Autonomy and the Confrontation between Ethics and Art in Art Criticism

The aim of this article is to move beyond the kind of analysis of the art-ethics relationship that is restricted to the subject matter and effects of particular examples of art, and to consider instead the related but distinct issue of the ethics of art's claim to be art. The confrontation between art and morality, centred on debates about controversial works, is not, therefore, the subject of this article. Under examination here is the way that changing conceptions of art's autonomy in art criticism since the mid-twentieth century inform understandings of the relationship between art and ethics. What is shown is that, firstly, discussions about art's autonomy in art criticism are often ideologically driven, ahistorically conceived, based on formal analysis and unstable. Parallel to the limits of these approaches to art's autonomy in art criticism is, secondly, a denuded conception of ethics. Taken together these limited understandings of autonomy and ethics result in what is, at best, an uncertain understanding of the relationship between art and ethics. The outcome of this analysis of recent art criticism is to propose a rethinking of both autonomy and ethics. A historical understanding of art's autonomy is employed here in order to stabilize at least some elements of the changing claims about art's autonomy. Understandings of the nature of ethics are also reconsidered. This reconsideration of ethics and autonomy shows that there is an inescapable confrontation between art and ethics, one that has been at the heart of the ontology of art since the eighteenth century. One result of this confrontation is to underscore the significance of art criticism in the interpretation and judgement of art. A second, implicit result is to place ethics first and foremost over autonomy in the consideration of the value of art.