Ugliness
The Non-beautiful in Art and Theory
Published on 22. December 2015
Book
Paperback/Softback
274 pages
978-1-78453-355-7 (ISBN)
Description
Ugliness is very much alive in the history of art. From ritual invocations of mythic monsters to the scare tactics of the early twentieth-century avant-garde, from the cabinet of curiosities to the identity politics of today, the ugly has been every bit as active as the beautiful, and often much more of a reality - Why then has it been so neglected? This book seeks to remedy this oversight through both broad theoretical reflection and concrete case studies of ugliness in various historical and cultural contexts. The protagonists range from cooks to psychoanalysts, from war prostheses to plates of asparagus, on a world stage stretching from ancient Athens to Singapore today. Drawing across disciplinary and cultural boundaries, the writers illuminate why ugliness, associated over the millennia with negative categories ranging from sin and stupidity to triviality and boredom, remains central to art and cultural practice.
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Target group
College/higher education
Illustrations
71 bw integrated
Dimensions
Height: 229 mm
Width: 152 mm
Thickness: 15 mm
Weight
480 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-78453-355-7 (9781784533557)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Persons
Andrei Pop is postdoctoral fellow, University of Basel and Mechtild Widrich is postdoctoral fellow, department of architecture, ETH Zurich.
Content
Andrei Pop and Mechtild Widrich, Rethinking Ugliness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
The Politics of Ugliness
Gretchen E. Henderson, The Ugly Face Club: A Case Study in the Tangled Politics and Aesthetics of Deformity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Suzannah Biernoff, The Face of War . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Brandon Taylor, Picasso and the Psychoanalysts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Mechtild Widrich, The 'Ugliness' of the Avant-garde . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
The Experience of Ugliness
Edward Payne, Ribera's Grotesque Heads: Between Anatomical Study and Cultural Curiosity . . . . .
Frederique Desbuissons, The Studio and the Kitchen: Culinary Ugliness as Pictorial Stigmatisation in Nineteenth-Century France . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Kathryn Simpson, I'm Ugly Because You Hate Me: Ugliness and Negative Empathy in Oskar Kokoschka's Early Self-Portraiture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Adele Tan, From Political Travesties to Aesthetic Justice - the Ugly in Teo Eng Seng's D Cells . . . .
The Theory of Ugliness
Andrei Pop, Can Beauty and Ugliness Coexist? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Kassandra Nakas, Putrefied, Deliquescent, Amorphous: The 'Liquefying' Rhetoric of Ugliness . . . . .
Odeta Zukauskien?, Orderly Ugliness, Anamorphosis and Visionary Worlds. Jurgis Baltrusaitis' Contribution to Art History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Three Definitions of Ugliness (1765, 1843, 1882) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
The Politics of Ugliness
Gretchen E. Henderson, The Ugly Face Club: A Case Study in the Tangled Politics and Aesthetics of Deformity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Suzannah Biernoff, The Face of War . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Brandon Taylor, Picasso and the Psychoanalysts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Mechtild Widrich, The 'Ugliness' of the Avant-garde . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
The Experience of Ugliness
Edward Payne, Ribera's Grotesque Heads: Between Anatomical Study and Cultural Curiosity . . . . .
Frederique Desbuissons, The Studio and the Kitchen: Culinary Ugliness as Pictorial Stigmatisation in Nineteenth-Century France . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Kathryn Simpson, I'm Ugly Because You Hate Me: Ugliness and Negative Empathy in Oskar Kokoschka's Early Self-Portraiture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Adele Tan, From Political Travesties to Aesthetic Justice - the Ugly in Teo Eng Seng's D Cells . . . .
The Theory of Ugliness
Andrei Pop, Can Beauty and Ugliness Coexist? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Kassandra Nakas, Putrefied, Deliquescent, Amorphous: The 'Liquefying' Rhetoric of Ugliness . . . . .
Odeta Zukauskien?, Orderly Ugliness, Anamorphosis and Visionary Worlds. Jurgis Baltrusaitis' Contribution to Art History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Three Definitions of Ugliness (1765, 1843, 1882) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .