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Product Description
Product Description
A provocative and absorbing analysis of the unprecedented eruption of misogyny at the turn of the century in the works of the key artists of the age. Illustrated throughout.
About the Author
About the Author: Bram Dijkstra is Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of California, San Diego, and author of several books, including Cubism, Stieglitz and the Early Poetry of William Carlos Williams, A Recognizable Image, and Defoe and Economics.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
10 of 14 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
This book reproduces hundreds of the most beautiful, eccentric, and unique paintings and sculptures ever made, complete with a marvelously entertaining commentary that "reveals" the sinister, patriarchial threat of each.
The greatest surprise is the obscurity yet quality of these works--you won't see them reproduced in any other art book, yet they are too entertaining and (sometimes) just plain daffy to deserve oblivion. Since subject matter is all that interests Mr.Dijkstra, they are unfortunately all in black and white, but the bold expressiveness of the compositions makes this only a minor flaw.
Almost as rich as this aesthetic feast is Mr. Dijkstra's commentary. Are you amused by 19th Century Puritanical screeds, right-wing condemnation of the Arts, or the Nazis' blather about "degenerate art"? If so, this scholar's views will be a revelation: a dour, fanatical, left-wing perspective! He has great insights into 19th Century culture, psychology, and "sexual politics," and these increase tenfold your enjoyment of the art.
But I was most delighted by his hilarious extremism, his intolerance for anything that won't fit within a microscopic window of "political correctness." The self-righteousness, the delusions (he describes a bucolic scene of frolicking cherubs as a harbinger of the Holocaust) and the choking fury he expends at long-dead paupers are a once-in-a-lifetime thrill. Thank you, Mr. Dijkstra! Beyond a doubt, the most memorable art critique I've ever read.
4 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Dijkstra's book is a wonderful dissection of the sexual subtexts of late-Victorian art, a genre packed with very telling and, by our standards, near-pornographic images under the guise of religious or mythological subjects. Analysing art that was designed to titillate - and frankly, still does - is a difficult brief. But in my view, Dijkstra successfully avoids a "Look how disgusting this is!" tone, and provides an insight into the many female stereotypes in Victorian art: temptresses, vampires, victims, invalids, degenerates, and more. My one major criticism is that the text too blatantly pushes Dijkstra's interpretations of the paintings ("Was this woman [looking at a goldfish bowl] ... seeing something more than just the goldfish swiming aimlessly in a circle? ... Wasn't she also a goldfish herself, and wasn't her environment, to a large extent, the goldfish bowl of her own "useless existence"? No wonder, then ... her melancholy expression"). In my view, this polemic tone weakens Dijkstra's point. The pictures, which are well supported by quotes from contemporary fiction and other sources, speak perfectly well about the weirdness of the late-Victorian male psyche.
3 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I read this about ten years ago and was impressed first by the depth of research needed to find so many second-rate Victorian paintings and second by the inexhaustible feminist interpretation. Published in 1985, and so prepared between 1980 - 1984, Djikstra was firmly under the spell of extreme academic feminism and it shows. Re-reading it now, I wish Dijkstra had revised it for a post-feminist age, because there are so many real questions about this stuff. Who bought these paintings and for how much? Who sold them? Where in the buyer's house did they hang, if they hung in domestic houses at all? What careers did these artists have? What was their standing in society and the profession of painting? Who were the models? What are the parallels between the art market then and now?
The book isn't just about paintings. Dijkstra discusses a large number of books and tracts, all of them pseudo-scientific codswallop, about women. Again, the really interesting questions are about parallels with our own times: there's just as much tosh talked about men and women now as before (Venus and Mars, anyone?). How significant was all that Victorian twaddle really? Is there any evidence that it affected the thinking of Parliamentarians or that the Suffragettes took up arms against it?
Then there is the central question: aren't all these paintings just Victorian soft-core pornography, the late nineteenth-century version of the Page Three girl? Dijkstra never addresses this question, partly because in the 1980's porn didn't have the academic visibility it does today, and partly because if the answer is "yes", the social and political significance he alleges for these paintings evaporates like the proverbial summer dew. In my view that's all these paintings are, and I'd love to know how the painters and their dealers and patrons got away with it. What does it tell us about the Victorians that this stuff sold in the quantities it clearly did?
If you are interested in the history of art but have a "History of the Great Names" view of it, this book will open your eyes to the vast amount of mediocre stuff that was produced in the past. Never again will you see the past as a Golden Age of Great Works compared to the pap of our own times. It's a good review of the misogynist views around in Victorian times as well: it's not just our age that has shelves full of pseudo-intellectual twaddle. But the extreme feminist critique gets a little wearing after a while. There's one point at which Dijkstra asks of these paintings "(given this) can Buchenwald be far behind?" In the context of 1980's feminism that was a serious question: now it's slightly grotesque. If you can filter out the feminism, it's worth reading this book. It's just such a shame that Dijkstra's energy and capacity for hard work was used up on a dead-end ideology.
The book isn't just about paintings. Dijkstra discusses a large number of books and tracts, all of them pseudo-scientific codswallop, about women. Again, the really interesting questions are about parallels with our own times: there's just as much tosh talked about men and women now as before (Venus and Mars, anyone?). How significant was all that Victorian twaddle really? Is there any evidence that it affected the thinking of Parliamentarians or that the Suffragettes took up arms against it?
Then there is the central question: aren't all these paintings just Victorian soft-core pornography, the late nineteenth-century version of the Page Three girl? Dijkstra never addresses this question, partly because in the 1980's porn didn't have the academic visibility it does today, and partly because if the answer is "yes", the social and political significance he alleges for these paintings evaporates like the proverbial summer dew. In my view that's all these paintings are, and I'd love to know how the painters and their dealers and patrons got away with it. What does it tell us about the Victorians that this stuff sold in the quantities it clearly did?
If you are interested in the history of art but have a "History of the Great Names" view of it, this book will open your eyes to the vast amount of mediocre stuff that was produced in the past. Never again will you see the past as a Golden Age of Great Works compared to the pap of our own times. It's a good review of the misogynist views around in Victorian times as well: it's not just our age that has shelves full of pseudo-intellectual twaddle. But the extreme feminist critique gets a little wearing after a while. There's one point at which Dijkstra asks of these paintings "(given this) can Buchenwald be far behind?" In the context of 1980's feminism that was a serious question: now it's slightly grotesque. If you can filter out the feminism, it's worth reading this book. It's just such a shame that Dijkstra's energy and capacity for hard work was used up on a dead-end ideology.
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