The latter group brings to mind a truly notorious kind of “art monster”—an artist who is not just neglectful but abusive or even criminal. This figure prompts a moral question ...

Last month, a pair of climate activists attacked a painting known as “The Rokeby Venus,” by the Spanish master Diego Velázquez ... Elkin borrows the phrase “art monster” from Jenny ...

The traumas of other people soften and fade, but the art persists. After a while, we forget the survivor’s name. We are also the monster. We need to own it. And we own it by doing exactly what ...

In a chapter called “Am I a Monster?,” Dederer examines her own struggle to balance her duty to her art with the obligations of motherhood. Aren’t all artists, she asks, a little bit monstrous?