The Autonomy of Art

Abstract

In his Aesthetic Croce makes some remarks upon the subject of sincerity: Artists protest vainly: ‘Lasciva est nobis pagina, vita proba’. They are merely taxed (in addition) with lying and hypocrisy. How far more prudent you were, poor women of Verona, when you founded your belief that Dante had really descended to Hell upon his blackened countenance. Yours was at any rate an historical conjecture. Finally, sincerity imposed as a duty upon the artist (a law of ethics also said to be a law of aesthetic) rests upon another double meaning. For by sincerity may be meant, in the first place, the moral duty not to deceive one’s neighbour; and in that case it is foreign to the artist. For indeed he deceives no one, since he gives form to what is already in his soul. He would only deceive if he were to betray his duty as an artist by failing to execute his task in its essential nature. If lies and deceit are in his soul, then the form which he gives to these things cannot be deceit or lies, precisely because it is aesthetic. If an artist be a charlatan, a liar, or a miscreant, he purifies his other self by reflecting it in art. If by sincerity be meant, in the second place, fulness and truth of expression, it is clear that this second sense has no relation to the ethical concept. The law, called both ethical and aesthetic, reveals itself here as nothing but a word used by both Ethics and Aesthetic (pp. 53–4).