Wendy Steiner's Venus in Exile

Steiner describes the shift in the value of beauty in nineteenth and twentieth century art. She points out that modernists in rejecting beauty (especially feminine beauty), they have rejected pleasure and, in a sense, our humanity. In her book, she hopes to redefine beauty as an "interaction" between the subject and the object, not as a quality someone possesses or not.
Steiner uses the myth of Cupid and Psyche and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (really interesting stuff!)as touchstone pieces as she traces the changing view of beauty through several artist's works from Kant's sublime, to Flaubert's realism, to Basquiat's outsider art.


Connections to past ideas and present questions:

Steiner's description of myth of Cupid and Psyche and how it shows a changing relationship between subject and object, between aesthetic response and beauty reminds me of Hegel's idea about art being a reconciliation between the divine within and without.

The increasing importance of garbage as subject matter. I haven't thought much about this subject in art, but see her points. This reminds me of Ibsen's Enemy of the People and The Sopranos. The culture that produces yet denies its waste creates a new way to make money.

Outsider art (loosely defined) as reinvigorating high art by offering "hope" and break from commodity culture. This links to Marcuse's sense that art should offer hope of a better world even if it can't change the world.

The capitalist "exchange" is not "compatible with aesthetics. Wharton comes to believe this in House of Mirth.

The subject-object shift in the gaze of Manet's Olympia, thought at the time to be a prostitute (but actually an artist). How does the subject matter (prostitute vs. artist) change our view of the painting and the what that gaze represents?

The link between aesthetics and humanity in the body.

The ordinary looking Scottish singer who won everyone's hearts with her aesthetically pleasing voice.