The conciliation of aesthetics and ethics in contemporary animalist art
Keywords:
animal maltreatment, animalist art, aesthetics, ethics, conciliation
Abstract
This article addresses the problem of the relationship between aesthetics and ethics in animalist art. The starting point is the affirmation of art as a suitable field to deal with the maltreatment and cruelty that animals receive from human beings. The animals are used by an art without animalistic intention and with symbolic pretensions, or by a properly animalistic art. The main ethical problem that arises concerns animalistic art, which, with the intention of ethically defending animals, treats them cruelly. The method of the work is the hermeneutic interpretation of texts and works of art. The objective is to clarify the problem of the reconciliation of the aesthetic and the ethical in current animalistic art. It is concluded that the solution to the problem of the relationship between aesthetics and ethics lies in the fact that the aesthetic is something internal to the ethical.
References
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WATT, Y. (2011). Artists, Animals and Ethics. Antennae, 19, 62-72.
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WOLFE, C. (2010). What is Posthumanism? University of Minnesota Press.
BAKER, S. (2000). The Postmodern Animal. Reaktion Books.
BAKER, S. (2006). You Kill Things to Look at Them: Animal Death in Contemporary Art. En The Animal Studies Group, Killing Animals (pp. 69-95). University of Illinois Press.
BAKER, S. (2013a). Artist/Animal. University of Minnesota Press. https://doi.org/10.5749/minnesota/9780816680665.001.0001
BAKER, S. (2013b). Animals, Artists and the Question of Ethics. University of Minnesota Press, 30 January. http://www.uminnpressblog.com/2013/01/animals-artists-and-question-of-ethics.html
BARTHES, R. (1970). Mythologies (1957). Seuil.
BEUYS, J. (1993). Interview with W. Sharp (1969). En Kuoni, C. (edra.) Energy Plan for the Western Man – Joseph Beuys in America. Writings and Interviews with the Artist (pp. 77-92). Four Walls Eight Windows.
BROGLIO, R. (2011). Surface Encounters: Thinking with Animals and Art. University of Minnesota Press. htttps://doi.org/10.5749/minnesota/9780816672967.001.0001
BURT, J. (2002). Animals in Film. Reaktion Books.
CHAPMAN, K. (2003). The Human Zoo. Hatton Gallery, 28 June. http://www.undo.net/it/mostra/14984
CHERRY, D. (2000). Beyond the Frame: Feminism and Visual Culture, Britain, 1850–1900. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203351314
COUSINS, M. (1994). Danger and Safety. Art History, 17(3), 418-423.
CRONIN, J. K. (2018). Art for animals: visual culture and animal advocacy, 1870–1914. The Pennsylvania State University Press. https://doi.org/10.5325/j.ctv14gpbw4
DANTO, A. C. (2003). The Abuse of Beauty: Aesthetics and the Concept of Art. Open Court.
DERRIDA, J. (2008). El animal que luego estoy si(gui)endo (2006). Trad. de C. Peretti y C. Rodríguez Marciel. Trotta.
DION, M, (2017). Some Notes Towards a Manifesto for Artists Working With or About the Living World. En Erickson, R. y Dion, M. (eds.) Misadventures of a 21st-Century Naturalist (pp. 84-85). Yale University Press-Institute of Contemporary Art.
GIONI, M. (2007). Where the Wild Things Are. Tate Etc, 11, 35. https://www.tate.org.uk/tate-etc/issue-11-autumn-2007/where-wild-things-are
GRUEN, L. (2015). Entangled Empathy: An Alternative Ethic for Our Relationships with Animals. Lantern Books.
HANSON, K. (1998). How Bad Can Good Art Be? En Levinson, J. (ed.) Aesthetics and Ethics: Essays at the Intersection (pp. 204-226). Cambridge University Press.
HARAWAY, D. (1978). Animal Sociology and a Natural Economy of the Body Politic, Part II: The Past Is the Contested Zone: Human Nature and Theories of Production and Reproduction in Primate Behavior Studies. Signs, 4(1), 37-60.
HARAWAY, D. (2008). When Species Meet. University of Minnesota Press.
HARRIES, M. (2007). Regarding the Pain of Rats: Kim Jones’s Rat Piece. TDR: The Journal of Performance Studies, 51(1), 160-165. https://doi.org/10.1162/dram.2007.51.1.160
HEGEL, G. W. F. (1989). Lecciones sobre la estética (1820-29). Trad. de A. Brotóns. Akal.
KEAN, H. (1998). Animal Rights: Political and Social Change in Britain Since 1800. Reaktion Books.
HORTA, Ó. (2017). Un paso adelante en defensa de los animales. Plaza y Valdés.
KRAUSS, R. (1999). ‘A Voyage on the North Sea’: Art in the Age of the Post-Medium Condition. Thames and Hudson.
LONGSTAFF, S. (2003). Animal Rights and Artistic Freedom. Arts Law Centre of Australia 30 June. http://www.artslaw.com.au/articles/entry/animal-rights-and-artistic-freedom
LOSTEDT, M. (2020). Perttu Saksa’s work on our relationship with the environment. http://www.perttu saksa.com/text1Lummaa
LUHMANN, N. (2005). El arte de la sociedad (1995). Trad. de J Torres. Herder.
MCCAUGHEY, P. (2008). On the Edge. The Australian, 7 June.
MILLER, M. E. (2012). Miru Kim’s Nude Art with Pigs Made Them Sick, Activist Says. Miami New Times, 12 January. http://www.miaminewtimes.com/2012-01-12/news/miru-kim-s-nude-artwith-pigs-made-them-sick-activist-says/full
MITCHELL, W. J. T. (2005). What Do Pictures Want? The Lives and Loves of Images. University of Chicago Press. DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226245904.001.0001
ORR, D. (2002). The Nature of Design. Ecology, Culture and Human Intention. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780195148558.001.0001
PACHIRAT, T. (2011). Every Twelve Seconds: Industrialized Slaughter and the Politics of Sight. Yale University Press. https://doi.org/10.12987/9780300152685
PLATÓN. (1988). La República. Trad. de C. Eggers Lan. En Platón, Diálogos IV. Gredos.
RIFKIN, J. (2009). The Empathic Civilization: The Race to Global Consciousness in a World in Crisis. Jeremy P. Tarcher/Penguin.
RITCHIN, F. (2013). Bending the Frame: Photojournalism, Documentary, and the Citizen. Aperture.
SINGER, P. (2011). Beyond Animal Liberation. Interview by Giovanni Aloi. Antennae, 19, 9-15.
THOMPSON, N. (2005). Becoming Animal: Contemporary Art in the Animal Kingdom. MIT Press.
TISDALL, C. (2008). Joseph Beuys: Coyote. Thames and Hudson.
WATT, Y. (2011). Artists, Animals and Ethics. Antennae, 19, 62-72.
WILDE, O. (2006). The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890). Oxford University Press.
WOLFE, C. (2010). What is Posthumanism? University of Minnesota Press.
Published
2025-04-01
How to Cite
GUTIÉRREZ-JORDANO, C. (2025). The conciliation of aesthetics and ethics in contemporary animalist art . Utopía Y Praxis Latinoamericana, 30(109), e15098806. Retrieved from https://mail.produccioncientificaluz.org/index.php/utopia/article/view/e15098806
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