Against Morality

Cultural critic McLaughlin (Sinkhole) ruminates on cancel culture’s effect on art criticism in this concise and captivating treatise. Squaring off against what she dubs “liberal realism”—i.e., the classification of art as ethically acceptable based on whether it promotes liberal moral standards—she tracks how recent attempts to give art “a dubious moral glow-up” have led to a “surreal” alternate reality of art criticism. For instance, she notes, the “sadistic” artist Chaïm Soutine, whose works exude “violence and objectification,” was recently described in Frieze magazine as “bringing ‘dignity’ to those at the bottom of the social order.” Likewise, McLaughlin highlights how this moralizing lens has a quelling effect on contemporary artworks; she points to the widely reported “offense” caused by the 2022 movie Tár as an example. McLaughlin is lucid and sharp, and readers will find themselves impressed even when they disagree. (In her rundown of the heated public response to Dana Schutz’s 2017 painting of Emmett Till in his casket, McLauglin gives only the barest credence to the accusation that the piece is part of a lineage of white artists appropriating Black suffering. While she critiques the episode with deftness, it might be a bridge too far for some—after all, surely some art might actually be in poor taste.) The result is a enjoyably provocative challenge to the status quo. (May)