The question of whether art can be a source of knowledge touches on the question I shall consider in this chapter: what, if anything, is the connection between art and morality? To talk of the connection is misleading because there are many connections between art and morality. I shall briefly discuss two of these first, if only to put them to one side so as to focus on the issues I take to be the most important.

First, there is what we can call “the materials question”: the question of the moral appropriateness of the materials from which art is made. One might think that there are some materials – human remains being a paradigm case – where the only appropriate way to treat them is to give them an appropriate interment. We do, or we should, treat human remains with respect. Hence, it might be thought inappropriate to use human remains as the material for a work of art. Certainly, when people have done so, it has caused a furore. In 1984 the Canadian sculptor Rick Gibson rehydrated two human foetuses, freeze-dried them, and exhibited them in the form of earrings (for this he was convicted of outraging public decency). The use of human remains is not unprecedented. One of the Pre-Raphaelites' favourite pigments was “mummy brown”; so called because it was made from ground-up Egyptian mummy. On discovering this, Edward Burne-Jones apparently rushed outside with his tube of paint and buried it in the garden.