Daisy Dixon, an assistant professor in philosophy at Cardiff University, UK, tackles taboo subjects in her new book Depraved: The Story of Dangerous Art, which, she says, charts “the most immoral art ever produced by humanity, across the globe and the ages”. What makes a work of art immoral, she asks, guiding the reader through dilemmas around the disturbing sides of human expression. Here, Dixon discusses some of the key points from her new publication.
The Art Newspaper: Where did the idea for the book come from? Your ongoing scholarly research?
Daisy Dixon: Mostly yes. My PhD in 2019 argued that artworks can perform speech acts. This was controversial at the time, though many philosophers are now more accommodating of the idea! When it came to Depraved, I wanted to use this analysis to make sense of how art can harm in the real world: the chapter on Oppression in particular developed out of my doctoral and post-doctoral work. My research is now focusing on “aesthetic injustice” though—how our aesthetic agency can be unfairly restricted. So watch this space!
How is the book timely, especially in light of ongoing culture wars?
It’s especially timely in the strong positions it takes, as well as its careful philosophical method in analysing complex debates. The book actually offers answers to these problems, rather than merely musing around them. I take a strong stance on the immoral artist problem, for example. I don’t say that Picasso’s or Gauguin’s paintings are bad works of art, but I do argue that their moral properties are affected by their creators’ lives. It’s perfectly compatible to hold that an artwork is immoral insofar as it exoticises the artist’s child bride and exploitation of a colonised land, for instance, while also respecting its artistic innovations. Another way Depraved is timely is its nuanced take on censorship and the freedom of speech. Acknowledging that art can be incredibly harmful, say, as a form of oppression—think of the racist ceramics of the Jim Crow era or the Western tradition of the female nude—doesn’t entail that we should destroy or censor these works.
Daisy Dixon’s new book Depraved: The Story of Dangerous Art
You say that art can be depraved in five distinct ways.
There is a wealth of philosophical literature on the intersection of art and morality, and the five relations have emerged out of that scholarship over several decades. My inspiration to represent these relations as a Hydra, though, came to me while writing the book and thinking about censorship. Like the monster’s distinct heads, these five relations are all connected. But also, realising that censorship often causes more problems than it solves made me think of Hercules trying to slay the Hydra and learning that cutting off one head just causes it to grow another one. So, while art can intersect with
(im)morality in these myriad ways, it’s better to tame that monster rather than kill it.
Who is the most “depraved” artist you discuss?
It’s probably got to be Hitler. Some will be surprised that his monstrous personality is present within his seemingly peaceful and quaint watercolours of forests, mountains and castles. But his style of artmaking—nostalgic, realistic, romantic—is morally relevant and in fact betrays a deep, insidious worldview. The next most depraved artist may have to be the Marquis de Sade, in part because his work like The 120 Days of Sodom (1785) is an entire Hydra of its own. It depicts horrific acts that supposedly influenced the Moors Murderers [in the 1960s], expresses barbaric perspectives in its eroticisation of rape, and was created by a man who raped and abused children. But, as I show in the book, Sade’s work still has moral and political value. It was embedded in the French Revolution, criticising the hypocrisies of the church and the upper classes, and it explored atheism and nihilism: what would it mean to be free in a godless world? A work of art’s depravity can sometimes be the very thing that offers vital insights for the human condition.
• Daisy Dixon, Depraved: The Story of Dangerous Art, Faber & Faber, 304pp, £20 (hb)
