The Cruel Mirror: Body Type and Body Image as Reflected in Art Author(s): Camille Paglia Source: Art

Documentation: Journal of the Art Libraries Society of North America, Vol. 23, No. 2 (Fall 2004), pp. 4-7 Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of the Art Libraries Society of North America Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27949310 . Accessed: 17/11/2013 11:46
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The CruelMirror: Body Type and Body Image as Reflected inArt_

Arts, Philadelphia byCamille Paglia, University of the

[This article is based on the closing plenary lectureat the ARLIS/NA Annual Conference, Baltimore,2003.] Last year, I had the great honor and pleasure of being the Art Libraries Society of North America's closing speaker at its annual conference in Baltimore. My subject was the dramatic fluctuations in female body type inWestern art, demonstrated by a discussion of sixty-six slides drawn from the Visual Resources Collection of Greenfield Library at theUniversity of theArts in Philadelphia. My title, 'The Cruel Mirror/' was inspired byWalt Disney's classic animated film, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), where the elegant witch-queen, with her Marlene Dietrich-like glamour, is obsessively preoccupied with her brutally candid mirror. Iwas thinking also of Oscar Wilde's use of the artwork as magic mirror in The Picture ofDorian Gray (1891), where a young man retains his charismatic beauty while the effectsof age and corruption are shifted to his painted portrait. Young people today in industrialized nations, fromNorth
and South America to

The massive power of commercial media can only be coun tered by alternative images from world art and culture. with its Unfortunately, the venerable survey course in art history, is invigorating chronological sweep, slowly losing ground in the United States to narrowly specialized courses, which means that the responsibility for acquiring and organizing representative more and more on art librarians,with theirbroad images will fall view of university collections present and future. What is needed is not just a complete time range of objects from fine art and archaeology but a record ofmedia images. After the triumph of mary arena for contemplation of the human figure. From my classroom experience with slide lectures, I find that contemporary students are astonished and fascinated by the
mercurial avant-garde abstraction, movies and advertising became the pri

the centuries. My materials thus far have been chosen mainly from Western art, simply because of the centrality itgives to the nude. What follows is a reconstruction (from my podium notes)
of my lecture

metamorphoses

in standards

of

female

beauty

over

amid a constant shower of media messages glorifying perfect beauty and perpetual youth. While there is reason for serious concern about the quality or realism of images our students see, I find unhelpful and moralistic the standard set of academic
terms like "commodification" culture. In a careerist to modern applied era of word-oriented dreary, commercial office routine,

Europe

and

Japan,

come

to consciousness

As a general rule, large, ample women have preferred status in agrarian or subsistence periods, while a thin, linear silhouette
fashionable for women in urban or

at last year's

conference.

becomes

When
wealth

food is in short supply, a plump wife advertises a man's

and property. But there were also biological reasons why,

courtly

societies.

sensual appeals to the eye need to be valorized. The media sup ply what ismissing fromprevailing social codes. As a free-speech proponent, I oppose regulation of the media (or the Web). Forms of cultural expression have theirown educators' obligation to diagnose and supply what ismissing in their students' experience. This is especially critical in the por trayal of female body type in advertisements and celebrity photojournalism. Since the rise of coed health clubs in the 1980s, a trim,aerobicized silhouette has been projected as the ideal for
dynamic, whose evolution can never be fully foreseen. But it is

when both pregnancy and childbirth could be difficult and dan gerous, fleshy women with wide hips were seen as better motherhood than thinwomen with narrow hips. prospects for Today we know that body-fat level is connected to fertility:
women since runners who become low too nature interprets weight lean may as a sign amenorrhea, develop insuffi of famine, nature and

cient to support pregnancy. With

thinness,

when

fat is the enemy, young women

young

women

are

today's media

focus on
society:

torn

between

are atwar with their own

white middle-class girls. In the 1990s, the outlandishly pneumat ic superheroines of animated science-fiction video games gave enormous impetus to the vogue forbreast augmentation. Thus, for the past decade a strange and perhaps impossible amalgam has emerged: the thin, sleek, toned female figurewith a flat, exposed midriff but startlingly large breasts. This silhouette is difficult enough to maintain during the hormonal teenaged years, but its imposition on older women requires a manic regime of exercise and dieting as well as a costly maintenance program of plastic surgery and liposuction.

The sac-like breasts, bulging belly, and padded hips conflate woman with her procreative function. She symbolizes health and abundance. But the masked face and withered arms dis turbingly show that she has no sight, speech, or reach?no identity as an individual. Less well known are other Stone Age objects also ironically named after the Roman Venus. The Venus of Laussel, found in

fragile, life-creatingphysiology. was beautiful because it meant vitality In the Stone Age, fat and fertility. The Venus ofWillendorf (c. 24,000 BC), a tiny lime stone statuette found in a riverbank above theAustrian Danube in 1908, has become one of the most popular objects inworld art.

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1911,was carved into the rounded wall of a limestone rock shel ter in the Dordogne. Once again we see the blank face, protuberant belly, and dwindling, knock-kneed legs with their lack of feet, which may sometimes have been ritually broken off, to keep fertility from leaving. The Venus of Laussel perhaps holds a bison horn, an early cornucopia. Shaped like a crescent moon, it is incised with a calendar of lunarmonths. The Venus of Lespugue, found in 1922 in the Pyrenees foothills, is carved of ivory (mammoth tusk). Here for the first time we see a major change in female body type. The suave, streamlined linearity of this object strikes us as modernist. The doll head isblank and the arms pencil-thin, so that theballoon-like breasts and buttocks hang likewaistline pouches?possessions rather than body parts. Continuing this long process of female stylization were the marble "idols" (3000-2200 BC) found in graves in the Cyclades islands in themid-Aegean. Cycladic faces are blank, as in Stone Age cult objects, but they are lifted,as ifcommuning with invis ible forces. Now the female silhouette is elongated and delta and surprisingly small breasts. The violin shape of early Western analogy between woman's Cycladic idols prefigures the instruments with that can be seen all the way stringed body
down to Picasso and Man geometric. The sex organs are treated schematically?a pubic

They became more statuesque in the graceful caryatids of the Maidens (c. 415 BC) on theAthenian Erechtheum's Porch of the Acropolis. These grand constructions show both power and composure as they literallyhold the roof up on theirheads. There are no large-scale female nudes in high classic Greek
art: such

ing nudes in pornographic pottery are prostitutes.) Instead, heavy, clinging drapery (the "wet look") reveals the female torso and thighs, as in the three intertwined, banqueting goddesses from the Parthenon's east pediment (c. 438-32 BC). The common claim that the Athenians were misogynistic or exclusively homo sexual is undercut by these voluptuous sculptures, with their
relaxed,

depictions

weren't

considered

respectable.

(The

rollick

In ancient Egypt, woman is projected as a visual object, a sophisticated work of art. Svelte, body-revealing garments of sheer linen can be seen as early as theOld Kingdom tomb sculp tures of Prince Rahotep and his wife Nofret (c. 2660 BC), where there is also an interestingdisparity in skin color. The affluent woman, with the luxury to stay out of thedesert sun, ispaler than her husband or servants. The famous bust ofNefertiti (c. 1350 BC), found in 1912, has amathematical severity that isnew inportraits ofwomen. She is all head, while theVenus of Willendorf was all a Nef ertiti's chiseled cheekbones have mannequin's high body. fashion hauteur. (I analyzed Nef ertiti's relation to the Egyptian cult of beauty in my book, Sexual Personae [New Haven, CT: Yale Press, 1990].) Aristocratic Egyptian style became University increasingly linear and elongated, as illustrated in my lecture by several chic New Kingdom princesses (18th and 19th dynasties).
The tions. We

Ray.

My examples of Hellenistic nudes (4th-lst centuries BC) were theAphrodite of Syracuse, with her pearlike buttocks, and the Venus de Milo, whose robes are provocatively slipping down her hips as she prepares to step intoher bath. The motif of the bathing woman, turning the viewer into a Peeping Tom, can also be seen in the canonical Cnidian Aphrodite and Capitoline Venus (Venus Pudica, the "modest Venus"). The Venus de Milo's precipitous decline in reputation over the past half century demonstrates the evanescence of style. A symbol of female perfection since 1820, when she was found on the island of Melos, the Venus de Milo is still touted by drawing pencils or hair salons as a paragon of beauty. But tastes have so changed that she now seems stolid and broad in the beam, and she has
vanished from art books.

regal womanliness.

Even mutilated, the Winged Nike ("Victory") of Samothrace (c. 190 BC) wonderfully illustratesmuscular female power, like that of the caryatids. Nike iswoman in action, her great wings beating as the sea spray plasters her filmy robes against her cur vaceous torso. Most published photographs of the statue,which commands theDaru Staircase at the Louvre, do not show that she is landing on the prow of a war ship. But the entire brilliant drama was thatNike is a female energy entering and dominat ingmale space?a naval battle where she is the arbiter of victory
and defeat.

(c. 1500 BC) found at Knossos

see bursting, bare,

mysterious

Minoan

statuettes

of

snake

on Crete combine the prior tradi

nursing breasts set off by ornate,

priestesses

Had I had more time, Iwould have liked to show Etruscan enthroned goddesses (c. 5th century BC), where woman was defined by her lap and embracing arms, and also ancient Roman portrait busts where aging matrons flaunted their wrinkles and double chins. But Imoved on to theMiddle Ages with a
fifteenth-century German carved-wood

corset, double highly structured clothing?a wasp-waisted apron, flounced hoop skirt,and symbolic hat crowned by a wild animal. Serpents, presumably symbolizing earth power, wind
around the

ing Virgin") from theMus?e National du Moyen-Age (Cluny): the hinged tabernacle doors swing out to reveal Mary's body as
internal space. These popular devotional items, sometimes

Vierge

ouvrante

("open

vases where theupraised, prophesying arms are perched on bell like bases: the female body here is a vessel?like Mary as the chosen vessel inseminated by theHoly Spirit. A striking segue can be made between Egyptian princesses, draped in pleated linen, and the columnar Archaic Greek korai (7th-early 5th centuries BC), holding out theirdevotional plates. I like to contrast theplain Attic style of the sprightly Peplos Kore with a demure kore fromChios in a rippling blue chiton?fancy
Ionian dress. Here we

figures'

raised

arms.

I also

showed

crude

Minoan

with the cultivated western coast ofAsia Minor, notorious for its "feminine" lyricism in music and poetry. The korai ("maidens") were ing?nues, suggesting an innocent, springtime femininity.

spot

an

early

sense

of fashion,

associated

giantMary spreads her bat-like cape to shelter humanity. Standing in the elegant S-curve posture of the courtlyHigh Middle Ages, the silver-gilt Golden Virgin (1339) from the Abbey Church of Saint-Denis can be juxtaposed with her descen dant, Botticelli's blonde goddess in The Birth ofVenus (c. 1485). The sinuous linearity of these figures is an enduring type of female beauty. In his excellent book, The Nude: A Study in Ideal Form (New York, NY: Pantheon Books, 1956), Kenneth Clark

called ShrineMadonnas, were finallybanned by the Pope. They show Mary as a cosmic cathedral containing Jehovah and the crucified Jesus, as if she were a Great Mother goddess like the winged Isis. A fruitful comparison would be to Piero della Francesca's Misericordia (Madonna ofMercy; c. 1460), where a

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Nineteenth-century Romantic and realist painting offers a dazzling variety of body types. I showed Ingres's Grand Odalisque (1814) and Manet's Olympia (1863) as nudes in the Venetian tradition of recumbent, lewdly accessible beauty. The with her zucchini shape and perversely unmarked foot first, pads, is a doped and sullen Arab sex slave, while the second (a homage to Titian's Venus ofUrbino), with its bleak dawn light, shows a shrewd Parisian businesswoman with a slightly bored, scandalously direct gaze. Alternative nineteenth century styles are represented by Ingres's coolly self-contained Portrait of Mile. Rivi?re (1805), with her Greek-inspired Empire dress, ermine boa, and mustard gloves, and Whistler's moody Symphony in White, No. 1 (1862), theWhite Girl with her unpinned hair and
unstructured

In the twentieth century, the seductive female figure remained a central inspiration for Matisse, with his bold lyri a master and of Picasso, cism, mutating styles.A superb example is Picasso's Girl Before a Mirror (1932), where his mistress's breasts and belly become apples and hanging pear, while the hatched Matisse wallpaper evokes a paradise thicket.Another modern artistwho saw the female body mythologically was the sculptor Henry Moore, whose monumental, reclining earth mothers (inspired by Mayan art) follow the landscape or, hol
lowed out,

Pre-Raphaelite

dress.

Art. Image? Board ofTrustees, National Gallery of National Gallery of

Art, Washington.

Figure

1. Titian,

Venus

with

a Mirror.

Andrew

W. Mellon

Collection,

contrasts the ideal women of Renaissance Florence and Venice as the Crystalline versus the Vegetable Venus. The former?tall, like Botticelli's reserved small-breasted, and intellectual?is is latter while the Venus, languid, vapid, and opulent, her organ ic figure resembling the rolling hills. As examples of Venetian style I chose Titian's lush Venus ofUrbino (1538) and Venus with a Mirror (1555) [Figure 1], the latter introducing the themes of
narcissism and

Madame

Western art's ambivalent love affairwith the female body was taken up by studio-era Hollywood after World War I.My final slides came from the collection ofmedia images that I have helped build at theUniversity of theArts over the past fifteen Harlow, with her loose, slatternlybreasts, broke from years. Jean a hyperactive 1920s flappers who had bound their bosoms for flat, androgynous look. At exactly the same moment (the early 1930s), Mae West was sporting her flamboyant signature cos tume as Diamond Lil?the corseted hourglass figure of the Belle Epoque, clearly a nostalgic dream tomany in long-gone her vast audience. Meanwhile, Norma Shearer was modeling

expose

woman's

creative

inner

space.

Jupiterand Io (1532) demonstrates how Venetian artists saw full figured fleshiness (and even "problem area" cellulite) as sexy. The line is clear toRubens, who studied Titian's work in Italy. My examples from Rubens were The Toilet of Venus (1612-15), Venus at aMirror (1655), The Fur (bare-breastedH?l?ne Fourment as Venus Pudica; 1635-40), and The ThreeGraces (1636-38), in which Botticelli's become have big, beefy, sylphlike nymphs good-humored women with assertive peasant feet. Amusing examples of Rubens's physically imposing women are the lusty, biceps-popping rowers of the allegorical Ship of State inhis Life of Marie de'Medici series (panel XVI; 1622-25) for the Luxembourg Palace. To demonstrate the extremes of rococo eroticism, I suggest juxtaposing Boucher's paintings of two of Louis XV's mistresses: the pearly, splayed L'Odalisque (Mlle. O'Murphy) (1745) and Madame de Pompadour (1758; National Galleries of Scotland), the latter showing the king's meddling confidante as the epitome of high fashion in her beribboned, d?collet? gown as she archly book inher hand. lounges with?shock!?a

self-scrutiny.

Correggio's

naughtily

rear-view

Vionnet's new, simple, elegantly streamlined evening dress, daringly exposing the small of the back. in Cecil B. Claudette Colbert as the empress Poppaea DeMille's The Sign of the Cross (1932) illustrated how ancient archetypes of the femme fatalewere used to costume Hollywood vamps. The same can be seen in the controversial poster for Suddenly, Last Summer (1959), where Elizabeth Taylor, barely white bathing suit, emerges from thewaves contained in a tight, like Aphrodite. My other examples from Hollywood history included Betty Grable's famed 1943 pin-up, which demonstrates how radically ideal female proportion has changed. Grable's once-perfect "million-dollar legs" now look a bit stumpy because our eye has been retrained by the long-legged models of the sports era inaugurated in the 1970s by Cheryl Tiegs's "California girl" look. Today's coltishmodels and actresses (like Nicole Kidman and Gwyneth Paltrow) would have been consid ered miserably scrawny and gawky beforeWorld War II. Big-breasted blondeness (a cardinal modern category) can Harlow to be traced from Marilyn Monroe and her more bosomy Mansfield, who plays her cartoonishly exag disciples like Jayne gerated figure for laughs. Monroe has the sleepy look and moist, parted lips of French odalisques. The "missile cone" 1950s brassiere (parodied by Jean-Paul Gaultier 's lethally pointy stage costume for Madonna) deployed the breast as a social weapon.

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A composite slide showed theMonroe/Mansfield constellation stillflourishing in thatRubensian Texan, Anna Nicole Smith. In the late 1990s, JenniferLopez made history by main streaming the black and Latino "booty": buttocks had never before been a focus ofwhite Anglo-American eroticism. But this
advance in

lessly hefting three foaming beer steins?quite a feat!Her arms are flung wide in the embracing posture ofmedieval Madonnas. The St. Pauli Girl is in the Rubens line of powerful, exuberant, women. But St. Pauli isHamburg's red-light dis life-affirming
trict, where on the menu. sailors carouse. Hence, one suspects, she too may be

shadowed by a deceptive editorial trend over thepast decade for using Photoshop software to thin out women's faces and bodies on magazine covers. I showed a 2002 Rolling Stone cover that flatteringly elongated Britney Spears's squat legs and blocky torso.A slide of a skanky, whip-lean Christina Aguilera illustrat ed the child-harlot or Lolita syndrome. My final slide was of the current St. Pauli Girl Beer carton ("Germany's fun-loving beer"). It shows amerry beer-hall maid, her bosom overflowing her peasant bodice and each hand effort

acceptance

of women's

natural

contours

was

over

The body, for good or ill, has become a primary marker of identity in this transient society where the extended family and old community ties have broken down. Style is cyclic: all stan dards will eventually change. But that may not be soon enough foryoung people (increasinglymale as well as female) barraged by images of "better" bodies than the ones theyhave been dealt. By encouraging historical exploration, we can reduce pressure and anxiety. There are companions and competitors beyond number in the great image book of the past.

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