ABSTRACT
In Western modernity, risk is an aesthetic virtue. Audiences and critics judge artworks for their novelty and originality, which in turn can be measured in terms of the risks the artist is willing to take, understood as the degree to which she is willing to break and alter existing aesthetic (as well as social) norms. Risk-taking distinguishes avant-garde from mainstream art, while risk-averse artists attract criticism. This contribution explores the concept of risk as aesthetic virtue in three steps. First, the contribution offers a sketch of the economy of aesthetic risk. Even where aesthetic risk stands in opposition to the market economy, it remains tied to this economy and has social and pecuniary rewards. The contribution then discusses how risk became an aesthetic virtue at the intersection of the parallel histories of art and globalized trade. At the level of a theory of practice, the emergence of risk as aesthetic virtue coincides with a transition from a metaphysics of providence to a one of probability. Finally, with avant-garde dance and the Hollywood industry as examples, the contribution discusses how risk works as aesthetic virtue and argues that both examples may similarly be understood in terms of an aesthetics of uncertainty.
