Is art bound by ethical constraints? Noël Carroll

Beauty vs Morality: Is art bound by ethical constraints?

But what about it? Seems about 100 years dated, considering the March 9, 2022 posting date. At this point, art really isn't bound by anything to include technique, aesthetics, form, tradition, education or even beauty and morality. Personally, I'm one for process and traditional techniques that today are considered kitsch (Nerdrum), and I can get behind more abstract expressionism in the immediate reaction to a process, marking, concept, etc., but I have a difficult time seeing any respect to traditional "art" let alone a bound obligation of some sort to ethics. If anything, I would expect to see a direct assault on such ideas. Even that rebellion is dated and aged with samples such as Piss Christ, Fat Chair or even older, Dadaism. Sure, there's going to be subsets, I suppose, taking efforts with such ideas today, but I wouldn't expect it to be more than pockets here and there. Even then, the most I would expect would be a reflection on history rather than some profound commentary on today. Academic, I mean, rather than practice.

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Carroll makes the argument that it is, or rather, properly can be. I get where he is coming from. Art without boundaries results in a subject matter that is emptied of unique "artistic" content. Art is everything and nothing.



The moral criticism of art is making a comeback today (e.g, debating whether it is OK to purchase the Harry Potter books). Indeed, production houses and publishing houses have "sensitivity editors" - moral censors of content are back. Moreover, moralizing in art is making a comeback, often at the cost of entertainment.



It never entirely went away. It is interesting, for example, that Siskel objected strongly to ALIENS imperiling children (i.e, Newt), which he apparently felt was a strong enough norm as be a rule which should not be broken and that Siskel and Ebert morally objected to John Rambo doing so much property damage to that small town in First Blood.



Most people in this forum squirm when Birth of Nation or Triumph of the Will or when reconsidering Tarantino's copious use of the N-word, even if not batting an eye at Cannibal Holocaust.



Can a good song be an immoral song? Hitler, an immoral man, is noted to have been a great speaker. At what point does the perceived immorality of the form or the content of a work of art become relevant to it? My guess is that no consistent principle will be found and that it is simply a matter of the God and Devil terms of an age. We're always doing moral criticism, even when we claim not to be.