Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611

  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Ancient Sculpture and Twentieth-Century American Womanhood: Venus Envy

Ancient Sculpture and Twentieth-Century American Womanhood: Venus Envy

Franks, Hallie

Hardcover

Series: Imagines - Classical Receptions in the Visual and Performing

Art HistoryAncient RomeGeneral World History

ISBN10: 1350469866
ISBN13: 9781350469860
Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
Published: Jan 9 2025
Pages: 256
Weight: 1.17
Height: 0.63 Width: 6.14 Depth: 9.21
Language: English

This book examines the reception of Graeco-Roman sculptures of Venus and their role in the construction of the body aesthetics of the fit American woman in the decades around the turn of the 20th century. In this historical moment, 19th-century anthropometric methods, the anti-corset dress reform movement and early fitness culture were united in their goal of identifying and producing healthy, procreative female bodies. These discourses presented ancient statues of Venus - most frequently, the Venus de Milo - as the supreme visual model of a superior, fit, feminine physique. An America of such Venuses would herald the future prosperity of the American race by reviving the robust health and moral righteousness of the ancient Greeks.

Venuses had long been symbols of beauty, but the new situation of Venus statues as an aesthetic and moral destination for women set up a slippage between ideal sculpture and living bodies: what did it mean for a woman to embody - or to try to embody - the perfect health and beauty of an ancient statue? How were women expected to translate this model into flesh? What were the political stakes to which this vision of a nation of American Venuses was bound? Who was believed to conform to this ideal, and who was excluded from it? In taking on these questions, Franks engages with physical culture and dress-reform media, modern artwork that adapts Graeco-Roman traditions, anthropological texts, art histories of ancient Greece, film, advertising and medical reporting on women's health.

1 different editions

Also available

Also from

Franks, Hallie

View All

Also in

Ancient Rome

View All