I had a curious conversation in class the other night thanks to Arthur Danto's essay
Beauty and Morality. In the midst of discussing whether it was morally right to represent someone else's pain the conversation moved into defining morality. We worked to tease out whether there was a right and wrong or if right and wrong was contextual. I asked if murder was right or wrong and the answer was surprisingly grey. Since I tend to think through paintings I thought I might share some paintings of murder as I continue to think this through.
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| The Massacre at Chios, Eugene Delacroix, 1824 |
You could argue that war is murder, that's not what I'm looking at though. Twenty thousand citizens (not combatants) died when the Ottomans took over the Greek Island of
Chios during the Greek War of Independence. Soldiers were ordered to murder babies under the age of three plus other horrors. Seventy thousand citizens were sent into slavery.
