What Do We Do With the Art of Monstrous Men? | How To Academy

Tue, 23 May 2023

6:30 pm - 7:30 pm GMT

What Do We Do With the Art of Monstrous Men?

Nick Hornby Meets Claire Dederer

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The acclaimed essayist joins novelist Nick Hornby for a passionate, provocative and blisteringly smart interrogation of how we experience art in the age of #MeToo.

How should we – the fans – respond to good art made by bad people?

What do we do with the art of monstrous men?

Can we love the work of Polanski and Michael Jackson and Picasso? Should we love it?

Does genius deserve special dispensation? Is history an excuse? What makes women artists monstrous?

And what should we do with beauty, and with our unruly feelings about it?

Claire Dederer joins How To Academy to explore these questions and our relationships with the artists whose behaviour disrupts our ability to apprehend the work on its own terms.

In conversation with Nick Hornby, she will interrogate her own responses and her own behaviour, and push us to do the same. Together, they will get to the heart of one of our most pressing cultural conversations.

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Claire Dederer

Critic, Essayist and Reporter

Claire Dederer is the author of Love and Trouble, and the New York Times bestselling memoir Poser: My Life in Twenty-Three Yoga Poses. A book critic, essayist and reporter, Dederer is a long-time contributor to The New York Times and has also written for The Atlantic, Vogue, Slate, The Nation and New York magazine. She lives in Seattle on a houseboat with her family.

Nick Hornby

Bestselling Novelist

Nick Hornby is the bestselling author of eight novels, including Just Like You, High Fidelity and About a Boy, and several works of nonfiction including Fever Pitch. He has also written numerous award-winning screenplays for film and television including Brooklyn, Wild and, most recently, State of the Union.