Course Description
Introduces students to art’s capacity to explore ethical questions related to ownership, public space, self-expression, and persuasion.
Athena Title
Visual Art and Ethics
Grading System
A - F (Traditional)
Student Learning Outcomes
- Students will develop an understanding of art’s capacity to explore profound ethical questions related to ownership, self-expression, public space, and persuasion.
- Students will engage with a wide range of art forms that inspire debate and reflection on a variety of ethically charged topics including property and ownership, public space and occupancy, self-expression and display, propaganda, and persuasion.
- Students will access and explore the ethical dimension of visual art by attending weekly lectures and conducting looking exercises.
- Students will become familiar with a variety of artworks that broach ethical questions and will be able to differentiate between examples that take a position and those that find ways to restate the nature of the dilemma so as to heighten its relevance and/or significance.
Topical Outline
- Plato v. Aristotle: First Words on Art and Ethics
- Art and the Ethics of Ownership
From repatriation to copyright, appropriation, and sampling
- Art and the Ethical Dimension of Public Space
Richard Serra’s Titled Arc to Relational Aesthetics
- Art and the Ethics of Self Expression
From Rembrandt to Abstract Expressionism to Cindy Sherman and Beyond
- Art and the Ethics of Persuasion
From Triumph of the Will to Paul Pfeiffer’s RGB (2023)
