Wendy Steiner, Venus in Exile: The Rejection of Beauty in Twentieth-Century Art (2001): Steiner argues that Kant’s denigration of mere beauty, and his definition of the sublime as a state of perception or understanding which transcends (or exists outside of) our daily, embodied lives, greatly influenced many avant-garde movements and subsequently produced forms of creative expression in Western cultures (French, English, American) that are oppressive and de-humanizing. The text identifies disruptions or breaks with this aesthetic ideology and unabashedly calls for an expansion of contemporary notions regarding the aesthetic to embrace representations that speak to a fundamental search for pleasure and connection.
The first female voice in our syllabus, Steiner is a professor of comparative literature and arguably interprets art history as an “outsider.” (My current art history professor, who received her PhD in Art History from John Hopkins in 2003, had never heard of Steiner.) Nonetheless, I think interdisciplinary work is critically important and Steiner’s text, as cultural criticism, is designed to reach a large audience at a time when Steiner perceives some kind of momentum building for a significant rethinking of aesthetics and the aesthetic.
Like Sarah, I was confused by the format Steiner chose for this book—its own aesthetic could have been more connected to the visual and I am curious about the absence of color even for the central figures Steiner presents, as well as the decision to not incorporate these images throughout the text.
Rather than raising some specific questions, I would like to throw out a couple of observations as discussion starters:
While I loved most of this book, I found myself wincing on occasion at Steiner’s lack of criticality regarding her own social positioning, and I found her blithe use of some terminology to be quite problematic. For example, what I perceived to be her privileging of “the domestic” seemed too narrow, insensitive, and class-based. For many people, their “domestic” experiences are not about pleasure, empathy, or connection. I respect her search for forms of expression that are life-affirming and her notion of integrating or fusing daily experience with more universal concerns, but I reject the term “domestic” as a valuable place for beginning or undertaking this kind of cultural reconstruction.
I found her readings of particular art works to be quite over-determined. I disagreed strongly with her interpretation of Bonnard’s Nude in Bathtub. Bonnard’s lifeless representation of his (schizophrenic?) wife, Marthe, reminds me more of Jennifer Lynch’s Boxing Helena than a “dreamer in a tub projecting a jewel-like domesticity” (169). Her reading of the intersections between race, class, and art in Basquiat's work seemed shallow as well.
Finally, I found her failure to evaluate connections between the political and artistic expression to be a big flaw. Her discussion of body art and tattoos is one-sided and works through concepts of degeneracy, rather addressing the semiotic potential embedded in this kind of expression. I can’t identify a specific American example, but can draw upon my familiarity with Chilean writer and performance artist, Diamela Eltit, who simultaneously performed, photographed and video-recorded acts of self-mutilation to express how deeply bound she was as a woman existing under Augusto Pinochet’s regime. Her skin became the only “voice” available to her. This kind of art is perhaps, most beautifully, about connection, not alienation or de-humanization. I think Steiner's text does not include a sufficient examination of critical intersections between the political and artistic expression because this discussion would complicate her notions of beauty in very problematic ways.
The first female voice in our syllabus, Steiner is a professor of comparative literature and arguably interprets art history as an “outsider.” (My current art history professor, who received her PhD in Art History from John Hopkins in 2003, had never heard of Steiner.) Nonetheless, I think interdisciplinary work is critically important and Steiner’s text, as cultural criticism, is designed to reach a large audience at a time when Steiner perceives some kind of momentum building for a significant rethinking of aesthetics and the aesthetic.
Like Sarah, I was confused by the format Steiner chose for this book—its own aesthetic could have been more connected to the visual and I am curious about the absence of color even for the central figures Steiner presents, as well as the decision to not incorporate these images throughout the text.
Rather than raising some specific questions, I would like to throw out a couple of observations as discussion starters:
While I loved most of this book, I found myself wincing on occasion at Steiner’s lack of criticality regarding her own social positioning, and I found her blithe use of some terminology to be quite problematic. For example, what I perceived to be her privileging of “the domestic” seemed too narrow, insensitive, and class-based. For many people, their “domestic” experiences are not about pleasure, empathy, or connection. I respect her search for forms of expression that are life-affirming and her notion of integrating or fusing daily experience with more universal concerns, but I reject the term “domestic” as a valuable place for beginning or undertaking this kind of cultural reconstruction.
I found her readings of particular art works to be quite over-determined. I disagreed strongly with her interpretation of Bonnard’s Nude in Bathtub. Bonnard’s lifeless representation of his (schizophrenic?) wife, Marthe, reminds me more of Jennifer Lynch’s Boxing Helena than a “dreamer in a tub projecting a jewel-like domesticity” (169). Her reading of the intersections between race, class, and art in Basquiat's work seemed shallow as well.
Finally, I found her failure to evaluate connections between the political and artistic expression to be a big flaw. Her discussion of body art and tattoos is one-sided and works through concepts of degeneracy, rather addressing the semiotic potential embedded in this kind of expression. I can’t identify a specific American example, but can draw upon my familiarity with Chilean writer and performance artist, Diamela Eltit, who simultaneously performed, photographed and video-recorded acts of self-mutilation to express how deeply bound she was as a woman existing under Augusto Pinochet’s regime. Her skin became the only “voice” available to her. This kind of art is perhaps, most beautifully, about connection, not alienation or de-humanization. I think Steiner's text does not include a sufficient examination of critical intersections between the political and artistic expression because this discussion would complicate her notions of beauty in very problematic ways.
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