MARC Record from marc_columbia

LEADER: 04453mam a2200397 a 4500
001 1793903
005 20220608235515.0
008 950907t19961996maua b 001 0 eng
010 $a 95038927
020 $a0262082446 (hc : alk. paper)
035 $a(OCoLC)ocm33206627
035 $9ALM2849CU
035 $a1793903
040 $aDLC$cDLC$dOCL$dRSD$dC#P$dOrLoB-B
050 00 $aN8241.5$b.H47 1996
082 00 $a700$220
100 1 $aHersey, George L.$0http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n82131864
245 14 $aThe evolution of allure :$bsexual selection from the Medici Venus to the Incredible Hulk /$cGeorge L. Hersey.
260 $aCambridge, Mass. :$bMIT Press,$c[1996], ©1996.
300 $axvi, 219 pages :$billustrations ;$c24 cm
336 $atext$btxt$2rdacontent
337 $aunmediated$bn$2rdamedia
504 $aIncludes bibliographical references (p. [199]-210) and index.
505 00 $tIntroduction: Aphrodite's Daughters --$tSexual Selection.$tAugmentation.$tBorrowing, Translation, and Exchange.$tSperm Competition.$tClothes as Genital Maps --$tIncarnate Christs and Selectable Saints.$tThe Incarnation.$tThe Immaculate Conception.$tMagdalen and Teresa --$tBody Canons.$tPolykleitos, Praxiteles, and Vitruvius.$tCanons and Number: Alberti, Leonardo, Michelangelo, Durer, and Lomazzo.$tWilliam Wetmore Story and the Seal of Solomon --$tAryans and Semites.$tAryanism.$tAryan Art: Frederic Leighton.$tSemitic Art: The Etruscans, Cimabue, and Michelangelo.$tTwo Afro-Aryan Heroines --$tMore Body Prescribers.$tSelecting Scientifically: Lavater, Ammon, Virchow, and Kretschmer.$tEndomorphs, Mesomorphs, Ectomorphs, and W. H. Sheldon --$tGalton and Lombroso.$tWorse and Better Faces.$tBreeding Baroque Bodies: Guido Reni.$tThe Monsters among Us.$tWomen, Ornament, and Degeneration.$tMorelli and Lombrosan Connoisseurship --$tMax Nordau.$tMore Degeneration.$tErotomania: Verlaine and Rodin.
505 80 $tBrain Decay: Whistler, Boldini, and J. W. Alexander --$tInto Nazism.$tPaul Schultze Naumburg: Rubens and Rembrandt.$tJacob Epstein and Racial Treachery.$tThe 120-Year Reich --$tHyperdevelopment Today.$tAugmentation: Hercules and Batman.$tExchange: Arnold, Diana of Ephesus, Kristy Ramsey, and Hannah Hoch.$tDimorphism: The Incredible Hulk, His Friends, and the Sage Grouse.
520 $aThe beauty of the human body has long fascinated art historian George Hersey. In The Evolution of Allure this interest takes a novel turn: for the first time, Hersey brings together modern Darwinian theories of sexual selection (male competition, attractor manipulation, and the like) with art history.
520 8 $aBy channeling a general preference for normative proportions, he argues, art has shaped Western society's sexual choices and reproductive goals while also giving rise to normative body types that link physiological drives to aesthetic impulses.
520 8 $aFrom the Greek Venus Pudica (a form and pose most familiar in the Medici Venus), to any number of subsequent portraits, to the phone-sex goddesses of D-Cup Superstars, Hersey's lively, erotically charged text shows how Western art and popular culture exploit the attractors (the cosmetics, clothes, and ornament that showcase the body) with which people make themselves more alluring or "selectable" to potential mates.
520 8 $aHe discusses the mathematical mapping of the selectable body itself and the formulas set forth by the Greek sculptor Polykleitos that have been preserved, through Vitruvius, Leonardo, Durer, and others, down to the present.
520 8 $aVictorian teachings wrapped these canons in Aryan racial theories about sexual selectability, and this in turn had its influence on early modern physical anthropology. Chapters on Francis Galton, Cesare Lombroso, Max Nordau, W. H. Sheldon's Infamous "posture pictures," and the Nazi theorist Paul Schultze-Naumburg deal with the fear of biological decadence that certain art (by Rembrandt, Rodin, Whistler) was thought to encourage.
520 8 $aHersey concludes with an excursus on the current hyperdevelopment of bodily attractors, as exemplified in the likes of body builders, Batman, and the Incredible Hulk.
650 0 $aSex role in art.$0http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh96012003
650 0 $aArt and society.$0http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85007975
852 00 $bglx$hN8241.5$i.H47 1996
852 00 $bbar$hN8241.5$i.H47 1996
852 80 $bfax$hN7610$iH43