context, and why, is generally what elevates art from craft.

If you want to separate the art from the artist for purely intellectual reasons, why are you picking and choosing what biography is relevant; why don't you go all the way? Let's show Guernica and Les Demoiselles d'Avignon to art history students, but first redact the name of the artist, the historical context these works were created in, why they were made. You can instead only discuss the paint colors, brushstrokes, composition, subject matter. I'm not sure this would get very far to inspire further study or appreciation of art.

While I'm ragefully pointing the finger here, Claire Dederer is a far worldlier, wiser, deeper thinker and feeler: she instead goes inside, and analyzes the question from her vantage as an audience member, a film critic, an artist, a woman, a mother, and finally, a recovering alcoholic. I picked up the book because I wanted to see someone wrestle with the question in the first place: I was validated that the question is a worthy one, but I ended up seeing more of the nuance to the question and how one proceeds in their own life, feelings, and mind. 

I'm seeing many facile readings of this book that claim the book relieves you of any responsibility to the art you love and appreciate, but what I took away was that we actually have all the more responsibility to think through this question deeply, meaningfully, and personally; that it matters greatly to art, its appreciation, and even its making.