Kokkiou C., Malakasioti A. (eds.) Beauty and Monstrosity in Art and Culture

Routledge, 2024. — 263 p.Beauty and Monstrosity in Art and Culture (Routledge Research in Art History) edited by Chara Kokkiou and Angeliki Malakasioti takes a new look at an old question: what is the relationship between beauty and monstrosity? How has the notion of beauty transformed through the years and how does it coincide with monstrous ontologies? Contributors offer an interdisciplinary approach to how these two concepts are interlinked and emphasize the ways the beautiful and the monstrous pervade human experience.The two notions are explored through the axis of human transformation, focusing on body, identity, and gender, while questioning both how humans transform their body and space as well as how humans themselves are gradually transformed in different contexts. The pandemic, gender crisis, moral crisis, sociocultural instability, and environmental issues have redefined beauty and the relationship we have with it. Exploring these concepts through the lens of human transformation can yield valuable insights into what it means to be human in a world of constant change. The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, archaeology, philosophy, architecture, and cultural studies.This book’s approach necessitates the exploration of fundamental, defining aspects that elucidate the idea of human transformation, focusing on body, identity, and gender. By using human transformation as a basic axis in the book, we also intend to explore how humans transform their bodies and space and how humans themselves, as situated social beings, are gradually transformed in different contexts. As notions of beauty and monstrosity slide into new interpretations and readings, we aim to challenge preconceived notions of what is considered “beautiful” or “ugly” and reexamine these ideas within different historical contexts and cultural environments. One requirement for a cross-disciplinary approach to beauty and monstrosity is that it acknowledges the diversity of phenomena associated with the idea of human transformation. Understanding beauty and monstrosity should therefore not consist merely in composing lists of features according to the standards of a given context. A notion of beauty as a whole is still needed, something that can count as a distinguishable unit of explanation of what beauty is and entails and eventually help to interrelate different aspects and dimensions of the beautiful and the monstrous. The broader areas of arts and humanities, classics, architecture, history, social and political sciences, gender studies, cultural and performance studies, as well as digital sciences, cyborgology, and artificial intelligence, show how beauty and monstrosity can be viewed as ambit embracing significantly more than the mere opposites of a dipole. All these areas are treated as incorporating diverse but equally complex modes of shaping and demonstrating (aesthetic) thought. They challenge traditional ideas of aesthetic values and definitions by introducing new methods of inclusion, ultimately strengthening the connections between them.The strong interdisciplinarity adopted here contributes to a better understanding of the human experience of the beautiful and the beastly when faced with different concepts and conditions of body, gender, individuality, and the self, making this project a versatile and multifaceted research tool. The pandemic, gender crisis, moral crisis, sociocultural instability, and environmental issues (topics that are addressed in the book) have redefined beauty and the relationship we have with it. They have changed the way we view bodies, gender, and certainly our own identity. They have changed the experience of their transformation over time. They have also changed the way we deal with concepts such as “beautiful monstrosity,” “monstrous beauty,” or “monstrous wonder” and talk about the grotesque or extraordinary in terms of attractiveness and pleasure. This book explores several issues that either emerged or are somehow associated with a major global crisis with multiple consequences in many aspects of life and for every human being. At the same time, it offers a broad and extremely rich toolbox for the critical reflection on the (re)assessment of what we see and feel as beautiful, pleasant, and normal and how it is related to the monstrous, the bizarre, and the abnormal. It is a time that calls for unity through diversity and inclusion, which is one of the fundamental promises of this book.When discussing the concepts of beauty and monstrosity, it is important to clarify that terms like “fine,” “enchanting,” “seductive,” “attractive,” or, on the contrary, terms like “ugly,” “bizarre,” and “abnormal” are not synonyms and, thus, they should not be used interchangeably. Rather, they highlight different aspects of what can be considered “beautiful” or “monstrous.” Our thesis is that anything that breaks or challenges societal norms, beauty standards, and conventions, in general, can be regarded as monstrous, and each of these distinct terms helps to emphasize this deviation from the norm. It is not always about being ugly or distasteful, but rather unexpected and surprising. In the past, we might have talked about prostitutes, witches, freakshows, and mythical or religious beasts; today we might encounter primitive personas, novel non-human ontologies, genetically or plastically transformed bodies, cyborgs, and other technological hybrids. In fact, the idea of beauty and monstrosity intersecting is becoming increasingly relevant in today’s world, as people are pushing the boundaries between these two worlds in various areas across the globe. Humans overall have been long questioning aesthetics that has to do with their identity, personality, gender specification, and other aspects of self-determination, through rebellious or revolutionary acts and ways of thinking. Today, either with the help of science and technology or expressed through novel societal contexts, they explore new liminalities and reassess pre-established phenomena. Human genome breakthroughs, scientific discoveries, artificial intelligence, sociocultural transcendences, all challenge the edges of knowledge and experience, and consequently, our ideas of what it means to be human nowadays, or what seems to be coming next.List of Figures and Tables
List of Contributors
Acknowledgments
IntroductionPreludeThe Garden: A Topological ViewThe Ancient Human: Retracing the PastAn Exquisite Appearance, A Beautiful Mind?: Thinking of Plato’s Charmides in Plutarch’s Life of DemetriusA Beauty’s Letter and the Beasts: Ariadne’s Heroidian Epistle (Ov. Her. 10)Infernal Women: Polysemic Winged Figures in Etruscan ArtOn Otherness: A New Kind of BodyBodies of Hybridity: Animal, Cyborg, and the Supernatural BecomingTeratological Machine in the Female Body: The “Hottentot Venus” as Beauty-and-the-Beast from a Decolonial Feminist PerspectiveFemale Body, Disgust, and the Erotic Redefined: The Dialectic MindshapingHybridities: New Genres and ContextsAnthropogarde of Stage, Cult, and the Popular: Co-Ritus, Labyrinths, ActionsThe Politics and Poetics of Contemporary AfricanfuturistBeauties and Beasts: Enchanted Environments as Vehicle for the Creator’s Self-discoveryPerforming the Human: Metamorphosis in ArtWhen Ugliness is Turned into Organs of SeductionReWired, ReMixed, and ReImagined: An Interview with StelarcTechnology vs Canonization: Alternative Ontologies and Crossing BoundariesCreating Life: An Embryo Assembly LineArt of the AIs, by the AIs, for the Art’s SakeRobots: Signs of DisruptionSpatial Ontologies: Space and Human TransformationArchitectural Representation as a Body without OrgansExploring the Urban Jungle: Making Space for Wildness in CitiesThe End of the Human: Death and Reflections into MorbidityThe Aesthetics of Hollowed Experience: Benjamin, Ensor, JamesDesiring the ZombieMedusa, Monstrous Beauty, and NeuroaestheticsCodaTruth, Beauty and Hungry MonstersInstead of an EpilogueEnding: Portrait of a Transforming HumanIndex