The Cat, the Cradle, and the Silver Spoon: Violence in Contemporary Art and the Question of Ethics for Art Education

Abstract

Against the backdrop of objective and subjective violence, two contemporary artworks are interpreted through theories of the Other. Zhu Yu’s Eating People (2000) is considered through Lacanian psychoanalytic theory and, in particular, through an Ethics of the Real. Teemu Mäki’s My Way, a Work in Progress (1995) is analyzed through Levinasian theories of ethics and the Third. It is argued that both artworks, which address violence, may instigate an affective antagonism between jouissance and social prohibitions and raise ethical questions about subjectivity and goodness. These ethical questions have import to art education in terms of rethinking the field’s relationship with contemporary art, prompting a pedagogy of provocation.