The Limits Of Art Two Essays

Tzvetan Todorov explores the complex relations between art, politics and ethics in the two essays that make up The Limits of Art. In the first essay, 'Artists and Dictators', he traces the intimate relationship between avant-garde art and radical politics in pre-revolutionary Russia, pre-fascist Italy and pre-Nazi Germany and sets forth the radical idea that the project of totalitarian dictators and avant-garde artists actually 'emerged from the same womb': both artists and dictators set out to make it new--be it art or society. In 'Art and Ethics', the second essay, he reexamines the age-old question of what can be expected from art and whether or not it should be emancipated from ethics. Must art be morally instructive, or should it be self-sufficient and concept-free? The answer is not an either/or for Todorov, who believes, like Baudelaire, that art has both cognitive and ethical aspects to it--even if it is presented as 'art for art's sake'. --Book Jacket.

Year

2010

Language

English

Publisher

Seagull Books

Editions

1

Pages

100

ISBN

9781906497620

Data source: Wikidata