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CHAPTER ART and OTHER VALUES 5 THE DESTRUCTION OF MONTE CASSINO In February 1944, in one of the most controversial actions of World War II, two hundred fifty Flying Fortresses leveled the Benedictine monastery at Monte Cassino with the highest concentration of explosive power used up to that time. In a single day, at the orders of a single person, General Bernard Freyberg, an artistic and historical monument that had been begun in the sixth century was completely destroyed. Allied leaders who had obeyed General Freyberg's orders immediately protested their innocence and their powerless- ness to prevent the bombing. Although precautions were to have been taken in the campaign to avoid any damage to the abbey, General Freyberg insisted that the abbey was occu- pied by German soldiers who threatened the lives of his advancing men. For this reason, he maintained, it had to be destroyed. Assuming that General Freyberg was correct in his assessment, was it acceptable to destroy an artistic treasure such as Monte Cassino? One might say that it was a military necessity. (Actually, there was apparently no evidence of a military presence within the ART AND OTHER VALUES 149 monastery, and there had been widespread skepticism about its being the keystone of the German defenses of the Liri valley.) But surely, one could have replied, millions of people died in World War II, so what are a few thousand more casualties relative to the worth of such a monument? Indeed, an incalculable number of people had lived and died in the fourteen centuries Monte Cassino survived. But, on the other hand, is any monument, any artwork, worth saving if it results in even one death? Does art have any real importance or value compared with the value of human life? If war inescapably distorts our way of looking at values, let us imagine a fictional peacetime dilemma: THE FIRE IN THE LOUVRE The Louvre is on fire. You can save either the Mona Lisa or the injured guard who had been standing next to it—but not both. What should you do? Is a human life more valuable than an artwork, even an extraor- dinary artwork, or less so? Would it make any difference if the person about to die in the fire were not a guard, but a thief who had come to steal the painting, or a convicted terrorist who had murdered other people? Or suppose the guard had already fallen to the floor uncon- scious and would not have suffered in the fire-how would that affect your decision? What if he were very old and ill and not likely to live much longer anyway-would this provide a reason for saving the painting rather than the man? Or ought one save the painting under any circumstance, even if this requires the sacrifice of human life? ROTHKO'S BEST WORK? Suppose that before he died, Mark Rothko told you in a sworn, notarized statement that one of the paintings attrib- uted to him was executed by the incorrigible nephew of a visitor to his studio who got hold of a brush and paint and vandalized an empty canvas. By mistake the canvas was consigned to a gallery and later sold to a museum at a very high price, where it now occupies a prominent place. It clearly contributes to the reputation of both the museum and Rothko, and the critics consider it among Rothko's best works. As an admirer of Rothko and a friend of the museum, should you keep this secret of twenty years, or tell the truth? 150 PUZZLES ABOUT ART: AN AESTHETICS CASEBOOK How would you justify telling all when you are very fond of the canvas and consider it better than most real Rothkos? Consider the consequences of your revealing what you know: not only will there be endless lawsuits and deep embarrassment on all sides, but people will view the canvas differently and perhaps even remove it from the museum in which it hangs. Yet people may get more delight from a canvas about which they are misinformed than from one about which they have learned the truth; why should anyone want to change things? After all, the authenticity of a work may properly affect its economic value, but what has it to do with aesthetic value? On the other hand, is it not important to tell the truth? THE PRICE OF A RAPHAEL Suppose that Raphael had faked a painting of his studio assistant Giulio Romano and signed it with Romano's name. Discovered undamaged, it was sold for $12,000. When it was later demonstrated that the painting was not a real Romano, its market value dropped to the price of the frame. When it was still later proved that it was Raphael's work instead, a museum offered $1,200,000 for it. Curators and museum directors claimed that the price was right because they could see things in it when it became known as a Raphael that they could not see when it was known as a Romano. We obviously can be mistaken about the immediate cash value of a painting, and that value is, like most things, variable over time. Can we be mistaken about the aesthetic value of a work of art? Can it change over time? In what way, if any, is the aesthetic value of a work related to its market value? ROCK LYRICS Many persons, especially teachers and parents, have ex- pressed concern over rock lyrics that are sexually explicit or vulgar and that express approval of violence, incest, murder, torture, and mutilation. One rock musician recently defended his work by reply- ing, "When I say 'Sleep with your sister, it'll blow your mind,' I am saying that if the United States would start being friendly with the Soviet Union, who knows how much good would be accomplished?" ART AND OTHER VALUES An organizer of rock concerts responded to the charges of being a corrupting influence by saying, "It is not my job to police the morality of society. The performers are all artists, and no one has the right to tell an artist what to do." 151 Do overtly obscene lyrics undermine conventional morality, and if so, should they be suppressed? Or are artists beyond usual moral constraints, even the dominant moral rules in a culture? Does a society have the right or the responsibility to make sure that its arts do not subvert its accepted moral principles? Can the arts alter a society's fundamental moral stance? "HAIL, MARY" From time to time, commercial motion pictures have out- raged various religious groups. In Jean-Luc Godard's film Hail, Mary, Mary, who is nude in several scenes, is portrayed as an avid basketball player who works at a gas station. Joseph is a cabdriver; Gabriel is an unsavory bum. All of them discuss divine insemination casually, and often in obscene language. The film was widely picketed by Catholic groups, which claimed it blasphemed their most sacred religious beliefs. Their chief complaint was not so much that the morals of a society were directly threatened by the film, or even that Catholic youths who saw it would fall into sin, but that a desecration of religion itself had taken place. Does an artist have the right to offend the moral or religious sensitivities of a community? Should whatever aesthetic values we find in film, painting, literature, or any of the other arts yield to other societal values? If so, under what conditions? Is it always wrong to offend anyone with your art? If not, when does it become wrong? How severe an offense to the majority would make it wrong? How severe an offense to a specific minority? Can there be redeeming aesthetic values in a work in the face of which religious, moral, or other societal values become unimportant or less important? These cases point to just a few of the kinds of conflict one can discover whenever art is, as inevitably it must be, part of the life of a people. Art is valued for a host of reasons. You might, for example, value an engraving you own because its lines are subtle and delicate, because it calls to mind a devotional theme, because covers a crack in the wall, or because an art dealer is willing to pay you a thousand 152 PUZZLES ABOUT ART: AN AESTHETICS CASEBOOK dollars for it. If another object would cover the crack more efficiently, or if you would prefer to have a thousand-dollar coat rather than the engraving, one of your reasons for valuing the artwork may compete directly with others and lose out to them. In instances like these, determining the outcome of a conflict of values may be an easy matter. Difficulties arise, however, as soon as we try to assess the competition between aesthetic and other values. What is the importance of the engraving's cash value as compared to the subtlety and delicacy of its lines? This difficult question points to two more basic difficulties, which must be faced at the start of any discussion of the relation between aesthetic and other kinds of value. The first difficulty has to do with ambiguities in the concept of value itself. Sometimes we speak of value as one big class or kind of thing, so that moral values, economic values, religious values, political values, historical values, aesthetic values, and so on are subclasses of human value, and one general theory of value provides the criteria for judging each. At other times, we are concerned more with the distinctive characters of different sorts of value than with similarities between them. We speak of each field of value as having its own individual nature, so that comparisons among different kinds of value are difficult to make. If the differences between the kinds of value are substantial if, for example, ethical values are held to be universally binding, whereas aesthetic values are not-quite separate theories may be required to account for them. The second basic difficulty, already raised in earlier chapters, involves a lack of conceptual clarity about the nature of aesthetic value. Is aesthetic value something that an artifact possesses—a quality we can find among the other objective properties of the work— or is it something that happens to an artifact when we esteem it in a certain way? When we say that an object is "aesthetically valuable" or that it has "aesthetic value," do we mean that the object has value, independently of being perceived and appreciated, or do we mean that it has been judged valuable? Does a piece of classical sculpture buried forever under volcanic ash have aesthetic value even though it will never be seen again? The history of aesthetics, as we have seen, has had defenders of each view. With respect to the conflict of values, however, the theoretical problem of where aesthetic value lies is less consequential than that of the nature of the enterprise of valuing. Whether or not the value is in the artifact or in the eye of the beholder, it is the value that produces the tensions. The buried sculpture, valuable though it may be, is unlikely to be involved in any quarrel. Only when we have a publicly perceivable artwork does aesthetic value-however that may be judged conflict with other, different values in our society. ETHICAL VALUES ART AND OTHER VALUES 153 Every social group has its standards for acceptable behavior. But some moral principles, it is widely believed, transcend local cultures. For instance, a great many people believe that respectful treatment of other persons is a moral imperative, and that causing unnecessary pain in others is an action universally to be deplored. Consequently, if aesthetic values were to come into conflict with these ethical values, they might be expected to do so in all societies. Nevertheless, the nature of the resulting conflicts, their characteristic terms and results, will continue to vary from culture to culture, as the qualities of the values involved are assessed differently by different people. Something that is universally to be deplored may be more deplorable in some societies than in others. It may also have differing relationships to aesthetic values (which may themselves be weighed differently). One can speak of value conflicts in the abstract, but the tensions between aesthetic values and moral values always occur in particular societal settings. The recognition that ethical and aesthetic values may conflict with or reinforce each other is hardly new. In Book 3 of the Republic, Plato argued that it is necessary to restrict the artist in his ideal state on the grounds that art affects human behavior. Art that produces undesirable behavioral consequences must be excluded, and art that yields good behavioral consequences should be produced for the benefit of the populace. Thus, poetry that sets bad models, such as Homer's description of Achilles weeping over the death of Patroclus or of Zeus' impatience to sleep with Hera, must be expunged from the literature of the state, and poets should write only of brave, pious, upright actions. Such views of art, not simply as an autonomous activity but as deeply affecting the whole of our lives, were not restricted to the Greeks. In the nineteenth century, Tolstoy saw art as a force that could elicit the loftiest ethical behavior-if the artist sincerely experienced the highest of human feelings and possessed the ability to communicate them to others through his works. In both Plato's and Tolstoy's eyes, ethical (and religious) goals were the determinants of aesthetic value. Sexual Ethics Artworks, or artifacts offered as artworks, often seem in our culture to create friction with ethical values in the area of sexual mores. At a time when sexually explicit films can be seen in any city, in theaters and on videotapes, it is hard to imagine that before the release of The Moon is Blue in 1953, the words "pregnant," "seduce," and "virgin" were never spoken in Hollywood films. In retrospect the lawsuits over 154 PUZZLES ABOUT ART: AN AESTHETICS CASEBOOK this film, its being banned in Boston, and the moral outrage of the Roman Catholic Legion of Decency over what today is thought to be a harmless comedy seem quaint and unreal. But the issue was real enough at the time: a motion picture offended the moral sensibilities of a large segment of the population; and this fact was accepted by many people as a basis for suppressing it. Furthermore, the issue did not disappear when the Production Code was eventually replaced by the audience-rating system in use today. Nor has the fundamental conflict between pornography and traditional morality been resolved by distinguishing between "hardcore" and "softcore" pornography. This is not simply because it is difficult to find a clear definition of pornography, but because pornography is often intended to be a challenge to conventional morality. If the very point of a pornographic work is to violate moral norms, the question becomes: Does this specific work nevertheless possess socially redeeming features to merit its acceptance? Those who answer yes often construe these features in aesthetic terms and argue that positive aesthetic values may override ethically negative Indeed, some argue that aesthetic values always override ethical ones. Those who answer no may hold either that aesthetic values never override ethical ones, or that they do not do so in the present case. How such disputes are to be adjudicated must depend, of course, on a more general account of the relative weights of aesthetic and ethical values, an account by no means subject to easy agreement. ones. The "Work Ethic" Because American society has traditionally valued hard work, Ameri- cans tend to admire those who are industrious and diligent and tend to abuse those they perceive as lazy or facile. This value in large part motivates the cliché expressed by detractors of the more abstract arts, "anyone could have done it." But even if an artist demonstrated little effort or skill in creating a work, would this warrant critical judgment against it? Clement Greenberg, proponent of the avant-garde, once said of the painter Piet Mondrian that his pictures with their white grounds, straight black lines and opposed rectangles of pure color radiate clarity, harmony, and grandeur. "Mondrian" he insisted "was one of the greatest painters of our time."¹ Frederic Taubes responded that Greenberg was under the influence of some rhapsodic afflatus and did not realize that "even without the use of masking tape any semiskilled practitioner could easily achieve similar grandeur without unduly straining his creative faculties."2 Assuming that you are at least semiskilled, could you achieve what Mondrian achieved, armed only with three cans of spray paint and a roll of masking tape? How does, or should, the presumption that ART AND OTHER VALUES 155 any semiskilled person could have executed a work affect its value? Is it a moral or an aesthetic demand that a great work take great effort? RELIGIOUS VALUES Religion is an area of human enterprise that uniquely blends conflict and cooperation, the competition of values and their accommodation. Religious devotion has inspired-and been fostered by-much of the greatest music, architecture, poetry, and visual art of all cultures. Cathedrals, which are among the grandest architectural accomplish- ments in history, can be understood only in terms of religious belief. The same is true of oratorios, requiems, and many great literary works. Yet some religious artifacts (plastic dashboard Madonnas, household icons, cinder-block churches, mass-produced menorahs, flea-market Buddhas, sentimental devotional verse) have negligible aesthetic value. And, conversely, some works apparently devoid of both religious intent and content have such evident and overpowering aesthetic value that many people are inclined to insist that they are religious. For example, Paul Tillich called Picasso's Guernica an altarpiece and considered it a masterpiece of modern religious painting, even though he would not be tempted to regard Picasso as a religious person.³ Obviously, the reasons why something is prized aesthetically and the reasons why it is prized religiously can interact in complex ways. The aesthetic greatness of Verdi's Requiem fuels its religious power. And, in spite of Clive Bell's remark that it does not matter a straw whether a crucifixion painting is of Jesus Christ or John Smith, the religious content of Grunewald's Crucifixion seems to contribute to its aesthetic power. Fra Filippo Lippi is reported to have been a blasphemer and a nun-seducer. He never renounced his orders, but painted many moving paintings and fathered another famous painter, Filippino Lippi. Fra Angelico, also a painter, was revered as a pious and faithful friar all of his life. Both Fra Filippo Lippi and Fra Angelico painted a number of paintings of religious subjects. It seems doubtful that anyone not aware of the biographical accounts could look at their paintings and tell which of the painters was the more genuinely religious. Yet a great many of the devout consider Fra Angelico's work not only more deeply religious, but aesthetically superior as a result. (Indeed, perhaps the fact that a large number of Fra Angelico's paintings are still in unusually good condition today reflects the religious community's esteem for him; such a concern for artworks because of the artist is commonplace.) Nevertheless, there is an important distinction be- tween valuing artists, or the character of artists, and valuing their works. While this distinction may seem to be a clear one, it may also 156 PUZZLES ABOUT ART: ANAESTHETICS CASEBOOK be asked whether aspects of the character of the artist insinuate themselves into the work in such a way that they affect its aesthetic value, so that judgments of the artist and the artwork are never wholly independent. J. S. Bach wrote a celebrated mass, as did Leonard Bernstein. Bach made a point of identifying his work with deeply held and specific theological beliefs; Bernstein did not. Are the aesthetic qualities of these works affected by these attitudes? Is one mass more "religious" than the other? Indeed, what makes a piece of music religious? Of course, some paintings are more religious than others. Surely representational content plays a role: a painting of the Crucifixion, no matter how good or how bad, is usually thought to be more religious than a painting of a bowl of fruit, simply because it portrays a religious event. Of course, the matter is not always so simple. A painting of the Crucifixion might be intended to show the cruelty of religion, and hence be antireligious, whereas a bowl of fruit might be intended to convey thanks for God's bounty. But it is also maintained that certain stylistic qualities make some works, even abstract works, more religious than others: profundity versus triviality, for example, or reverence versus superciliousness. While reducing these qualities to simple descriptive characteristics may be an impossible task, it would also be absurd to deny that there is something that could be called religious style-even in works that have no overt connection with religious subjects or even religious artists. Similarly, certain pure musical compositions strike us as appropriately called "hymns" or "requiems" or "prayers," even though they lack words that might indicate religious content. Does this mean that some blurring of the categories of religious value and aesthetic value is inevitable? HISTORICAL VALUES People enjoy artworks for various reasons. Much of the so-called art of antiquity draws attention primarily because the works are old. Even the Venus de Milo, exquisite as it may be, is often viewed as one would view the Acropolis at Athens or Fountains Abbey-as a ruin, more important historically than aesthetically. When an alleged antique krater from ancient Greece, loudly praised for its beauty, is discovered to be a bowl made in the nineteenth century, it is scorned and its presumed aesthetic qualities seemingly disappear. Is an object more beautiful if it is authentic than if it is a fake? This is to extend a question introduced in our discussion of creativity in Chapter 4; we may now ask whether aesthetic value depends upon historical factors and, if so, to what degree. In the previous chapter, we considered whether Jan van Meege- ren's Vermeer forgery Christ and the Disciples at Emmaeus could be ART AND OTHER VALUES 157 considered creative. When Van Meegeren confessed in 1945 that he sold six of his own paintings as Vermeers—including Christ and the Disciples at Emmaeus-they were regarded as among the finest of all of Vermeer's works and had hung in major galleries for years. Van Meegeren's very effective forgery brought the matter of historical authenticity and aesthetic value to an obvious head: of course it is morally wrong to fake a painting, but did the revelation in 1945 that the paintings were not by Vermeer point out any aesthetic difference? Not surprisingly, some critics immediately changed their minds about the value of the paintings. Authenticity became the criterion of aesthetic value, but had the paintings changed? Where had their beauty gone? Some works that are genuine, and done by artists of certifiable talent, are nevertheless criticized as being unoriginal. In Chapter 4 we considered originality as a variety of creativity; here the question is whether originality is a historical or an aesthetic property. When Handel or Mozart built complex works out of simple, familiar melo- dies, were they unoriginal? Surely originality in music does not mean using only unfamiliar tunes any more than originality in literature means using only sentences that have never been written before. Qriginality seems to involve what the artist does with the material in relation to the history of the medium more than what he or she does with the material itself. But, like authenticity, originality is clearly an aesthetic as well as a historical property. POLITICAL VALUES, MARXISM, AND THE ISSUE OF AESTHETICISM In the previous discussion of conflicts between aesthetic and other values, we asked whether aesthetic values should yield to ethical, religious, or historical values, or the other way around. We have assumed that the values were more or less distinct and have dealt largely with questions of priorities among them. The conflict between aesthetic and political values also seems at first to involve a question about priorities. Frequently, however, theorists understand this conflict in such a way as to deny, or undercut, any need to establish priorities among values. Some argue, for instance, that the only value of artworks is aesthetic. This is the radical aestheticist position. More moderate aestheticists hold that whereas art has other values, aesthetic values always have priority, and hence there is no real conflict. Others maintain that art naturally excludes itself from contact (and hence, conflict) with other values. Marxists, among others, differ from aestheticists in that they do not deny conflict between aesthetic and other values, but insist that L 158 PUZZLES ABOUT ART: AN AESTHETICS CASEBOOK aesthetic value is merely a function of other values, and therefore not in conflict with them. Aestheticists defend their views by pointing out that we would not call an artifact art except for its aesthetic qualities, no matter what other qualities it possessed. Since they understand aesthetic value to be autonomous, they tend to locate it in formal features of the work, not in its utility or moral significance. This is the background from which "art for art's sake" theories are derived, theories that insist that art has nothing to do with morality, religions, politics, or any other area of human activity. Taken to its logical conclusion, however, this idea suggests that art is in total conflict with all other human concerns (because it is at odds with all other values) yet that it cannot conflict at all (because it is disconnected from these values). In this view, the realms of art and social concerns are by their natures distinct, and the artist is completely alienated or separated from society. Marxists make much of this alienation, insisting that the "art for art's sake" view of the aestheticists defends a social order marked by class exploitation. This exploitation will end, they say, when aesthetic value is recognized to have its roots in economic relationships and to have importance only because art is important to the life of man in his society. An artwork's real value, they insist, depends on its function in its social setting. 115 Lenin was in many respects the clearest, as well as the most radical, of the early theorists. Literature, he insisted, "cannot be a means of enriching individuals or groups: it cannot, in fact, be an individual undertaking, independent of the common cause of the proletariat.... Literature must become part of the common cause of the proletariat." In other words, any literary activity that does not serve the common cause, as found in the efforts of the party, is to be condemned. Literature, as all art, is a tool, a shaper of political attitudes. Its function is social. It arouses and enhances the awareness of social realities. Thus, in every setting Marxists have considered the function of art as ideological; indeed, if an artist were to fail to serve an ideology, any value accorded his or her work would be based on a false idea. Furthermore, art based on a false idea produces a contradiction that leads inevitably to the deterioration of aesthetic value itself. Properly understood, Marxists maintain, the work of art is both an expression of and a reaction against social conditions. Appropriately designed, it becomes a weapon in the class struggle. ECONOMIC VALUES That the price tag on an artwork does not coincide with its aesthetic value, however the latter is measured, is obvious. We know many other factors that affect economic value: among them, supply and ART AND OTHER VALUES 159 ɖemand, inflation, and fads. Is an Impressionist painting that was bought for a few hundred dollars in the nineteenth century ten thousand times better today? Not long ago Sotheby's sold two Degas paintings for slightly over seven million dollars and a Tissot of the same period for about two hundred thousand dollars. Is one Degas worth almost twenty Tissots, not just in the marketplace, but aesthet- ically? Is the Van Gogh Irises, sold for almost 50 million dollars in 1987, twenty-five times better than his Bouquet de Fleurs des Champs, sold by Sotheby's in 1981? These questions may not seem to make much sense, because aesthetic values do not readily lend themselves to quantitative measure. Art thieves do not steal the most beautiful objects; they steal the ones with the highest price tags. A person who prefers to contemplate a Mary Cassatt or an Adolphe Bouguereau canvas rather than a Renoir may be exercising good sense or good taste, but whoever gets a chance to buy a Renoir at a Cassatt price and chooses the Cassatt as an economic investment may be doing a very unwise thing. Of course, it may be that Renoirs are currently over- priced and Cassatts are not yet at the top of their market; perhaps the buyer was right. How to outguess the financial market in art is one problem; the important question is what difference, if any, aesthetic values should play here. Works of art can do many things, and these may cut across the traditional boundaries of values. Art is not unique in being subject to different kinds of evaluation, nor are aesthetic values the only values that conflict with others. The contest between the religious and the ethical, for instance, is among civilization's oldest, and the struggle between the political and the ethical among its most controversial. Here we have been specifically concerned with problems raised by the aesthetic, a value realm that seems to have more than its fair share of competitors. Can any characteristic patterns be seen in these opposi- tions? Is any generalization possible? Because art objects can be used in so many ways, the correspond- ing evaluations are hardly a surprise. Paintings can be a good invest- ment, as they may appreciate faster than stocks or bonds do. Music can soothe or excite us, cover the sounds of traffic or of the quarreling couple upstairs, induce us to buy more in the supermarket or play a better game of backgammon, or even reduce pain during childbirth. Literature can inspire self-improvement or make us frustrated with life. Some sculpture can even keep us warm if we run out of firewood. Aristotle's observations about the functions of objects are appli- cable here. An object can have all sorts of uses, he pointed out, and can function effectively in a number of ways. An acorn can serve as food for a squirrel or a missile for a child to throw at a squirrel. It can be varnished and mounted on a stand. It can signal that autumn has come. It can also develop into an oak tree. But of all these functions, the last Oah tree анаводи 160 PUZZLES ABOUT ART: AN AESTHETICS CASEBOOK is the distinctive one, since, while other things can serve as food, weapons, decorative objects, or natural symbols, nothing but an acorn can grow into an oak tree. Similarly, art can have many values attached to it, but only one value is distinctive. This is what we have called "aesthetic value." Just what aesthetic value consists in has puzzled philosophers since they began thinking about it, but two things seem clear: aesthetic value has to do with appreciating something for its own sake, rather than for other considerations, and it has to do fundamentally with the act of perceiving. Aestheticians sometimes combine these ideas in the claim that aesthetic value arises when something is recognized as "worth contemplating for its own sake." But what is worth contemplating for its own sake? Can aesthetic theory provide useful guidance here? The task is difficult because strongly held values are as complex as they are diverse. Each of us has a loose catalogue of things, attitudes, and actions we prize. Judgments about them are not always compatible in concrete situations. They may even show a mutual hostility within one realm of value. In the realm of ethics, for instance, one may be obliged both to tell the truth and to preserve human life, yet find oneself in situations where one obligation can be satisfied only if the other is violated. Moreover, contests of values may cut across entire value systems. I may admire a work aesthetically that offends me religiously. I may buy a painting that is a poor investment, or profit from a painting that I loathe. I may appreciate the art of Bruckner's music, yet prefer to listen to music whose aesthetic value I acknowledge to be inferior (it may be hard work to listen to Bruckner, and I may be tired; indeed, some serious musicians cannot stand chamber music at breakfast). If, despite all this, aesthetic theory is to guide us in determining what is worth contemplating for its own sake, it will begin either by underscoring or denying the autonomy of our aesthetic judgments. In declaring a painting aesthetically valuable one may have to ignore how well it covers the cracked plaster, how much of a bargain it was, how strongly it inspires one to charity or nobility, whether it offends or reinforces one's faith or morality, and so on. According to the opposite point of view, however, the claim that a painting is aesthetically valuable may imply that its beauty is enhanced by its utility or by how it functions morally, religiously, economically, historically, and so on. There is no consensus as to which is the right alternative or even whether other alternatives may exist. As in so many aesthetic matters, this fundamental question has so much compelling evidence on either side that it does not permit easy resolution. Furthermore, it is not a question to be resolved lightly, for the answer determines whether General Freyberg was right in bombing Monte Cassino, whether the Mona Lisa or the guard should be rescued from the fire in the Louvre, whether the secret of the "Rothko" canvas should be told, whether the Romano is undervalued, whether certain rock lyrics should be sup- ART AND OTHER VALUES 16 pressed, and other practical dilemmas, which are presented in the case that follow. CASES HEY, THIS LOOKS GOOD A WAR MONE! Art and Ethics 5-1. BLOOM COUNTY DOCUMENTARY UM, ACTUALLY I THINK IT'S AN ABC ON LEBANON. OH PHOO. LOOKS LIKE AN OLD "RAT PATROL" EPISODE. NO... NO, IT'S JUST THE 6 O'CLOCK NEWS. I THINK. THOSE LOOK LIKE REAL GRENADE LAUNCHERS. I THINK. 12-74 YEAH! BLAST THAT SUCKER! BLAM! 00! THIS IS BLAM! GREAT STUFF!! WELL. I MEAN IF IT IS FAKE. WILL SOMEONE PLEASE TELL ME WHETHER I SHOULD BE ENJOYING THIS OR NOT... Bloom County by Berke Breathed. © 1983 Washington Post Writers Group, Reprinted with permission. Is it wrong to enjoy something aesthetically if it is unethical? Can on enjoy aesthetically a fictional portrayal of horrible events withou enjoying aesthetically the horrible events themselves?―M.M.E. 5-2. DANGEROUS BODY ART During the late 1960s there was a great deal of interest in "Body Art in both Europe and the United States. In such art, the physical body o the artist was a central element in the work and was used in extremel dangerous ways. American artist Chris Burden, for example, had himself shot in the arm with a .22 caliber bullet in Shoot (1971) crawled (almost naked) through broken glass in Through the Nigh Softly (1973), and had himself "crucified" with nails in his hands onto the back roof of a Volkswagen in Transfixed (1974).6 Members of the Wiener Aktionismus group-Otto Mükl, Günter Brus, and Rudol Schwarzkogler-were even more extreme.' Schwarzkogler created what he called "artistic nudes-similar to a wreckage," in which he mutilated himself, cutting his penis. In 1969, he died from these self-mutilations. As a gallery director, not only must you decide whether or no this is art, but what your responsibilities are to human life and its preservation. Considering the circumstances and your knowledge o 164 PUZZLES ABOUT ART: AN AESTHETICS CASEBOOK Pollock's widow died in 1985. Should her wishes concerning her husband's drawings be respected? Or is it appropriate to exhibit them now? Should her wishes have been respected prior to her death, or would it have been all right to exhibit the drawings despite her objections, since she did not own them? Was the analyst justified in selling the drawings in the first place, or should he have kept them and had them destroyed at his own death? Does the fact that these drawings were part of Pollock's therapy have any bearing on their status as art?―M.P.B. 5-6. DYING WISHES Virgil, fatally ill aboard the ship that was carrying him back to Italy, is said to have made a deathbed wish that the unfinished manuscript of the Aeneid be destroyed. Felix Mendelssohn made a similar wish concerning the manuscript of his Italian Symphony. And Aubrey Beardsley, also on his deathbed, ordered his illustrations for Lysistrata to be destroyed because he considered them obscene. None of these wishes was carried out. Should any or all of them have been honored? Do we need additional information to answer this question?―B.H. 5-7. ROCKY ISLAND WITH SIRENS The year is 1912. A patron who has commissioned a mural entitled Rocky Island with Sirens is distressed to discover that the artist has painted the sirens naked. The patron has a second artist touch up the mural so that the sirens appear dressed. The original artist, who had accepted the commission fee, nevertheless holds that he has a right to present his work in its original form. 12 Who should have prevailed in this case, the patron or the artist? Is this merely a legal issue, to be settled by determining whether the case took place in the United States, which does not recognize an artist's "moral rights" of integrity in the artwork, or, say, Germany, which does? (Because Rocky Island with Sirens was a German case, the court held that the artist had the right to present his work in its original form; it probably would have been decided against the artist in the United States.) Or are there aesthetic principles that dictate what the law should be? —M.P.B. 5-8. THE COLOR OF PITTSBURGH In 1958, Alexander Calder's mobile Pittsburgh was donated by a private collector to Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, for installation in the Greater Pittsburgh International Airport. The mobile was ART AND OTHER VALUES 165 originally black and white, but when it was installed, it was painted green and gold, the official colors of Allegheny County. Calder pro- tested, but the work was not restored to black and white during his lifetime.13 Having already relinquished ownership of the work when it was sold to the collector, did Calder, as the creator of the work, still have a right to insist that it not be altered? Even if he did not, was it wrong for Allegheny County to alter the artwork against his wishes? Could we say that the artwork itself had a right not to be altered, regardless of whatever rights Calder or Allegheny County might have had? R.M.M. 5-9. MAHLER'S SUPERSTITIONS Mahler's Symphony no. 6 is allegorical and highly personal. In the last movement, Mahler traces the adventures of a fighting hero who falls and rises twice in battle. These events are marked by two hammer strokes, and in the first version of the score, they are followed again by a third hammer stroke. This last hammer stroke marks the hero's being fatally struck down, "like a tree." Mahler so strongly identified with the hero of the first version that he feared that the third hammer stroke would foretell and precipitate his own death. So, in the official second version he suppressed the third hammer stroke entirely." 14 Are only artistic considerations pertinent in giving credence to the intentions of a composer? Are we under a moral obligation not to perform the first version? Should we disregard Mahler's personal feelings of identification? Which of the competing intentions of the composer is decisive, if any? Is the fact that Mahler is already dead relevant? M.K. 5-10. TAKIS AND “THE MACHINE" On January 3, 1969, the Greek-born sculptor Takis (Panayotis Vassi- lakis) went to the Museum of Modern Art in New York City and attempted to remove one of his sculptures from the museum's exhi- bition "The Machine." As critic Lucy Lippard reported in Studio International magazine, Takis contended that "an artist had the right to control the exhibition and treatment of his work whether or not he had sold it." Lippard went on to say that this was "not a revolutionary proposition, except in the art world.” 1/15 Art law has become a more complicated field in recent years.16 It is widely claimed that works of art are part of a separate category of objects, distinct from all other classes of objects and, therefore, not subject to the laws and restrictions placed upon other material goods.