Morality and the Visual Arts

Catalog description

Caravaggio was a murderer, Schiele a sex offender, and Picasso a self-declared art thief. Why do some artists seem to treat law and ethics as obstacles to be transcended - as if creativity itself demanded a leap from rebellion to outright transgression? This course explores the fraught relationship between art and morality, probing what can be represented, what ought to be censored, and why. Art, we often insist, should be free - freer even than society can tolerate - but in defending that freedom, do we also excuse the inexcusable? Is art a space of radical experimentation, or merely a smokescreen for privilege and impunity? Who gets to decide what counts as good or bad art? These are the questions this seminar will take up, guiding participants through debates in aesthetics, sociology, and moral philosophy.