The Woman as an Embodiment of the Sublime:
The communication of a sense or feeling of the sublime has long been considered an aesthetic norm by artists and aestheticians alike. The sublime can be found in the embodied experience of light shining through stained-glass windows in Mediaeval churches, dark clouds gathering on the horizon in Renaissance landscapes, nineteenth century photographs of the vast and monumental landscape of the United States. Photographers would travel to unknown areas of the United States and create constructed and detailed images of the vast and monumental landscape.[31] The experience of the sublime, as I have come to understand it, is a physical reaction to a visceral overstimulation of basic nature. Typically, the sublime has been used to describe an overwhelming experience of landscape or natural phenomena. When the sublime is used to describe female imagery, according to philosopher Umberto Eco, it is an exploration of the idea of “Jugendstil, in which beauty is a beauty of line, which does not disdain the physical dimension....the female body lends itself to envelopment in soft lines and asymmetrical curves that allow it to sink into a kind of voluptuous vortex… Erotically, ... emancipated, sensual women who rejected corsets or style to protect them from their self-confessed lack of independence.”[32] The previous was my own application of Eco’s idea of the sublime in beauty and early twentieth century art.
By the 1920s, a new movement in art had begun which echoed concurrent rapid industrialization and changing social norms: Art Nouveau, a movement which Eco signified as “the reconciliation of art and industry.”[33] By applying the philosopher and political scientist Dolf Sternberger’s thought that, “Art Nouveau enveloped a singular imagining of the world that dealt with universal and extreme contrasts of both positive and negative aspects: motifs such as youth, spring, light and health contrasted with dream, longing, fairytale, obscurity and perversion”[34] to the imagery women experienced on a daily basis, Eco concludes that the 1920s “saw the reduction of all objects to the level of goods – New Beauty can be reproduced – and lost the “aura” of singular importance.”[35] But how does this idea of the “New Beauty” manifest itself in deviant images of women of the era?
The provocative images in question were taken during a period of cultural upheaval and with an emphasis upon the investigation into the individual as a sublime and existential being. The practice of recognizing chance as being the main fuel for social interaction, as premised during the period of Surrealism, and the notion of woman as a new citizen of the urban environment was key in how she and others were to navigate this new city space.[36]
When attached to human sentiment, the Sublime becomes a battle for personal freedom regardless of the perceived outcomes – the chatter of repression.[37] The problem is not only manifest in the representations of women, but also in their underlying character – the individual mind of the woman being depicted. That a model has made the conscious choice to project her sexual identity into the visual sphere can serve as an expression of her autonomy – a prospect which, perhaps, threatens more traditional views of how a woman should conduct her private and public affairs. In deliberately depicting themselves as sexually free, these women provoked something in those who feared such change and who sought to punish this freedom of spirit. Transgression of the line traditionally drawn between a discrete and temperate moral and sexual identity and its overt display is an act of breaking down the barriers of repression, and as such can inspire fear both in the subject and in those around her. As Eco explains, it is a way of “looking at things from a distance,”[38] as “the struggle between the beauty of provocation and the beauty of consumption.”[39] This struggle occurs in context of the issues of chance as encountered in the Surrealist Manifesto by Andre Breton, “to teach us to interpret the world through different eyes”[40] – a new way of seeing – “experiencing the universe of dreams, fantasies of the mentally ill, and unconscious drives.”[41]
To look at the girly images with a different set of eyes, ignoring the intent of the sitter or photographer to portray woman as object of desire, is to forgive the history of repression and control over the female subject and view the situation anew – not as the depiction of women’s bodies qua objects, but as beautiful subjects deliberately displaying their sublime beauty, no matter the consequences. The sublime can be beautiful in a romantic, tragic and life-altering way. It can allow us to experience empathy and compassion – compassion being the goal for how to look and experience the ugly, according to Eco.[42] “Ugliness is defined as the opposite of beauty.”[43] It is “a lack of equilibrium within the parts of the whole.”[44] Ugliness stems from the unknown, the deformed, and the deviant. When juxtaposed against the presentation of the beautiful, the ugly stands out all the more for its polar opposition. I believe that the shock that some people had when viewing the deviant images of women was a shock of viewing something they thought to be ugly – or that is, not ugly in form, but ugly in thought or principle. It created an outlook for people challenged by their own basic needs and desires, needs and desires which have been categorized as being morally bad. In this sense, the girly images could be seen as ugly in the sense of the “opposite of good - not only repellent – obscene.”[45]
It is no surprise, then, that those women who chose to portray their sexual identity in front of the camera were often considered lacking in good moral judgment, perhaps even mentally ill. In reality, I believe that their images urged men and women alike to look at their own situations anew. These images excited a visceral experience of the sublime, confronting offended viewers with the question of what it was their putatively moral sentiments were supposed to be sheltering them from. To reiterate, the ugliness in question is not a physical ugliness that could be articulated and explained by using anatomical models of “perfected” bodies, nor is it something that can be touched directly with the senses. Rather, it is an extreme, affective release of ideas kept out of reach for so many.
“The experience of beauty is defined as disinterested pleasure,”[46] it is something that one wishes to look at but not possess, and in and of itself, it is present being of itself.[47] The ugly is different, especially when it relates to women’s interiority: “Ugliness arouses emotional reactions, manifestations of ugliness in itself distinguish natural ugliness from formal ugliness. The person can be ugly but at the same time nice and lovable.”[48] With regard to the issue of how to read early twentieth century ‘bad girl’ images, a woman can be beautiful and lovable but manifest ugliness of thought in others. “Ugliness reveals their inner malice and power of seduction.”[49] I believe that this idea of the “power of seduction” is the key to understanding the power of the girly image, as it highlights the idea of the girly image as one representing the ugly in the beautiful.
Seduction can come from many different sources. However, when a girl-next-door figure takes it upon herself to represent herself as a sexual subject, this unsettles the heterosexual male gaze. The woman who lived her life as a New Woman, who presented herself as a single working woman within the urban setting of the city, was constantly associated with the prostitute. “Prostitution and its high visibility was indicative of the moral decay of cities and the working class alike,” writes Hellen Bortich.[50] Such women received harsh sentences for their ‘crimes’ occurring in public and “represented the most flagrant affront to prevailing constructions of femininity and sexuality.”[51] The sharp criticism aimed at prostitution and visible sex work amongst the lower classes often over-spilled onto lower-class women who did not work in the sex trade, and who would nonetheless be considered sexual objects. Therefore, when women would purposely show their bodies in desirable positions they were immediately thought of as sexually available and this classified them as a sex-worker, regardless of whether or not the image was initially intended for a husband going off to war or for an art project of a photographer. The intention did not matter, what mattered then and still does today is the association girly pictures have with prostitution and sex work. “The allurement of beauty always has one with the prostitution of the body. – they are condemned by their bodies – condemned by unhappiness.”[52]
To view the ugly as an interiority of personal expression and freedom, not only “obliges us to provoke fear and disgust or amusement, but also is an appeal for compassion which transports us with truth and poetry to the realm of art.”[53]
Jennifer Lorraine Fraser
To find out more about Dana Brushette visit her website here. http://www.danabrushette.com/
The communication of a sense or feeling of the sublime has long been considered an aesthetic norm by artists and aestheticians alike. The sublime can be found in the embodied experience of light shining through stained-glass windows in Mediaeval churches, dark clouds gathering on the horizon in Renaissance landscapes, nineteenth century photographs of the vast and monumental landscape of the United States. Photographers would travel to unknown areas of the United States and create constructed and detailed images of the vast and monumental landscape.[31] The experience of the sublime, as I have come to understand it, is a physical reaction to a visceral overstimulation of basic nature. Typically, the sublime has been used to describe an overwhelming experience of landscape or natural phenomena. When the sublime is used to describe female imagery, according to philosopher Umberto Eco, it is an exploration of the idea of “Jugendstil, in which beauty is a beauty of line, which does not disdain the physical dimension....the female body lends itself to envelopment in soft lines and asymmetrical curves that allow it to sink into a kind of voluptuous vortex… Erotically, ... emancipated, sensual women who rejected corsets or style to protect them from their self-confessed lack of independence.”[32] The previous was my own application of Eco’s idea of the sublime in beauty and early twentieth century art.
By the 1920s, a new movement in art had begun which echoed concurrent rapid industrialization and changing social norms: Art Nouveau, a movement which Eco signified as “the reconciliation of art and industry.”[33] By applying the philosopher and political scientist Dolf Sternberger’s thought that, “Art Nouveau enveloped a singular imagining of the world that dealt with universal and extreme contrasts of both positive and negative aspects: motifs such as youth, spring, light and health contrasted with dream, longing, fairytale, obscurity and perversion”[34] to the imagery women experienced on a daily basis, Eco concludes that the 1920s “saw the reduction of all objects to the level of goods – New Beauty can be reproduced – and lost the “aura” of singular importance.”[35] But how does this idea of the “New Beauty” manifest itself in deviant images of women of the era?
The provocative images in question were taken during a period of cultural upheaval and with an emphasis upon the investigation into the individual as a sublime and existential being. The practice of recognizing chance as being the main fuel for social interaction, as premised during the period of Surrealism, and the notion of woman as a new citizen of the urban environment was key in how she and others were to navigate this new city space.[36]
When attached to human sentiment, the Sublime becomes a battle for personal freedom regardless of the perceived outcomes – the chatter of repression.[37] The problem is not only manifest in the representations of women, but also in their underlying character – the individual mind of the woman being depicted. That a model has made the conscious choice to project her sexual identity into the visual sphere can serve as an expression of her autonomy – a prospect which, perhaps, threatens more traditional views of how a woman should conduct her private and public affairs. In deliberately depicting themselves as sexually free, these women provoked something in those who feared such change and who sought to punish this freedom of spirit. Transgression of the line traditionally drawn between a discrete and temperate moral and sexual identity and its overt display is an act of breaking down the barriers of repression, and as such can inspire fear both in the subject and in those around her. As Eco explains, it is a way of “looking at things from a distance,”[38] as “the struggle between the beauty of provocation and the beauty of consumption.”[39] This struggle occurs in context of the issues of chance as encountered in the Surrealist Manifesto by Andre Breton, “to teach us to interpret the world through different eyes”[40] – a new way of seeing – “experiencing the universe of dreams, fantasies of the mentally ill, and unconscious drives.”[41]
To look at the girly images with a different set of eyes, ignoring the intent of the sitter or photographer to portray woman as object of desire, is to forgive the history of repression and control over the female subject and view the situation anew – not as the depiction of women’s bodies qua objects, but as beautiful subjects deliberately displaying their sublime beauty, no matter the consequences. The sublime can be beautiful in a romantic, tragic and life-altering way. It can allow us to experience empathy and compassion – compassion being the goal for how to look and experience the ugly, according to Eco.[42] “Ugliness is defined as the opposite of beauty.”[43] It is “a lack of equilibrium within the parts of the whole.”[44] Ugliness stems from the unknown, the deformed, and the deviant. When juxtaposed against the presentation of the beautiful, the ugly stands out all the more for its polar opposition. I believe that the shock that some people had when viewing the deviant images of women was a shock of viewing something they thought to be ugly – or that is, not ugly in form, but ugly in thought or principle. It created an outlook for people challenged by their own basic needs and desires, needs and desires which have been categorized as being morally bad. In this sense, the girly images could be seen as ugly in the sense of the “opposite of good - not only repellent – obscene.”[45]
It is no surprise, then, that those women who chose to portray their sexual identity in front of the camera were often considered lacking in good moral judgment, perhaps even mentally ill. In reality, I believe that their images urged men and women alike to look at their own situations anew. These images excited a visceral experience of the sublime, confronting offended viewers with the question of what it was their putatively moral sentiments were supposed to be sheltering them from. To reiterate, the ugliness in question is not a physical ugliness that could be articulated and explained by using anatomical models of “perfected” bodies, nor is it something that can be touched directly with the senses. Rather, it is an extreme, affective release of ideas kept out of reach for so many.
“The experience of beauty is defined as disinterested pleasure,”[46] it is something that one wishes to look at but not possess, and in and of itself, it is present being of itself.[47] The ugly is different, especially when it relates to women’s interiority: “Ugliness arouses emotional reactions, manifestations of ugliness in itself distinguish natural ugliness from formal ugliness. The person can be ugly but at the same time nice and lovable.”[48] With regard to the issue of how to read early twentieth century ‘bad girl’ images, a woman can be beautiful and lovable but manifest ugliness of thought in others. “Ugliness reveals their inner malice and power of seduction.”[49] I believe that this idea of the “power of seduction” is the key to understanding the power of the girly image, as it highlights the idea of the girly image as one representing the ugly in the beautiful.
Seduction can come from many different sources. However, when a girl-next-door figure takes it upon herself to represent herself as a sexual subject, this unsettles the heterosexual male gaze. The woman who lived her life as a New Woman, who presented herself as a single working woman within the urban setting of the city, was constantly associated with the prostitute. “Prostitution and its high visibility was indicative of the moral decay of cities and the working class alike,” writes Hellen Bortich.[50] Such women received harsh sentences for their ‘crimes’ occurring in public and “represented the most flagrant affront to prevailing constructions of femininity and sexuality.”[51] The sharp criticism aimed at prostitution and visible sex work amongst the lower classes often over-spilled onto lower-class women who did not work in the sex trade, and who would nonetheless be considered sexual objects. Therefore, when women would purposely show their bodies in desirable positions they were immediately thought of as sexually available and this classified them as a sex-worker, regardless of whether or not the image was initially intended for a husband going off to war or for an art project of a photographer. The intention did not matter, what mattered then and still does today is the association girly pictures have with prostitution and sex work. “The allurement of beauty always has one with the prostitution of the body. – they are condemned by their bodies – condemned by unhappiness.”[52]
To view the ugly as an interiority of personal expression and freedom, not only “obliges us to provoke fear and disgust or amusement, but also is an appeal for compassion which transports us with truth and poetry to the realm of art.”[53]
Jennifer Lorraine Fraser
To find out more about Dana Brushette visit her website here. http://www.danabrushette.com/