Role of Ethics in Art & Its Impact on the Audience

The present study aims to explain the role of ethical content among the artists and general audience in terms of (1) ethics in an artwork; (2) relation of ethical elements with the artist as well as the audience. To this purpose, two questions can be formulated: 1. To what extent do artists pay attention to the role of ethics in the creation of artworks? 2. What effect does the moral component of an artwork have on the perception of the audience? The paper at hand has employed a descriptive-analytical method of research and the data has been gathered through the desk study of library resources as well as field survey (filling out questionnaires). The survey included two groups: (1) artists, art graduates and students at different academic levels from six prominent universities in Tehran and (2) general audience comprising of those with artistic background as well as the general audience studying in various academic levels and disciplines at different universities in Tehran. Three factors were considered in the selection of the general audience: (a) strategies in choosing the artistic style; (b) ethics in the creation of the artwork and (c) ethics and the audience. Using the Variance Formula and F-test, the results obtained included 49/59, 26/191, 81/346 respectively. Based on the statistical results, 2/65 of the first group approved the use of strategies and the choice of artistic style above 50% on average. A comparison of the opinions of the members of the same group showed that the use of the ethics in the creation art work is at 29%; i.e. less than the average level. These numbers indicate that in this group, considering the option of audience and ethics in the creation of works of art by 40.2 is consistent with their views. A comparison of the artists' opinions with respect to items such as their years of artistic activities, shows a difference of ideas among them.  However, the application of strategies and artistic style and ethics in the creation of artworks are different. A comparison of the viewpoints of the second group of participants in the study reveals that there is a relation between the rate of employing ethics in the creation of artworks with the author’s academic level. Ph.D. holders of non-art disciplines were more interested in strategies and styles (8.76) and B.A and B.S. holders were the least interested while those with master’s degree had the least interest in ethical factor (2.31). The analysis of the findings related to the art style and ethics indicates that the general audience expect 79%, 63%, and 83% more than average that artists should use style and the ethics for the creation of artworks and believe these are a part of the intrinsic value of the artwork. The statistic results show that the rate of the ethics employed in the creation of art works is lower than the average. There is a meaningful difference between pro-ethic public audience and artists who think of no limitation for the creation of the artistic work in terms of ethics. Standard deviation is higher with the general audience too. Experimental F, also shows the same opinion on the part of the non-specialist audience. The findings of the study indicate that the content-ethnics is not similar for the artists and audience. In response to the study questions, it seems that the ethical factor for general audience is more important than the artists. However, artists and specialist audience are on the side of creativity and artistic values of the artwork than the ethical issues. The conclusions drawn from the study, reveals that among the artistic community, there is no direct relationship between ethical values and aesthetical values of a piece of artistic work. However, the ethical values can be taken into consideration in theoretical and practical education of the art students to make a balance between ethics and artistic works.