PanArtReviewThough its title suggests that it might be about extreme artworks at the margins of morality, this book turns out to be a rehash of the ‘woke’ position on which kinds of artworks should be deemed bad ... Depraved reveals the basic trouble of social-justice art criticism: the insistence on indicting the artist’s intention ends up erasing the artwork’s autonomy ... It also denies the viewer’s own agency: to judge for themselves, to appreciate the work on their own terms, while taking or leaving the history that made it, regardless of progressive puritans like Dixon.
