Venus in Exile: The Rejection of Beauty in Twentieth-century Art

by Wendy Steiner

Whereas previous eras had celebrated beauty as the central aim of art, the modernist avant-garde were deeply suspicious of beauty and its perennial symbols, woman and ornament, preferring instead the thrill and alienation of the sublime. They rejected harmony, empathy, and femininity in a denial still reverberating through art and social relations today. Exploring this casting of Venus, with all her charms, into exile, Wendy Steiner's brilliant, ambitious, and provocative analysis explores the twentieth century's troubled relationship with beauty. Tracing this strange and damaging history, starting from Kant's aesthetics and Mary Shelley's horrified response in Frankenstein, Steiner untangles the complex attitudes of modernists toward both beauty and the female subject in art. She argues that the avant-garde set out to replace the impurity of woman and ornament with form -- the new arch-symbol of artistic beauty. However, in the process of controlling desire and pleasure in this way, artists admitted the exotic fetish objects of "primitive" cultures -- someone else's power and allure that surely would not overmaster the sophisticated modernist. A century of pornography, shock, and alienation followed, and this rejection of feminine and bourgeois values -- domesticity, intimacy, charm -- kept the female subject an impossible and remote symbol. Ironically, as Steiner reveals, the feminist hostility to the "beauty myth" had a parallel result, leaving Western society alienated from desire and pleasure on all sides.

In the course of this elegantly constructed and accessibly written argument, Steiner explores the cultural history of the century just ended, from Dada to Futurism,T. S. Eliot's "Wasteland" and Picasso's "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon" to "Pumping Iron II: The Women" and "Deep Throat," Jean-Michel Basquiat and Outsider Art, Naomi Wolf and Cindy Sherman, Thomas Pynchon and Don DeLillo, ranging across art and architecture, poetry and the novel, feminist writing and pornography.

Only in recent years, Steiner demonstrates, has our culture begun to see a way out of this damaging impasse, revising the reputations of neglected artists such as Pierre Bonnard, and celebrating pleasure and charm in the arts of the present. By disentangling beauty from a misogynistic view of femininity -- as passive, narcissistic, sentimental, inefficacious -- Western culture now seems ready to return to the female subject and ornament in art, and to accept male beauty as a possibility to explore and celebrate as well. Steiner finds hints of these developments in the work of figures as varied as the painter Marlene Dumas, the novelist Penelope Fitzgerald, and the choreographer Mark Morris as she leads us to a rediscovery and a reclamation of beauty in the Western world.

From one of our most thoughtful and ambitious cultural critics, this important and thought-provoking work not only provides us with a searching analysis of where we have been in the last century but reveals the promise of where we might be going in the coming one.

Genres: Art, Nonfiction, Feminism, History, Art History, Theory

304 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1901

Reviews

[John Jr. · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating and valuable book, which I won't attempt to review. The publisher's description here will tell you more than I could (unless I sat down for a thorough re-encounter with the text).

[Jeffrey Brannen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Terribly conflicted on this book. It is equal (possibly greater) part analysis of the rejection of beauty in 20th century art and glowing admiration for the project's children and grandchildren. So frequently I was struck by how wicked and dehumanizing modern authors and artists are to women and then Wendy Steiner would flip and go on for pages in gushing admiration of these artists' work.

I've owned the book for 15 years, started it twice before and only previously finished the first chapter. Now, having read Colin Gunton's "The Triune Creator" and "The One, The Three, and The Many," I was ready to tackle the subject of the dehumanized Other in 20th century art.

Gunton makes the case that when God is displaced from being the Creator, fragmentation occurs in a slew of endeavors, including culture. Truth, goodness, and beauty all vie for highest priority with no genuine mediation between them.

Steiner carries this analysis into art where beauty of the particular and agency of persons is rejected in favor of truth in the depiction of abstracted form and color. When truth is elevated above beauty, personhood and relationship with the Other is lost.

Her solution (or rather postmodern art's solution) is to put the pen or brush into the hands of the Other and then the problem can be ameliorated. Or can it? She seems to be uncertain as to the effectiveness of this.

From my reading of Gunton, without the Trinity, creating and sustaining by the plan of the Father by the Son and through the Spirit, there can be no way to genuinely mediate between the one and the many, between the universals of form and the particulars of genuine persons. What is left is the terrible emptiness of self striving for domination at the expense of others.

Steiner is reaching for a similar conclusion, but lacks the trinitarian framework to resolve the conundrum. What is left is brilliant a critique of the dehumanizing tendency of modern art.

Here is my short summary of the book: through the lens of Mary Shelly's "Frankenstein" Wendy Steiner examines 20th century art as a grand but failed experiment which resulted from a mechanized and weaponized world where the rational self must rise above beauty to achieve the sublime. In the process, ornamented woman (women accentuated by makeup, jewelry, and clothing) is rejected in favor of universal, depersonalized forms.

When the forms fail, the fallback is to fetish - the appropriation of primitive imagery- because primitives are permitted (by reason of their lack of evolution) to experience emotional excesses.

Women and domesticity are eliminated.

[Gavin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thesis is that idea of beauty and of women were so intertwined a hundred years ago that Modernism was misogynistic - i.e. in form, as well as just some of its practitioners happening to be. Furthermore, that this, as part of a wider smashing of old things, relates to feminism finally breaking out and establishing new options for women (?) Not sure of the truth-value, but I liked this anyway.

[Alexandra Hildreth · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5– a lot of repetition and hammering down the same point, though Steiner’s work is super well read I felt she relied too heavily on her use of Mary Shelley vs. Kant from the first two pages. Very thoughtful insight at times but at others the reference material was hand picked to support the authors point and made it feel dislocated amongst the larger text

[Lisa]

A book from college that we never ended up reading. So far I think I am reading the words but not completely following everything the author is saying. This is one of the books I force myself to read to feel smarter (but maybe it just makes me feel not as smart).