"Can Beauty Ever be Considered a Moral Trait?" Part One: From Venus to Eve



Introduction

 

In this series of blogs I will trace the evolution of the tastes and values surrounding the female nude, from the Venus of Willendorf to Barbie. The purpose of this series of blogs is to show the transformation of tastes and values, and ultimately the politics, that has followed the perception, appreciation, and treatment of the female form. The cultural and aesthetic treatment of the female body has changed over time, and is now a more contest site of meaning than ever before. This, we might call the democratisation of the female body.

 

At no time in history have woman had as much political and aesthetic control over their bodies, although by no means at a level of parity with men. In order to understand this democratisation we need to understand that the tastes and values surrounding the female form are not fixed, that there is a range of influences that contribute to the prevailing tastes and values of a given era that change over time. Unlike during any other era, women are subjective agents (as opposed to objects of discussion) who contribute to the tastes and values surrounding their own form.

 

 

"Can Beauty ever be Considered a Moral Trait?"

 

This was the question posed to my first-year class at university this year for a writing task. It's a decidedly big question, but it's also a very important question outside the abstract domain of the classroom. It is a question that resides at the crossroad of aesthetics and ethics, always a contentious intersection. Contentious because it overlaps with certain areas of interest with gender studies and sexual politics more broadly; in particular, the notion of beauty of a highly contested concept. A woman's beauty, more specifically, can be highly ideological terrain. Nevertheless, I do believe that beauty can be a moral trait, and I will seek to frame this answer to the question here. It is, however, more complicated than a yes/no answer.

 

To try to explain simply, beauty is a moral trait, not in an objective or subjective sense but in an intersubjective sense. Beauty is a moral trait of all the participants involved or complicit in the process whereby beauty is constructed or perceived. That is, beauty is a moral trait not only for those who are considered beautiful but also those who consider them beautiful, the perceiver as well as the perceived; importantly, both can be the same person. I will attempt to explain the nuance of this point.

 

To call beauty, particularly physical beauty, a moral trait raises questions of value and taste. By "taste" I mean the prevailing preferences of a society at any given time; in the context, this refers to the preferred shapes and variations of the female form. Value is construed more broadly: it refers to what is considered important to that society at any given time. I say "at any given time" because tastes and values do change; understanding the process of change is critical to understanding how beauty can be considered a moral trait.

 

What I will focus on here is how the representation of the female form has changed. In particular, I will focus on a few key representations of the female nude. The female nude has historically been laden with meaning, indicative of the values of the era. That is, the aesthetic tastes that surrounds the female nude at any given time are representative of a set of prevailing values of the era. Importantly, those values change from era to era, and are not always related to the same material facts. Let me foreshadow a little to explain: the Gothic nude, the nude of the middle ages, an era of extreme religiosity, depicts the female form in a decidedly non-sexual way, while the nude of Ancient Greece depicts an ideal, almost mathematical form. The pre-historic Venus of Willendorf embodies a different set of values, while modern images of the nude a different set of values again.

 

I will address the different representations as embodying a certain set of historical values; the importance of this point is that the tastes and values surrounding the female body have changed, and that there is no fixed value, as such. The value of the female body is historically situated and not absolute. What is, therefore, moral about beauty pertains to its relative state, meaning the social, economic, and political situation in which the female body exists.

 

 

Prehistory: The Venus of Willendorf

 

It can be argued that the changes in historical tastes and values of the female body constitute an evolution towards the democratisation of the female body, but this is not my goal at present. It is, nevertheless, importantly to keep in mind that the body is never just an image, even in its prehistoric form; it is always a site of political and social significance.

 

The Venus of Willendorf is one of the oldest representations of the human form.

 

 

 

 

 

What you first notice about the Venus are breasts and stomach. On closer inspection you notice that the figure has no discernible face and no arms. It is also noticeable that the Venus has a large posterior. Certain features of the Venus are exaggerated while other features are diminished. The question, of course, must be "why?" One theory, promoted by neuroscientists like V. S. Ramachandran, suggests that the exaggeration of certain features and not others relates to a biological predisposition toward those certain features and not others. This is an evolutionary argument.

 

The exaggeration of the breasts and the stomach, which are pertinent to child-raising, has some resonance. The Venus's physique is not an oddity, the same sorts of exaggerations and minimisations occur in other "Venuses" of the time period, 20,000-25,000 years ago. The traditional interpretation is that the Venus is a fertility symbol, which is a reasonable analysis. Other interpretations, which can be seen as sympathetic to the fertility interpretation, argue that there is a biological imperative that leads to the brain emphasising certain features and not others. This is a evolutionary and neurological interpretation.

 

A proper interpretation must take account of all the features, including the minimised ones; in the case of the Venus of Willendorf, the absence of arms and the minimisation of facial features, which again is common in other Venus figurines. If the brain is, for lack of a better word, programmed to focus on certain features and not others, then there is an argument to be made about the exaggerated features in the Venus. The values expressed in these earliest artistic expressions are neuro-biological, if not evolutionary.  

Antiquity: The Aphrodite of Knidos

The Venus of Willendorf signifies the emergence of art and human culture - the shift from prehistory to history. The female body has not changed in 30,000-odd years; what has changed is the art and culture of the human race. The influence of art and culture on the tastes and values of society, at least in terms of Western art and culture, surrounding the female nude is best illustrated by the Classical - Greco-Roman - treatment of the naked female form. The Greeks were fascinated by mathematics, and mathematical proportions would come to influence even their appreciation of the human body.

 

Importantly, the male nude was held equal to, if not greater than, the female nude in cultural and aesthetic esteem in Greek society. This is an interesting point of different to every other period of Western history, but my focus here is the female form. There is, arguably, an obsession with the male form now, but whether it is comparable to the Greeks' is another question for another time.

 

The female nude is represented through a very particular formula: the distance between the breasts, the distance from the breasts to the navel, and the distance from the navel to the partition of the legs. That is to say, the distance from the breasts to the partition is twice that of the distance between the breasts. This is a mathematical formula that, as Kenneth Clark says, is repeated throughout the classical period. The Aphrodite of Knidos (or Cnidos), attributed to Praxiteles, exemplifies this formula:

 

 

 

The Aphrodite differs markedly from the Venus; the craft of sculpting had obviously greatly improved in 20,000-odd years! That aside, what we notice is, at first glance, is an emphasis on verisimilitude, quite distinct from the exaggerations of the breasts, buttocks, and stomach in the Venus. I say "at first glance" because the proportions are, as I have mentioned, governed by a mathematical ideal, and this is not universally applicable; very few women actually meet the "Classical ideal."

 

The Greek obsession with mathematics goes beyond sculpture and the representation of the human form. There was a mysticism that was attached to mathematics, perhaps best exemplified in the cult of Pythagoras. Mathematics was a lens through which the world could be seen and understood; it must be remembered that Ancient Greece, Classical civilisation, is where many of our most enduring questions about humanity and the universe were first asked.

 

Mathematics represents order and causal structures of meaning. While women were considered second-class citizens (there is no real difference in their political status in Antiquity to the later Gothic, or medieval era), the "idealisation" of form is not misogynistic; both male and female forms had mathematical ideals. The set of value this particular taste represents revolves around proportion and structure. Greek society (I have Athenian society in mind here) was highly structured, socially and politically.

 

Perhaps a more enduring expression of the Greek ideals of structure and organisation than mathematical ideals and mysticism that emerges from Ancient Greece is the form of political organisation known as democracy, which flickered for a brief moment in the 4th century BC, and which would be seen again for millennia. Greek democracy was a complicated system with what Americans would call "checks and balances" programmed into its institutional structure. Although, women were not granted a vote, and, obviously, neither were slaves. Politically and culturally speaking, in ancient Greece there was certain prevailing attitudes towards women and certain minorities that still echo today.

 

 

Medieval Era: Adam and Eve

 

The Greeks revelled in mathematical proportions; they had stumbled upon the fact that everything in the universe could be represented mathematically, though they may have extended the metaphor too far with prescriptive measurements. In the medieval period, representations of the female body took on a different shape. The ideal form of the Greeks, perhaps an exaggeration of proportionality, gives way to a different kind of exaggeration in the Gothic or Medieval period.

 

There are two parts to the Gothic era, early and late. The female (as well as the male) body is noticeably different, although they share the same desexualised essence. The early Gothic body is remarkable in its unremarkable shape with no physiological emphasis of any sort; the "ideal proportion" of the early-Gothic is one of severe under-statement. The early-Gothic period, it must be remembered, is one dominated by the Christian mythology and a pervasive asceticism. The body, in this period, is something to be shunned, not glorified; it is almost always in a state of mortification. The Adam and Eve at Bamberg is a good example of the entirely desexualised nature of the early-Gothic nude.

 

 

 

Adam and Eve are almost caricatures. The body is something to be transcended in this time period. The natural shape of the female form (as well as the male form) is caricatured into near formlessness. Save for two small breasts, the difference between Adam and Eve is negligible.

 

The late-Gothic representation of the female body, on the other hand, is a little more stylised; as such, it is a little more interesting. The late-Gothic nude has two key features: an emphasising of the stomach, and a de-emphasising of the breasts. The exaggeration of the stomach and reduction of the breasts represent a de-sexualisation of the female form and an emphasis on the woman's role as life-giver. The distended stomach always resembles the swollen belly inextricably associated with pregnancy. The swollen breasts that are also often associated with pregnancy are not represented, however.

 

Hugo van der Goes' depiction of Adam and Eve is emblematic of the late-Gothic nude. Kenneth Clark refers to the female nude of this period as "bulb-like," while the men are root-like in form.

 

 

 

 

 The distended stomachs of the Gothic female nude are peculiar from a modern perspective, but it must be remembered that the predominant shape is indicative of the morality of the time. "Eve" is decidedly un-sexual; her body is purely functional. However, it should also be remembered what women represented for the 1500 since the emergence of Christianity: the Fall of Man, as represented in van der Goes' picture. Eve is plucking the apple from the Tree of Knowledge at the insistence of the anthropomorphic snake. It is, perhaps, ironic that the gender that is held responsible for the Fall of Man for her temptation is represented so un-temptingly.

 

*

 

In the next blog, I will focus on representations of the female body from the Renaissance to the 20th Century. In particular, I will look at the works of Giorgione, Titian, Rubens and Renoir, among others. Artists such as these over this period since the 15th century capture broader-ranging and more naturalistic images of the female nude, with an increasing sense of feminine subjectivity and diversity in the subject-matter. As this period progresses, depictions of the female nude are bound less and less by an over-arching moral structure or ideal; depictions of the female nude over this period become more subjective, both in relation to the artist and the female subject herself. This diversification and subjectivisation is an important precursor - empowering as well as problematic - to the realisation of beauty as a moral trait in the modern era.