Transgressions of socially engaged artists. Moral implications and axiological conflicts

Abstract

This article addresses socially engaged artists’ transgressions, and their moral implications and axiological conflicts. The text opens with the presentation of the subject of the research, the concepts and theories commonly ultilised (including Pierre Bourdieu, Nathalie Heinich, Zygmunt Bauman, Emil Durkheim, Maria Ossowska) and the critical sociology perspective adopted in the text. In the following parts of the article, the author examines in detail selected transgressive threads in the visual arts, changes in the artistic ethos and notices the lack of an artist’s ethical code. Finally, he reflects on the possibility of applying Leszek Kołakowski’s concept of “ethics without a moral code” and Zygmunt Bauman’s concept of “personal morality” to artistic production.