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| the grotesque in western art and culture: The Grotesque in Western Art and Culture Frances S. Connelly, 2014-07-31 This book establishes a fresh and expansive view of the grotesque in Western art and culture, from 1500 to the present day. Following the non-linear evolution of the grotesque, Frances S. Connelly analyzes key works, situating them within their immediate social and cultural contexts, as well as their place in the historical tradition. By taking a long historical view, the book reveals the grotesque to be a complex and continuous tradition comprised of several distinct strands: the ornamental, the carnivalesque and caricatural, the traumatic, and the profound. The book articulates a model for understanding the grotesque as a rupture of cultural boundaries that compromises and contradicts accepted realities. Connelly demonstrates that the grotesque is more than a style, genre, or subject; it is a cultural phenomenon engaging the central concerns of the humanistic debate today. Hybrid, ambivalent, and changeful, the grotesque is a shaping force in the modern era. |
| the grotesque in western art and culture: The Grotesque and the Unnatural , |
| the grotesque in western art and culture: Second Nature Josephine Gray, Lisa Trahair, 2022-11-08 Examining Henri Bergson’s work, philosophy, and the body, this volume explores the history and philosophy of comedy, film, psychoanalysis and the comic performance of the future, creating a theoretical and practice-based framework for the field. |
| the grotesque in western art and culture: The Grotesque in Church Art Thomas Tindall Wildridge, 1899 |
| the grotesque in western art and culture: Grotesque Justin D. Edwards, Rune Graulund, 2013 Grotesque provides an invaluable and accessible guide to the use (and abuse) of this complex literary term. Justin D. Edwards and Rune Graulund explore the influence of the grotesque on cultural forms throughout history, with particular focus on its representation in literature, visual art and film. The book: presents a history of the literary grotesque from Classical writing to the present examines theoretical debates around the term in their historical and cultural contexts introduce readers to key writers and artists of the grotesque, from Homer to Rabelais, Shakespeare, Carson McCullers and David Cronenberg analyses key terms such as disharmony, deformed and distorted bodies, misfits and freaks explores the grotesque in relation to queer theory, post-colonialism and the carnivalesque. Grotesque presents readers with an original and distinctive overview of this vital genre and is an essential guide for students of literature, art history and film studies. |
| the grotesque in western art and culture: The Grotesque in Art and Literature Wolfgang Kayser, 1957 |
| the grotesque in western art and culture: Gift of the Grotesque Daniel J. D. Stulac, 2022-02-22 “No other book of the Bible is quite so R-rated. No other book is quite so ugly or grotesque. Judges offers its reader not a roster of angelic saints, but an astonishing tempest of brutality, feces, slaughter, assassinations, conspiracy, genocide, child sacrifice, rage, betrayal, mass graves, gang-rape, corpse mutilation, kidnapping, and civil war.” Gift of the Grotesque offers readers a series of seven theological essays focused on one of the most confusing and challenging books in the biblical canon. Stulac’s captivating style combines sensitive exegesis with broadly accessible meditations on culture, art, music, literature, memoir, theology, and spirituality. Better understood as a companion rather than a biblical commentary, this unusual resource will kickstart the theological imagination of anyone who struggles to understand how the book of Judges points forward to the life and work of Jesus Christ. Dare to follow an experienced biblical scholar into the heart of Israel’s theological Dark Age, and you will encounter there the transformative Word of God in ways you do not expect. The prophetic book of Judges, writes Stulac, “wants to gut you like a fish, because on the far side of that unenviable prospect, it wants you alive like you’ve never lived before.” |
| the grotesque in western art and culture: Comic Grotesque Neue Galerie New York, 2004 Filled with irreverent wit, comical elements, and absurdist humour, the comic-grotesque has fascinated artists since ancient times. This volume brings together an array of artists including Paul Klee, Max Klinger, Alfred Kubin, Emil Nolde, and Max Ernst and traces the evolution of this influential movement in modern art. |
| the grotesque in western art and culture: The Written and the Visual Małgorzata Łuczyńska-Hołdys, 2021-06-07 The author investigates the points of contact between literature, visual arts and feminist criticism by offering fresh readings of selected Romantic and Victorian poems about women and a discussion of their wide-ranging visual history – a subject which has not yet been undertaken in a book-length study. The innovative feature of the project lies in its scope and merit: extensive readings of 19th century poetry, informed by carefully chosen critical approaches, are followed by a rich overview and analysis of visual renderings of the poems in question. Łuczyńska-Hołdys has succeeded in bringing to light previously unknown or undiscussed works, and reappraised many well-known paintings and illustrations. |
| the grotesque in western art and culture: The Neronian Grotesque Scott Weiss, 2023-11-13 During the reign of Nero, Roman culture produced some of its most spectacular works of art and literature, and some of its strangest. This study explores these effects across textual and visual media in an integrated way. Weiss' analysis allows for appreciation of the shared strategies of composition, overlaps between literary and visual rhetoric, the role of context in shaping the reception of a work, and the authority of the reader/viewer to generate meaning. The volume offers an account of Roman visual-literary interactions in the mid-first century ᴄᴇ that considers these dynamics as informing broad cultural phenomena. The results reveal features pervasive in a literary and artistic culture invested in exploring the edges of expression. The Neronian Grotesque is a fascinating study on the literary and artistic production in the Neronian period, and has wider implications for anyone working in the field of Roman cultural history and visual studies more broadly. |
| the grotesque in western art and culture: The Early Modern Grotesque Liam Semler, 2018-10-26 The Early Modern Grotesque: English Sources and Documents 1500-1700 offers readers a large and fully annotated collection of primary source texts addressing the grotesque in the English Renaissance. The sources are arranged chronologically in 120 numbered items with accompanying explanatory Notes. Each Note provides clarification of difficult terms in the source text, locating it in the context of early modern English and Continental discourses on the grotesque. The Notes also direct readers to further English sources and relevant modern scholarship. This volume includes a detailed introduction surveying the vocabulary, form and meaning of the grotesque from its arrival as a word, concept and aesthetic in 16th century England to its early maturity in the 18th century. The Introduction, Items and Notes, complemented by illustrations and a comprehensive bibliography, provide an unprecedented view of the evolving complexity and diversity of the early modern English grotesque. While giving due credit to Wolfgang Kayser and Mikhail Bakhtin as masters of grotesque theory, this ground-breaking book aims to provoke new, evidence-based approaches to understanding the specifically English grotesque. The textual archive from 1500-1700 is a rich and intriguing record that offers much to interested readers and researchers in the fields of literary studies, theatre studies and art history. |
| the grotesque in western art and culture: Prophetic Culture Federico Campagna, 2021-06-17 Selected as one of The Tablet's Books of the Year 2021 Throughout history, different civilisations have given rise to many alternative worlds. Each of them was the enactment of a unique story about the structure of reality, the rhythm of time and the range of what it is possible to think and to do in the course of a life. Cosmological stories, however, are fragile things. As soon as they lose their ring of truth and their significance for living, the worlds that they brought into existence disintegrate. New and alien worlds emerge from their ruins. Federico Campagna explores the twilight of our contemporary notion of reality, and the fading of the cosmological story that belonged to the civilisation of Westernised Modernity. How are we to face the challenge of leaving a fertile cultural legacy to those who will come after the end of our future? How can we help the creation of new worlds out of the ruins of our own? |
| the grotesque in western art and culture: Art on My Mind bell hooks, 2025-05-27 The canonical work of cultural criticism by the “profoundly influential critic” (Artnet), in a beautiful thirtieth-anniversary edition, featuring a new foreword by esteemed visual artist Mickalene Thomas “Sharp and persuasive.” —The New York Times Book Review on the original publication of Art on My Mind In Art on My Mind, “one of the country’s most influential feminist thinkers“ (Artforum) offers a tender yet potent suite of writings for a world increasingly concerned with art and identity politics. This collection of bell hooks’s essays, each with art at its center, explores both the obvious and obscure: from ruminations on the fraught representation of Black bodies, to reflections on the creative processes of women artists, to analysis of the use of blood in visual art. bell hooks has been “instrumental in cracking open the white, western canon for Black artists” (Artnet), with searing essays complemented by conversations with Carrie Mae Weems, Emma Amos, Margo Humphrey, and LaVerne Wells-Bowie. Featuring full-color artwork from giants such as Jean-Michel Basquiat, Lorna Simpson, and Alison Saar, Art on My Mind “examines the way race, sex and class shape who makes art, how it sells and who values it” (The New York Times), while questioning how art can be instrumental for Black liberation. In doing so, hooks urges us to unravel the forces of oppression that colonize our imaginations. With a new foreword from acclaimed contemporary artist Mickalene Thomas, this thirtieth-anniversary edition passes the torch to a new generation of artists, capturing hooks’s simple yet evergreen affirmation: art matters—it is a life force in the struggle for freedom. Art on My Mind is essential reading for anyone looking to find lessons on liberation and creativity in the world of color—the free world of art. |
| the grotesque in western art and culture: Horror Literature from Gothic to Post-Modern Michele Brittany, Nicholas Diak, 2020-03-02 From shambling zombies to Gothic ghosts, horror has entertained thrill-seeking readers for centuries. A versatile literary genre, it offers commentary on societal issues, fresh insight into the everyday and moral tales disguised in haunting tropes and grotesque acts, with many stories worthy of critical appraisal. This collection of new essays takes in a range of topics, focusing on historic works such as Ann Radcliffe's Gaston de Blondeville (1826) and modern novels including Max Brooks' World War Z. Other contributions examine weird fiction, Stephen King, Richard Laymon, Indigenous Australian monster mythology and horror in picture books for young children. |
| the grotesque in western art and culture: On the Grotesque Geoffrey Galt Harpham, 1982 The Description for this book, On the Grotesque: Strategies of Contradiction in Art and Literature, will be forthcoming. |
| the grotesque in western art and culture: The Female Grotesque Mary Russo, 2012-11-12 The grotesque - the exagggerated, the deformed, the monstrous - has been a well-considered subject for students of comparative literature and art. In a major addition to the literature of art, cultural criticism and feminist studies, Mary Russo re-examines the grotesque in the light of gender, exploring the works of Angela Carter David Cronenberg Bahktin Kristeva Freud Zizek. Mary Russo looks at the portrayal of the grotesque in Western culture and by combining the iconographic and the historical, locates the role of the woman's body in the discourse of the grotesque. |
| the grotesque in western art and culture: Handbook of Gestalt-Theoretical Psychology of Art Walter Coppola, 2025-06-16 The Handbook of Gestalt-Theoretic Psychology of Art synthesizes contemporary research in the psychology of perception, cognition, language and hearing to reassess the Gestalt approach to studying the arts. Since Rudolf Arnheim’s death in 2007, the field has seen a resurgence, with scientists revisiting and reinventing previously articulated points of view. For the first time, this new work is gathered in a single comprehensive resource. Beginning with a history of the field, the book considers meta-theoretic issues before discussing the various senses. It explores topics including aesthetics, space, poetry, literature, music, and film, bringing together leading researchers from across the discipline. It will be an essential read for all students and researchers of the psychology of art, the psychology of perception, or Gestalt Theory. |
| the grotesque in western art and culture: The Total Art of Stalinism Boris Groys, 2011-08-08 From the ruins of communism, Boris Groys emerges to provoke our interest in the aesthetic goals pursued with such catastrophic consequences by its founders. Interpreting totalitarian art and literature in the context of cultural history, this brilliant essay likens totalitarian aims to the modernists’ goal of producing world-transformative art. In this new edition, Groys revisits the debate that the book has stimulated since its first publication. |
| the grotesque in western art and culture: The Routledge Companion to Literature and Art Neil Murphy, W. Michelle Wang, Cheryl Julia Lee, 2024-03-11 The Routledge Companion to Literature and Art explores the links between literature and visual art from classical ekphrasis through to contemporary experimental forms. The collection’s engagement with diverse literary and cultural artifacts offers a comprehensive survey of the vibrant interrelationships that currently inform literary studies and the arts. Featuring four sections, the first part provides an overview of theoretical approaches to art and literature from philosophy and aesthetics through to cognitive neuroscience. Part two examines one of the most important intersections between text and image: the workings of ekphrasis across poetry, fiction, drama, comics, life and travel writing, and architectural treatises. Parts three and four consider intermedial crossings from antiquity to the present. The contributors examine the rich intermedial experiments that range from manuscript studies to infographics in graphic narratives, illuminating the vibrant ways in which texts have intersected with illustration, music, dance, architecture, painting, photography, media installations, and television. Throughout this dynamic collection of 37 chapters, the contributors evolve existing critical debates in innovative new directions. The volume will be a critical resource for advanced undergraduate and graduate students, as well as specialist scholars working in literary studies, philosophy of art, text and image studies, and visual culture. The Introduction and Chapters 10, 14 and 37 of this book are freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) 4.0 license. |
| the grotesque in western art and culture: The Oxford Handbook of Montaigne Philippe Desan, 2016-10-14 In 1580, Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592) published a book unique by its title and its content: EssaysR. A literary genre was born. At first sight, the Essays resemble a patchwork of personal reflections, but they engage with questions that animate the human mind, and tend toward a single goal: to live better in the present and to prepare for death. For this reason, Montaigne's thought and writings have been a subject of enduring interest across disciplines. This Handbook brings together essays by prominent scholars that examine Montaigne's literary, philosophical, and political contributions, and assess his legacy and relevance today in a global perspective. The chapters of this Handbook offer a sweeping study of Montaigne across different disciplines and in a global perspective. One section covers the historical Montaigne, situating his thought in his own time and space, notably the Wars of Religion in France. The political, historical and religious context of Montaigne's Essays requires a rigorous presentation to inform the modern reader of the issues and problems that confronted Montaigne and his contemporaries in his own time. In addition to this contextual approach to Montaigne, the Handbook also establishes a connection between Montaigne's writings and issues and problems directly relevant to our modern times, that is to say, our age of global ideology. Montaigne's considerations, or essays, offer a point of departure for the modern reader's own assessments. The Essays analyze what can be broadly defined as human nature, the endless process by which the individual tries to impose opinions upon others through the production of laws, policies or philosophies. Montaigne's motto -- What do I know? -- is a simple question yet one of perennial significance. One could argue that reading Montaigne today teaches us that the angle defines the world we see, or, as Montaigne wrote: What matters is not merely that we see the thing, but how we see it. |
| the grotesque in western art and culture: But Is It Art? Cynthia Freeland, 2002-02-07 In today's art world many strange, even shocking, things qualify as art. In this book, Cynthia Freeland explains why innovation and controversy are valued in the arts, weaving together philosophy and art theory with many fascinating examples. She discusses blood, beauty, culture, money, museums, sex, and politics, clarifying contemporary and historical accounts of the nature, function, and interpretation of the arts. Freeland also propels us into the future by surveying cutting-edge web sites, along with the latest research on the brain's role in perceiving art. This clear, provocative book engages with the big debates surrounding our responses to art and is an invaluable introduction to anyone interested in thinking about art. |
| the grotesque in western art and culture: The Art of Africa Christa Clarke, Rebecca Arkenberg, 2006 By focusing on forty works from the Metropolitan's collection, this educator's resource kit presents the rich and diverse artistic heritage of sub-Saharan Africa. Included are a brief introduction and history of the continent, an explanation of the role of visual expression in Africa, descriptions of the form and function of the works, lesson plans, class activities, map, bibliography, and glossary. |
| the grotesque in western art and culture: Edinburgh Companion to Gothic and the Arts David Punter, 2019-08-05 The Gothic is a contested and complicated phenomenon, extending over many centuries and across all the arts. In The Edinburgh Companion to the Gothic and the Arts, the range of essays run from medieval architecture and design to contemporary gaming and internet fiction; from classical painting to the modern novel; from ballet and dance to contemporary Goth music. The contributors include many of the best-known critics of the Gothic (e.g., Hogle, Punter, Spooner, Bruhm) as well as newer names such as Kirk and Round. The editor has put all these contributors in touch with each other in the preparation of their essays in order to ensure the maximum benefit to the reader by producing a well-integrated book which will prove much more than a collection of disparate essays, but rather a distinctive contribution to a field. |
| the grotesque in western art and culture: Modern Art and the Death of a Culture Hendrik Roelof Rookmaaker, 1994 Uses popular and lesser-known paintings to show modern art's reflection of a dying culture and how Christian attitudes can create hope in today's society. |
| the grotesque in western art and culture: The Sleep of Reason Frances S. Connelly, 1999 A comprehensive revision of our understanding of primitivism and its impact on modern art, centering on the invention of the idea of primitive art. |
| the grotesque in western art and culture: Super Bodies Jeffrey A. Brown, 2023-08 Finalist — San Diego Comic-Con International 2024 Eisner Award in Best Academic/Scholarly Work 2024 MPCA/ACA Best Book for Use in the Classroom, Midwest Popular Culture Association / Midwest American Culture Association (MPCA/ACA) An examination of the art in superhero comics and how style influences comic narratives. For many, the idea of comic book art implies simplistic four-color renderings of stiff characters slugging it out. In fact, modern superhero comic books showcase a range of complex artistic styles, with diverse connotations. Leading comics scholar Jeffrey A. Brown assesses six distinct approaches to superhero illustration—idealism, realism, cute, retro, grotesque, and noir—examining how each visually represents the superhero as a symbolic construct freighted with meaning. Whereas comic book studies tend to focus on text and narrative, Super Bodies gives overdue credit to the artwork, which is not only a principal source of the appeal of comic books but also central to the values these works embody. Brown argues that superheroes are to be taken not as representations of people but as iconic types, and the art conveys this. Even the most realistic comic illustrations are designed to suggest not persons but ideas—ideas about bodies and societies. Thus the appearance of superheroes both directly and indirectly influences the story being told as well as the opinions readers form concerning justice, authority, gender, puberty, sexuality, ethnicity, violence, and other concepts central to political and cultural life. |
| the grotesque in western art and culture: Discourse on Sacred and Profane Images Gabriele Paleotti, 2012 In the wake of the Counter-Reformation, Cardinal Gabriele Paleotti, the archbishop of Bologna, wrote a remarkable treatise on art during a time when the Church feared rampant abuse in the arts. Paleotti's 'Discourse on Sacred and Profane Images' argues that art should address a broad audience and explains the painter's responsibility to his spectators. |
| the grotesque in western art and culture: The medium of Leonora Carrington Catriona McAra, 2022-11-29 Before her death, the artist and writer Leonora Carrington (1917–2011) had already garnered a cult following, with numerous creative people making the pilgrimage to meet her at her home in Mexico City. Since then, her fame has only increased. Thinking across contemporary art media, this book demonstrates how Carrington has posthumously become a medium in her own right, critically haunting the creative intellectuals who met or knew her. It explores the work of a remarkable variety of individuals and organisations, including the artists Lucy Skaer, Samantha Sweeting and Lynn Lu, the actress Tilda Swinton, the novelists Chloe Aridjis and Heidi Sopinka and the ensemble Double Edge Theatre. This long-awaited study provides essential reading for both new and established members of the burgeoning Carrington fan club. |
| the grotesque in western art and culture: Picturing Punishment Anuradha Gobin, 2021-09-13 Bringing together themes in the history of art, punishment, religion, and the history of medicine, Picturing Punishment provides new insights into the wider importance of the criminal to civic life. |
| the grotesque in western art and culture: György Ligeti's Cultural Identities Amy Bauer, Márton Kerékfy, 2017-10-02 Since György Ligeti’s death in 2006, there has been a growing acknowledgement of how central he was to the late twentieth-century cultural landscape. This collection is the first book devoted to exploring the composer’s life and music within the context of his East European roots, revealing his dual identities as both Hungarian national and cosmopolitan modernist. Contributors explore the artistic and socio-cultural contexts of Ligeti’s early works, including composition and music theory, the influence of East European folk music, notions of home and identity, his ambivalent attitude to his Hungarian past and his references to his homeland in his later music. Many of the valuable insights offered profit from new research undertaken at the Paul Sacher Foundation, Basel, while also drawing on the knowledge of long-time associates such as the composer’s assistant, Louise Duchesneau. The contributions as a whole reveal Ligeti’s thoroughly cosmopolitan milieu and values, and illuminate why his music continues to inspire new generations of performers, composers and listeners. |
| the grotesque in western art and culture: The Arabesque from Kant to Comics Cordula Grewe, 2021-09-01 The Arabesque from Kant to Comics tracks the life and afterlife of the arabesque in its surprising transformation from an iconoclastic literary theory of early German Romanticism to aesthetic experimentation in both avant-garde art and popular culture. Its explosive growth in popularity was followed by an inevitable taming as arabesques became staples in book illustration, poetry publications, and even the decoration of printed scores. The subversive potential of the arabesque was preserved in one of its most surprising offspring, the comic strip: born at the moment when the cholera pandemic first swept through Europe, the comic translated the arabesque’s rank growth into unnerving lawlessness and sequences of contagious visual slapstick. Focusing roughly on the period between 1780 and 1880, this book illuminates the intersecting histories of avant-garde theories of writing, visual culture, and even the disciplinary origins of art history. In the process, it explores media history and intermediality, social networks and cultural transfer, as well as the rise of new and nontraditional art forms. This book will be of particular interest to scholars of art history, intellectual history, European art, aesthetics, book illustration, material culture, reproduction, comics, and German history. |
| the grotesque in western art and culture: On the Politics of Ugliness Sara Rodrigues, Ela Przybylo, 2018-08-29 Ugliness or unsightliness is much more than a quality or property of an individual’s appearance—it has long functioned as a social category that demarcates access to social, cultural, and political spaces and capital. The editors of and authors in this collection harness intersectional and interdisciplinary approaches in order to examine ugliness as a political category that is deployed to uphold established notions of worth and entitlement. On the Politics of Ugliness identifies and challenges the harmful effects that labels and feelings of ugliness have on individuals and the socio-political order. It explores ugliness in relation to the intersectional processes of racialization, colonization and settler colonialism, gender-making, ableism, heteronormativity, and fatphobia. On the Politics of Ugliness asks that we fight against visual injustice and imagine new ways of seeing. |
| the grotesque in western art and culture: What Film Is Good For Julian Hanich, Martin P. Rossouw, 2023-09-05 For well over a century, going to the movies has been a favorite pastime for billions across the globe. But is film actually good for anything? This volume brings together thirty-six scholars, critics, and filmmakers in search of an answer. Their responses range from the most personal to the most theoretical—and, together, recast current debates about film ethics. Movie watching here emerges as a wellspring of value, able to sustain countless visions of the good life. Films, these authors affirm, make us reflect, connect, adapt; they evoke wonder and beauty; they challenge and transform. In a word, its varieties of value make film invaluable. |
| the grotesque in western art and culture: The Spirit of Carnival David Danow, 2021-05-11 The world of literature responds to the spirit of carnival in ways that are both social and cultural, mythological and archetypal. Literature provides a mirror in which carnival is reflected and refracted through the multifarious perspectives of verbal art. In his original, wide-ranging book, David K. Danow catches the various reflections in that mirror, from the bright, life-affirming magical side of carnival, as revealed in the literature of Latin American writers, to its dark, grotesque, death-embracing aspect as illustrated in numerous novels depicting the dire experience of the Second World War. The remarkable meshing of these two diametrically opposed yet inextricably intertwined facets of literature (and of life) makes for an intriguing sphere of investigation, for the carnival spirit is animated by a human need to dissolve borders and eliminate boundaries—including, symbolically, those between life and death—in an ongoing effort to merge opposing forces into new configurations of truth and meaning. Expanding upon the seminal ideas of Mikhail Bakhtin, carnival, argues Danow, is designed to allow one extreme to flow into another, to provide for one polarity (official culture) to confront its opposite (unofficial culture), much as individuals engage in dialogue. In this case the result is dialogized carnival or carnivalized dialogue. In their artmaking, Danow claims, human beings are animated by a periodic predisposition toward the bright side of carnival, matched by an equally strong, far darker predilection. Carnival forms of thinking are firmly embedded within the human psyche as archetypal patterns. In this engaging exploratory book, we are shown the distinctive imprint of these primordial structures within a multitude of seemingly disparate literary works. |
| the grotesque in western art and culture: Beautiful Ugliness Mark William Roche, 2023-10-15 This book probes the intersection of the beautiful and the ugly, offering a systematic framework to understand, interpret, and evaluate how ugliness can contribute to beautiful art. Many great artworks include elements of ugliness: repugnant content, disproportionate forms, unresolved dissonance, and unintegrated parts. Mark William Roche’s authoritative monograph Beautiful Ugliness: Christianity, Modernity, and the Arts challenges current practices of the dominant aesthetic schools by exploring the role of ugliness in art and literature. Roche offers a comprehensive and unique framework that integrates philosophical and theological reflection, intellectual-historical analysis, and interpretations of a large number of works from the arts. The study is driven by the recognition that, though ugliness is usually understood as the opposite of beauty, ugliness nonetheless contributes significantly to the beauty of many artworks. Roche’s analysis unfolds in three parts. The first offers a refreshing conceptual analysis of ugliness in art. The second considers the history of ugliness in art and literature, with special attention to its role in Christian art and its central place in modern and contemporary art. The third synthesizes earlier material, offering a taxonomy of beautiful ugliness derived from Hegelian philosophical categories. Roche mesmerizes the reader with an extraordinary range of literary scholarship and expertise, with a particular focus on English, Latin, and German literature, and with a broad range of analyzed phenomena, including fine arts, architecture, and music. Including 63 color illustrations, Beautiful Ugliness will draw in readers from multiple disciplines as well as those from beyond the academy who wish to make sense of today’s complex art world. |
| the grotesque in western art and culture: Art And The Committed Eye Richard Leppert, 2019-04-05 In Art and the Committed Eye Richard Leppert examines Western European and American art from the fifteenth to the twentieth century. He studies the complex relation between the look of images and the variety of social and cultural uses to which they are put and demonstrates that the meaning of any image is significantly determined by its function, which changes over time. In particular, he emphasizes the ways in which visual culture is called on to mediate social differences defined by gender, class, and race. In , Leppert addresses the nature and task of representation, discussing how meaning accrues to images and what role vision and visuality play in the history of modernity. Here he explains imagery's power to attract our gaze by triggering desire and focuses on the long history of the use of representation to enact a deception, whether in painting or advertising. explores art's relation to the material world, to the ways in which images mark our various physical and psychic ties to objects. The author analyzes still life paintings whose subject matter is both extraordinarily diverse and deeply paradoxical—from flower bouquets to grotesque formal arrangements of human body parts. Leppert demonstrates that even in innocent still lifes, formal design and technical execution are imbued with cultural conflict and social power. is devoted to the representation of the human body—as subject to obsessive gazing and as an object of display, spectacle, and transgression. The variety of body representation is enormous: pleased or tortured, gorgeous or monstrous, modest or lascivious, powerful or weak, in the bloom of life or under the anatomist's knife, clothed or naked. But it is the sexual body, Leppert shows, that has provided the West with its richest, most complex, contradictory, conflicted, and paradoxical accounts of human identity in relation to social ideals. |
| the grotesque in western art and culture: SOCRATES Jasmine Fernandez, Dr C Upendra, Dr Amarjeet Nayak, Dr Ghasemali Kouchnani, Nadia Maftouni, Alexandros Schismenos, Dr Michelle Blakely, Dr Curtis R. Blakely, Rotimi Adeforiti, Gizachew W. Gifayehu, Prof. (Dr) Inderjeet Singh Sodhi, Dr. Prakash Chand Kandpal, Isha, Sisay Assemrie Temesgen, 2019-04-28 This issue of SOCRATES has been divided into three sections. The first section of this issue is English Literature. The paper authored by Jasmine Fernandez, Dr C Upendra and Dr Amarjeet Nayak explore the medical thriller Coma through a grotesque lens. This study provides us with the idea that grotesquery is employed as a template to translate meanings and interpretations of medical thrillers. Through multiple responses as elicited by the grotesque, these thrillers engage with readers differently and hence produce varied responses. The second section of this issue is Philosophy. The first paper of this section has been authored by Ghasemali Kouchnani and Nadia Maftouni explores the Semiotics of Love in Suhrawardi’s Allegorical Philosophy. The paper concludes that the theme of Suhrawardi’s stories is mystical love and the wayfarer loves God. This love is to be spiritual emotion rather than passionate love simply because, on his way, the seeker must overcome his own inner and outer senses. These perceptions are symbolized by ten towers, ten graves, ten flyers, ten wardens, five chambers and five gates. These are the allegories of perceptions, i.e., the five internal and the five external senses could be seen in “Treatise on Towers”, “A Tale of Occidental Exile”, “The Simurgh’s Shrill Cry”, “The Red Intellect”, and “On the Reality of Love”. The second paper of this section has been authored by Alexandros Schismenos. The paper represents an opinion that, as a chimera, time-travel is non-feasible and impossible. To support his claim the author briefly outlines the origins of the time-travel concept and its epistemological and metaphysical/ontological conditions. If these conditions prove to be absurd, the logical impossibility of time-travel will have been demonstrated. The third section of this issue is Political science. The first paper of this section has been authored by Dr Michelle L Blakely and Dr Curtis R Blakely. This paper represents the first application of the Game theory to the field of penology, conceptualizing the relationship between prisons and prisoners as a “game” provides insight into the motivations, strategic behaviors and decision-making processes of its players. The second paper of this section has been authored by Rotimi Adeforiti which tends to identify the factors responsible for the crises of integration in the Nigeria federal system. The paper concludes that the foundations of federalism were laid by the British consciously or unconsciously for the existence of Nigeria. The country subscribed to federal system of government and had been practicing it. The problem facing Nigeria federal system today among others is no longer amalgamation of the country but the interest of various elite or elite ‘to be’ in the country. The third paper of this section has been authored by Gizachew Wondie Gifayehu which attempts to analyse the development and practice of citizenship and citizenship rights in Ethiopia. The fourth paper of this section has been authored by Prof. Inderjeet Singh Sodhi. This paper deals with the current status of water management in India and its emerging issues and challenges. The fifth paper of this section has been authored by Dr Prakash Chand Kandpal. This paper focuses on the development of sustainable cities, highlighting the actions and initiatives undertaken by the Government of Delhi to combat the menace of pollution in Delhi. The sixth paper of this section authored by Isha presents the concept of Public-Private Partnership and also evaluates its progress in school education in India. The paper concludes that the introduction of the PPP model in school education in India could help in the achievement of desired results as the payments are made by the government against the services delivered through the private sector. But there is a risk sharing between both government and private sector which is helpful for the delivery of public services in an efficient manner. However, PPP in the education sector has a long way to go as the schools approved under PPP model in some states of India like Assam, Bihar, Himachal Pradesh, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Odisha, Tripura and West Bengal are still not functioning. The seventh paper of this section has been authored by Sisay Assemrie Temesgen. This paper analyzes the moral acceptability of violent force and retaliation at the individual and community level, and in the arena of national and international politics. |
| the grotesque in western art and culture: Messerschmidt's Character Heads Michael Yonan, 2017-09-22 This book examines a famous series of sculptures by the German artist Franz Xaver Messerschmidt (1736–1783) known as his Character Heads. These are busts of human heads, highly unconventional for their time, representing strange, often inexplicable facial expressions. Scholars have struggled to explain these works of art. Some have said that Messerschmidt was insane, while others suggested that he tried to illustrate some sort of intellectual system. Michael Yonan argues that these sculptures are simultaneously explorations of art’s power and also critiques of the aesthetic limits that would be placed on that power. |
| the grotesque in western art and culture: Collectivism After Modernism Blake Stimson, Gregory Sholette, 2007 “Don't start an art collective until you read this book.” —Guerrilla Girls “Ever since Web 2.0 with its wikis, blogs and social networks the art of collaboration is back on the agenda.Collectivism after Modernism convincingly proves that art collectives did not stop after the proclaimed death of the historical avant-gardes. Like never before technology reinvents the social and artists claim the steering wheel!” —Geert Lovink, Institute of Network Cultures, Amsterdam “This examination of the succession of post-war avant-gardes and collectives is new, important, and engaged.” — Stephen F. Eisenman, author of The Abu Ghraib Effect “Collectivism after Modernism crucially helps us understand what artists and others can do in mushy, stinky times like ours. What can the seemingly powerless do in the face of mighty forces that seem to have their act really together? Here, Stimson and Sholette put forth many good answers.” —Yes Men Spanning the globe from Europe, Japan, and the United States to Africa, Cuba, and Mexico,Collectivism after Modernism explores the ways in which collectives function within cultural norms, social conventions, and corporate or state-sanctioned art. Together, these essays demonstrate that collectivism survives as an influential artistic practice despite the art world's star system of individuality.Collectivism after Modernism provides the historical understanding necessary for thinking through postmodern collective practice, now and into the future. Contributors: Irina Aristarkhova, Jesse Drew, Okwui Enwezor, Rubén Gallo, Chris Gilbert, Brian Holmes, Alan Moore, Jelena Stojanovi´c, Reiko Tomii, Rachel Weiss. Blake Stimson is associate professor of art history at the University of California Davis, the author ofThe Pivot of the World: Photography and Its Nation, and coeditor ofVisual Worlds and Conceptual Art: A Critical Anthology. Gregory Sholette is an artist, writer, and cofounder of collectives Political Art Documentation/Distribution and REPOhistory. He is coeditor ofThe Interventionists: Users' Manual for the Creative Disruption of Everyday Life. “To understand the various forms of postwar collectivism as historically determined phenomena and to articulate the possibilities for contemporary collectivist art production is the aim of Collectivism after Modernism. The essays assembled in this anthology argue that to make truly collective art means to reconsider the relation between art and public; examples from the Situationist International and Group Material to Paper Tiger Television and the Congolese collective Le Groupe Amos make the point. To construct an art of shared experience means to go beyond projecting what Blake Stimson and Gregory Sholette call the “imagined community”: a collective has to be more than an ideal, and more than communal craft; it has to be a truly social enterprise. Not only does it use unconventional forms and media to communicate the issues and experiences usually excluded from artistic representation, but it gives voice to a multiplicity of perspectives. At its best it relies on the participation of the audience to actively contribute to the work, carrying forth the dialogue it inspires.” —BOMB |
| the grotesque in western art and culture: Reportage Drawing Louis Netter, 2023-12-28 How does drawing shape the truth and our understanding of the visual world? Why has the act of reportage drawing persisted and thrived in our ever-changing media landscape? This book offers a deep dive into the world of reportage drawing, a world which is provocative, mixed media, transdisciplinary and immersed in the idiosyncratic vision of the artist. Where the traditional orientation of reportage was on the communicative function of the image as a record of an event, contemporary practitioners, largely detached from commissioning structures of the 19th and 20th centuries, now seek to capture more experiential qualities of place and choose locations which have highly personal and political significance. Liberated from old conceptions of reportage drawing as objective and true, artists today embrace subjectivity and are seeking a rich dialogue with their subjects, using drawing to tell important stories about protest, human migration, war, corporate capitalism and homelessness. Louis Netter distinguishes contemporary reportage drawing from its historical function through a critical exploration of the aesthetic of the sketch, the role of caricature and the nature of experience. Featuring several prominent artists such as Jill Gibbon, who secretly draws in arms fairs across Europe, Phoebe Glockner, who produces highly provocative mixed media work about violence against women in Mexico, renowned reportage illustrator Gary Embury and French reportage artist Loup Blaster, in addition to an exploration of the author's own work, this book shows how the act of drawing can foster new insights about people, places and political realities in often subtle and challenging ways. Part of the Drawing In series, this book opens up reportage drawing practice as a way of understanding our world in a deeper and more personal way. |
GROTESQUE Definition & Meaning - Merriam-Webster
The meaning of GROTESQUE is a style of decorative art characterized by fanciful or fantastic human and animal forms often …
Grotesque - Wikipedia
In art, grotesques are ornamental arrangements of arabesques with interlaced garlands and small and fantastic human and …
GROTESQUE | English meaning - Cambridge Dictionary
GROTESQUE definition: 1. strange and unpleasant, especially in a silly or slightly frightening way: 2. wrong or unfair…. Learn …
GROTESQUE Definition & Meaning | Dictionary.com
Grotesque definition: odd or unnatural in shape, appearance, or character; fantastically ugly or absurd; bizarre.. See examples of …
GROTESQUE Synonyms: 170 Similar and Opposite Words - Merriam-We…
Synonyms for GROTESQUE: loud, harsh, ugly, jarring, disgusting, unpleasant, unaesthetic, grating; Antonyms of GROTESQUE: …
GROTESQUE Definition & Meaning - Merriam-Webster
The meaning of GROTESQUE is a style of decorative art characterized by fanciful or fantastic human and animal forms often interwoven with foliage or similar figures that may distort the natural into absurdity, …
Grotesque - Wikipedia
In art, grotesques are ornamental arrangements of arabesques with interlaced garlands and small and fantastic human and animal figures, usually set out in a symmetrical pattern around some form of …
GROTESQUE | English meaning - Cambridge Dictionary
GROTESQUE definition: 1. strange and unpleasant, especially in a silly or slightly frightening way: 2. wrong or unfair…. …
GROTESQUE Definition & Meaning | Dictionary.com
Grotesque definition: odd or unnatural in shape, appearance, or character; fantastically ugly or absurd; bizarre.. See examples of GROTESQUE used in a sentence.
GROTESQUE Synonyms: 170 Similar and Opposite Words - Merriam-W…
Synonyms for GROTESQUE: loud, harsh, ugly, jarring, disgusting, unpleasant, unaesthetic, grating; Antonyms of GROTESQUE: aesthetic, artistic, beautiful, artful, esthetic, attractive, becoming, good
