Abstract
Moralists hold that art criticism can and should take stock of moral considerations. Though moralists disagree over the proper scope of ethical art criticism, they are unified in their acceptance of the consistency of valence thesis: when an artwork fares poorly from the moral point of view, and this fact is art critically relevant, then it is thereby worse qua artwork. In this paper, I argue that a commitment to moralism, however strong, is unattractive because it requires that we radically revise our art critical practices in contexts where revision seems ill advised. I will consider two such cases, Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin and Balthus’ Alice. When we further reflect on our actual art critical practices in cases like these, we find that we do not have an unfailing commitment to the consistency of valence thesis. That is, some artworks are (artistically) good because they are (morally) bad.
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Notes
For a few notable exceptions, see Daniel Jacobson, “In Praise of Immoral Art,” Philosophical Topics, 25 (1997), pp. 155–99, Matthew Kieran, “Forbidden Knowledge: The Challenge of Immoralism,” in Contemporary Debates in Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Art, Matthew Kieran, (ed.) (New York: Blackwell Publishing, 2006), pp. 57–73, and Hilary Putnum “Literature, Science, and Reflection,” New Literary History, 7.3 (1976), pp 483–492.
For our purposes, art’s ethical or moral evaluation is a straightforwardly moral practice, while ethical art criticism is an art critical practice, that of taking moral considerations as art critically relevant. ‘Moralism’ refers to a class of art critical theories.
There is a bit of disagreement amongst moralists over the positive version of the consistency of valence thesis: An artwork is made better to the extent that its moral considerations fare well from the moral point of view, and this fact is art critically relevant. My focus here is squarely on the negative condition.
S. Dalton-Brown, Pushkin’s “Evgenii Onegin,” (Bristol Classical Press, 1997), p. v.
In addition, Eugene Onegin has been read as social criticism (e.g., it features the kinds of heroes that could emerge only from the stifling social constraints of nineteenth century Russia), as a mocking of Romantic tales, and as a formalist object, amongst a myriad of other interpretative strategies.
He is only in his twenties, a mark of maturity in nineteenth century Russia.
There is a tendency amongst moralists who endorse the consistency of valence thesis to try to read artworks that are regarded both as important and as morally troubling as morally sound artworks. Though I am not in principle opposed to such interpretative strategies, I am opposed to those who make the further recommendation, either implied or explicit, that the moralistic reading is the preferred reading of the artwork.
One might claim that our identification with Eugene is a case of hating the sin but loving the sinner. In the case of many narrative artworks this may be the case. What initially looks like a case of identifying with an immoral character turns out to be a case of our identifying with something else, something not so morally problematic. Often a character has another virtue, or we feel sorry for him, or we understand how it is that he ended up the way they did. But, that doesn’t seem to be the case here. Not only are we invited to identify with Eugene as an anti-hero, we are also asked to fictionally share his world-view.
Despite the fact that Eugene is a man of no morals, and thereby someone who presumably doesn’t share our actual moral outlook, there is plenty of interpretive room for reading him as the real hero of the novel: Eugene is someone with whom we are invited to fictionally identify. The way that Eugene’s character is presented in the novel suggests that the thoughtful person is a moral cynic, and so we thoughtful readers are invited to take this view seriously. Consider, for example, the novel’s narrator who is a third party about whom we know only that he is an acquaintance of Eugene’s. Throughout the work, the narrator claims to share Eugene’s morally cynical world-view. Even stronger, or even worse, while Eugene is claimed to be merely emotionally cold, the narrator claims to be bitter. Further the narrator claims that whatever happiness we are capable of stands in stark contrast to a life dedicated to others, especially if that dedication is a result of a romantic attachment.
Happy is he who has known its fretfulempire, and fled it; happier stillis he who’s never felt its will,he who has cooled down love with parting,and hate with malice; he whose lifeis yawned away with friends and wife...
It seems that the best way to live is without love. It is better to never experience love; it is better to leave those you love than to be in love; it is better to experience negative emotions like hate and malice than positive ones like love. It is even better to be bored by one’s life (say by being married) than to be given to emotional attachment. Eugene’s (and the narrator’s) skepticism about intimate bonds even goes beyond romantic relationships to other kinds of bonds like friendship. That the narrator is so closely allied with Eugene’s cynicism gives further support to my contention that Eugene is the hero of the novel, and thereby gives us reason to take his worldview as what one might call a candidate for fictional truth. Thirdly, Eugene’s cynicism is contrasted favorably with other not so cynical characters, such as Lensky, the young, romantic poet, Tatyana, the woman who falls in love with Eugene. Despite the fact that Lensky and Tatyana actually fare better from the moral point of view than Eugene, it is clear from the description of them that it is Eugene, and not those silly romantics, who is the hero of this novel.
Berys Gaut, “The Ethical Criticism of Art,” in Jerrold Levinson (ed.), Aesthetics and Ethics: Essays at the Intersection, (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 182−203.
There is debate about the degree to which an immoral artwork can properly be seen as great. See for example, Mary Devereaux, “Beauty and Evil: The Case of Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will,” in Jerrold Levinson (ed.), Aesthetics and Ethics: Essays at the Intersection, (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 227−256.
In a review of D. W. Griffith’s overall oeuvre, James Agee gives the 1915 “The Birth of a Nation” extraordinarily high critical praise. “He achieved what no other known man has ever achieved. To watch his work is like being witness to the beginning of melody, or the first conscious use of the lever or the wheel; the emergence, coordination, and first eloquence of language; the birth of an art: and to realize that this is all the work of one man…The most beautiful single shot I have seen in any movie is the battle charge in ‘The Birth of a Nation.’” James Agee, “David Wark Giffith,” The Nation, September 4, 1948: 264. Agee is not alone. “The Birth of a Nation” occupies the 44th place on the American Film Institute’s list of the top 100 American films of all time. Even the mainstream contemporary film critic Roger Ebert argues that “The Birth of a Nation” is a great film. See, Roger Ebert, “The Birth of a Nation (1915),” The Chicago Sun Times, March 30, 2003.
See my manuscript “Monstrous Thoughts and the Moral Identity Thesis,” forthcoming in The Journal of Value Inquiry.
Gaut, op. cit., pg. 194.
I am not suggesting that we cannot discover what our real moral commitments are in light of the imaginative attitudes that we find ourselves given to. Clearly we can. My claim is that very often there is a distance between what we find ourselves capable of feeling or desiring in a fictional context and what we find ourselves capable of feeling or desiring in an actual context. This suggests that our fictional or imaginative attitudes do not require the same moral commitments as their non-imaginative counterparts. For another argument for this point, see Gregory Currie’s “The Paradox of Caring: Fiction and the Philosophy of Mind,” in Mette Hjort and Sue Laver (eds.), Emotion and the Arts, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), pp. 63–77.
Robert Stecker, “The Interaction of Ethical and Aesthetic Value,” British Journal of Aesthetics, 45 (2005), p. 147.
How might one make the case for disregard in this case? It appears that there are at least two ways to disregard an element of an artwork. First, one could literally silence it. In a case of silencing, an art critic will simply not direct her attention to the morally offending bit at all. This kind of silencing appears to happen when an art critic offers a more or less formalist interpretation of an artwork. Such a critic will pointedly refuse to attend to the content of a work (to the degree that such disregard is possible) and so ignore the moral assessment of said content. I don’t have any interest in denying the validity of this kind of art criticism. It seems a perfectly legitimate interpretative strategy to follow James McNeil Whistler’s directive and consider “Arrangement in Grey and Black” in light of its compositional elements. Where Whistler goes too far, is in insisting that formalism is the interpretative strategy to take, i.e., that we should never consider “Arrangement in Grey and Black” as a portrait of his mother. And, while one may be capable of offering a somewhat through formalist account of Eugene Onegin interpreting it as an anti-heroic tragedy requires that the reader pointedly direct her attention to the narrative content. So, in this case the strategy of silencing won’t work. Still, even if we engage with the narrative content so that it is impossible to “silence” the morally offending bit, we may still be capable of another kind of disregard: we may be capable of simply ignoring the fact that the theme is immoral. Think here of the morally offending bit as a noisy child who demands one’s attention in the background. While we may be incapable of actually silencing the child, we may still be capable of paying the child no heed. Analogously, in attending to an artwork one might pay attention to the morally offending bit simply because it is part of the narrative, but pointedly refuse to allow it a role in one’s art critical judgment. This second type of disregard has the benefit of allowing us to attend to the narrative content. Moreover, it seems clear that we sometimes do disregard the moral message of an artwork for the purpose of art criticism in this second sense.
Though it is not clear how seriously we are meant to take Eaton’s metaphor of friendship. It is worth noting that in friendships the amount of immorality we are willing to tolerate is relative to the other positive character traits that they have. That is, we are willing to tolerate a greater amount of immorality from someone with a keen wit, all things being equal, than we are from someone without. Perhaps something like this is also going on in art criticism.
Antonin Artaud, “Exposition Balthus a la Galerie Pierre,” La Nouvelle Revue Francaise, 248 (1934), pp. 899–900.
At the request of The Street’s American owner, Balthus repainted an offending portion of this painting. In the lower left corner of the painting a man stands behind a schoolgirl. As the painting is today the man’s hand reaches around the school girl, originally the man’s hand came closer to reaching up her dress.
For his part, Balthus denies that his paintings are deliberately eroticized. He may be right that there is another way to interpret the paintings. Nevertheless, I think that anyone who looks at these paintings will find that there something disingenuous about Balthus claiming that we are misreading his paintings.
In my discussion of Balthus, I will rely on the influential writings of Sabine Rewald and Jean Claire. See Sabine Rewald, Balthus, (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1984); and Jean Clair, Balthus, (New York: Rizzoli International Publishers, 2001).
Rewald, op. cit., p. 28.
Sabine Rewald, “Balthus Lessons – Five Controversial Works by the French Artist,” Art in America, (September, 1997).
This analysis raises questions about Noël Carroll’s clarificationism as well. In A Philosophy of Mass Art, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), Carroll advocates a position that the calls clarificationism. According to clarificationism an artwork is immoral to the extent that it obfuscates our moral understanding, and that when such obfuscation interferes with our uptake of the work, it is an artistic failing. If I am right about Balthus’ work, then this suggests that even in cases where the immorality fails to serve some further moral or cognitive end, the experience itself may be rewarding in light of the confusion that that is occasioned by the painting. I see no reason to claim that artworks should be crystal clear about either their message or about how they expect one to respond to them.
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Patridge, S. Moral Vices as Artistic Virtues: Eugene Onegin and Alice . Philosophia 36, 181–193 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-007-9102-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-007-9102-8