The Imperatives of Contemporary Art (original) (raw)

Modernist appeals to moral and ethical imperatives are not uncommon. Throughout the twentieth century one finds writers, artists, filmmakers, and critics expressing concerns, directly and indirectly, about the norms and values of artistic production internal to modernist practice, and the external responsibility of artists to society. The central question addressed in this paper is the following: Can we truly speak of ethical demands internal to art, which enjoin artists to behave in a certain way as artists? Or does the fact that the behavior in question is internal to art make it, for want of a better term, an aesthetic issue, by which I mean an issue having to do with the nature of the process by which art is made, as well as the motivations and intentions of the artist? My view is that claims made by a range of modern and contemporary artists are analogous in structure to, but not to be confused with, ethical imperatives. Ethics has to do with building character as a human being. Art has to do with the activity of human beings as artists. Art and ethics are not identical, although there are important points of contact and overlapping characteristics, which helps explain why artists and critics so often invoke the language of ethics. This does not in any way diminish the value and role of art. Using recent statements by American sculptor Richard Serra on the “ethical imperative of modernism”, I will argue that Serra’s imperative suggests not only a structural similarity between art and ethics, but a particular and central role for art in the cultivation of human well-being as well as in our social and political lives.