Autonomies of Art by Clement Greenberg

Clement Greenberg spoke at the first Mountain Lake Symposium, titled "Moral Philosophy and Art," organized by Ray Kass and John Link in 1980.

"Autonomies of Art" was the title he chose for his talk. It includes a very clear statement about where art stands in the general scheme of values Clement Greenberg held dear. That place may surprise some today, as it surprised some in 1980.

Real Audio brought to you courtesy of newCrit (click to visit).

To read the text of "Autonomies of Art" try The Greenberg site (click to visit).

Autonomies of Art: The Talk (29:14)

Autonomies of Art: Q&A 1 (38:22)

Questions include:

• Question 1:    When art fails aesthetically as well as morally, is it just bad art or is it morally offensive too?
• Question 2:    How can Greenberg subordinate art to morality?
• Question 3:    Does good art make people morally better?
• Question 4:    Can art justify using evil to make itself good?
• Question 5:    Isn't aesthetic choice a moral choice?
• Question 6:    How can you challenge Kant's conviction that morality is an end in itself?
• Question 7:    Why are you so puritanical, sectarian, and limited?
• Question 8:    Can abstract art (such as minimalism) be immoral?
• Question 9:    Isn't choosing to be an artist a moral act?
• Question 10:  Again, why can't abstract art be immoral?
• Question 11:  Matisse was a pornographer according to many in his own time; why listen to anyone about the difference between pornography and art?

Autonomies of Art: Q&A 2 (24:02)

Questions include:

• Question 1:    Do you mean the artist cannot use pornography?
• Question 2:    People of taste in the early 20th century ruled Matisse obscene. Doesn't that mean taste is a force of suppression and destruction?
• Question 3:    I am an educator. Would you expel art history from art departments?
• Question 4:    Regarding aesthetic distance and pornography/morality: How do you maintain aesthetic distance?
• Question 5:    I am troubled by your diminishment of morality. What about its role in narrative art? Isn't narrative art moral?
• Question 6:    Is there meaning in art?
• Question 7:    Are not the moral and the aesthetic the same thing in narrative art?
• Question 8:    Can aesthetic judgment be demonstrated?
• Question 9:    If the artist consciously chooses to make representational art, doesn't that free aesthetic distance? Likewise, doesn't abstract art limit aesthetic distance?
• Question 10:  What is the art critic's role? Should the art critic forget politics?

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