Publications
Current and archived a-n publications
Subscriber resource
Morality bites
Godfrey Worsdale on artists who explore moral issues.
Our different behavioural traits are guided by, and may be appraised by, what each of us considers to be morality. The validity of our actions and utterances, the acceptability of the motives which inspire them and the eventual effects to which they give rise are determined by morality. How, though, should we decipher statements or expressions in moral terms if they are not intended to be assertions of fact but rather artistic interventions and investigations? When writing about British art, the French critic and writer Eric Troncy, praised Damien Hirst for having “introduced a dimension of mystery, probably with the intention of conjuring up the fragile nature of life and the randomness of social order, without falling into the irritating trap of moralisation.” For some, the understanding that art exists as a purely good and positive force is unassailable. Others are attracted by the danger of employing the arena of art to investigate and represent that which is normally thought to be inappropriate, discriminatory, offensive, abhorrent, repulsive, indecent. This can spiral down to the false opposition of pleasurable aesthetics against serious intellectual concern; both...
. . . to read the rest of this resource
and access all Knowledge Bank and Publication articles subscribe online - from only £6.
If you are a subscriber please login here.