What is one to do upon discovering that a favorite artist is a monster? That’s one of the questions that Dixon, an assistant professor of philosophy at Cardiff University, grapples with in this provocative work. Her goal is “to take you on a journey through the history of immoral art, exploring some of the most controversial and volatile works humanity has ever produced,” from “erotic literature that has inspired murderers” to “beautiful paintings created by paedophiles.” Dixon compares the concept of depraved art to a “Hydra of five screeching heads” and identifies five areas of closer investigation: the varying definitions throughout history of what constitutes obscenity; art that incites, or is believed to have incited, criminal behavior; cultural products that “prop up systems of oppression” by objectifying women as in Édouard Manet’s Le déjeuner sur l’herbe (1863) or suggesting the inferiority of people of color; immoral artists whose works are meant to malign or demean, as when Paul Gauguin, a predator who “used his colonial privilege to sexually abuse girls as young as thirteen,” painted Spirit of the Dead Watching (1892), “the depiction of a dark-skinned girl in an abusive relationship with an older white man”; and the question of works in which acts of cruelty are part of their creation, from “the problematic use of ivory in medieval sculpture across the world to twentieth-century conceptual art that involves setting live animals on fire.” She concludes with a timely chapter on authoritarian attempts to manipulate culture by “not only targeting the art of persecuted groups, but driving out any cultural products which threaten their totalitarian power,” from Nazi book burnings to President Trump’s “Orwellian” attacks on American museums. Whatever one’s opinion on the question of whether one can or should separate the art from the artist, readers will find much to ponder in this well-researched effort.
