Abstracts
The Desired Body:
The Bride, the Prostitute, and the Iunx
JoAnn Delmonico Luhrs
Department of Classics,
Bryn Mawr College
Although the bride
and prostitutewere socially incompatible in ancient Greece, each was desirable
becauseof her body - the bride for her procreative abilities and the prostitutefor
her availability. Each woman used the same adornments to enhance herdesirability.
One such tool was the iunx.
The transitional
state, temporaryfor the bride and permanent for the prostitute, makes each
of these womendesirable in society and is manifested in the symbolism of
the iunx. Thebride is located within social parameters while the prostitute
is on themargins; however, they are both desirable women whose images are
depictedvisually and textually by men. Each of these women uses the iunx
as theydo other adornments to increase their beauty. It is not important
thattwo forms of imagery are used: visual and textual, nor that the iunx
waseven used at all; what is important is the symbolism of the iunx and
whatthat symbol meant - eros/desire - to both the bride and prostitute.
As described by ancient
authors,the iunx, magical device, was used by prostitutes to attract or
keep lovers.In iconographic evidence specifically epaulia/wedding scenes,
brides aredepicted holding a i unx. Using the iunx as a starting point,
I began toinvestigate representations of the iunx as a bird, a device, and
as mythicalpersonifications. The iconographic evidence of the bird, and
the iunx,and its connections to Eros and Aphrodite facilitate the association
ofthe iunx with desire.
Both bride and prostituteanswer
different needs in society but use the same accoutrements: makeup,perfumes,
jewelry and special clothing to adorn their bodies. Both womenuse the iunx
as another decoration in their adornment.
Through research
it becameapparent that the iunx need not be seen only as a magical device
in boththe textual and iconographic evidence; it evolved to become symbolic
foreros/desire. Through this symbolism, the connection between depictionsof
both bride and prostitute with the iunx became clear.
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The Absent Body in
Ivan Albright’s Still-lifes of 1931
Robert Cozzolino
Department of Art History,
University Wisconsin-Madison
Ivan Albright is
best knownas a merciless painter of flesh. He made a reputation early with
starklylit, "microscopically-rendered," shockingly corporeal paintings of
individualspresented alone in dark rooms. Why then did he suddenly abandon
the bodyin favor of three complex still-lifes in 1931? This paper focuses
on theapparent absence of the body in Albright's projects of the 1930s.
The mostnotorious of the trio shows an eight-foot high door bearing a wreath
ofblack lilies, pink roses and one yellow carnation. Albright worked on
the canvas for a decade and eventually titled it That Which I Should Have
DoneI Did Not Do (The Door). Despite its prominence in Albright's oeuvre,
thepainting has attracted little scholarly attention. The Door has been
treatedas a morbid meditation on death and regret, firmly in the vanitas
tradition.I will argue that the body remains Albright's subject in The Door
and histwo contemporary still-lifes.
The Door and its
immediatepredecessors represent Albright's struggle to paint the intangible.
In1931, he shifted away from an excessively corporeal subject to that ofthe
body implied; bodily presence suggested through traces, ghostly iconographyand
the "place" of the viewer. Albright manipulated the viewer's body beforethese
paintings through subtle but disconcerting shifts in perspectivewhich call
the gravity, stability, and meaning of the body into question.One still-life
implies that we are suddenly floating, dizzy, above an elaboratetable arrangement.
A second makes us contemplate a surrogate doll lyingin state in a large
glass case. Before The Door, we are confronted withan uncanny image; space,
a portal, a threshold and light rendered withsuch virtuosity that it seems
real. Yet the door buckles, swells, and assumesthe mortal qualities of flesh.
Mists, streams of vapor, and a wisp of smokeglide over the portal, suggesting
spirits, ethereal bodies, and the paranormal.Albright's suppression of the
physical body in these paintings revealsmuch about his spiritual attitude
toward "body." He believed in two bodies:one earth-bound and another eternal.
I will offer a new interpretationof The Door by looking closely at its content
in relationship to Spiritualism,Theosophy and Albright's writing.
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Considering Castration:
An Iconology of a Missing Member
John Corso
History of Art and Archaeology,
Cornell University
Gender is contingent;
thegendered subject requires ongoing constitution to emerge within a symbolicsystem.
Given that formation of the gendered subject is a continual andpositional
process, the use of one universal model of gender appears monopolistic.Thus,
successful present-day discussions of gender must accommodate multivalentmodels.
The insistence on
a rangeof gender models has enhanced research within contemporary medieval
studies. In a broad attack on social construction, Nancy Partner asserts
that thesole use of only one explanatory system to describe gender is insufficient(Partner
1993). Since her criticism holds discursive merit, this paperheeds Partner’s
reproof by situating a model of gender-as-attribute withinthe existent panoply
of gender models. Applied to current scholarshipon medieval castration,
the gender-as-attribute model exposes the underlyingiconographic methodology
detectable in various articles on masculinity.
This paper starts
with MartinIrvine’s investigation of Abelard’s remasculinization project
(Irvine 1997).Irvine’s essay analyzes various attempts by Abelard to remake
his severedmanhood. Irvine’s analysis would profit from the gender-as-attributemodel
by better articulating Abelard’s dependence on iconography in hisreconstruction
project. The second case centers on Jos Kodeweij’s researchon erotic pilgrim
badges. In the case of sexually explicit badges,Kodeweij acknowledges
the role of the attribute (Kodeweij 1999), but hedoes so using a static
semiotic explanation. I would like to complicatethis reading by contending
that meanings were far more unstable. Like iconography as a whole, attributes
benefit from a post-structuralapplication of linguistic "slippage,"
rather than begin forced intoan exact signification. Using both semiotic
and performance theories,the paper concludes with a reconsideration of erasure
as investigated byMichael Camille.
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The Beauty of Socrates:
Unity, Utility, and
the Body in Xenophon's Symposium
Alexander Alderman
Department of Classics,
Brown University
Xenophon's Socratic
writings(Memorabilia, Oeconomicus, Apology, and Symposium) serve two ends,
sometimesat odds with one another. Through his portrayal of Socrates, Xenophon
seeksto defend the philosopher from charges of antisocial or anti-Athenian
opinionsand behavior. Yet, he also uses Socrates' famous gadfly nature to
bringto light the shortcomings of Athenian beliefs and practices.
Both of these motives
areclear from passages in the Memorabilia. We can see the first in action,for
example, when Xenophon vehemently denies that Socrates and his pupilshad
masochistic tendencies resulting form their disdain for the human body.After
some detailed analysis, we can see the second motive at work whenSocrates
chastises a member of the Athenian aristocracy; this noblemanhas become
exhausted after a short journey while his luggage-bearing slaveremains resilient.
In his criticism, Socrates brings Greek slavery ideology,which claims that
masters deserve to rule slaves because they have greaterself-control, into
conflict with Greek work ideology, which dictates thatviliue is only achieved
through adversity.
In the Symposium,
Xenophontakes that work ideology to task by exploring salutary forms of
inactivityand play-the first line of the work is a sort of apology for the
subjectmatter. Watching a pair of young dancers, Socrates argues that dancingbeautifies
the body by revealing its unity in motion; the jester Phillipdances in response
and shows that motion reveals his body's disunity andugliness. Xenophon
then develops a critique of the concept of beauty andfurthermore of Greek
beauty ideology. The action of the work culminatesin a beauty contest between
the notoriously ugly Socrates and the youngCritoboulus in which Socrates
tries to equate beauty with goodness andthereby with utility and to argue
that his bug eyes, snub nose, and oversizedmouth all are entitled to claims
of redefined beauty.
Xenophon's Socrates
is muchmore concerned with bodily matters than Plato's, and Xenophon seems
torecognize this and even make light of it. After Antisthenes praises Socratesfor
his well-trained appetites, Socrates playfully chastises Antisthenes,"You
love me for my body, not my mind."
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"The Poorest and
Thinnest of Men:"
Virtue and the Mortal
Body in the Representations of Philip II
Alejandra Giménez-Berger
Tyler School of Art,
Temple University
In his Elogio de
las esclarecidasvirtudes del rey Felipe II (Eulogy of the noble virtues
of the king PhilipII), published in 1604, Cristóbal Pérez
de Herrera introducesa series of moralizing descriptions of the dying king's
body. Alludingin part to the Medieval tradition of the double-body of the
king, Herrera'sidentifies the royal body, signified by heraldic dress and
external accruements,as the locus of virtues long recognized as hallmarks
of Habsburg and Iberianidentity. Startling, however, is Herrera's praise
of those virtues which,revealed by the undressing of the king, reside in
Philip's natural body.
What are the intellectualdiscourses
that enable Herrera to ascribe virtue-and through it, power-toa physical
body ravaged by illness and time? What are the liminal bodies/spacesthrough
which royal identity is transferred when the body decays? In thispaper,
I address a number of issues that stem from an anthropological andart-historical
reading of the natural and the political bodies of the kingas informed by
the rhetoric of this most popular eulogy. A necessary corollaryto this reading
is the anastomosis of individual character and rising nationalsentiments
that occurs in autonomous Habsburg portraiture. In the paintedportrait,
identity is represented by the strict control of the naturalbody (through
its gestures, movements, physiognomy, demeanor) or by itserasure (through
its encasing by heraldic dress). Philip's self-fashioningin portraiture,
sustained by international dialogues on the behavior ofthe ideal courtier,
elucidates the success of Herrera's rhetoric.
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Modes of Resistance:
Reconceptualizing the Black Body in Art
from 1970 to Present
Soraya Murray and Derek Conrad Murray
Department of History
of Art, Cornell University
From Black Power
to the FeministMovement to Post-Black, the Black body continues to be utilized
both metaphoricallyand allegorically as a tool of radical resistance. Societal
fixation onthe Black body illuminates the black/white binary, which in turn
reinforcesthe notion of an interdependent historical existence. Both
fetshizedand rebuked, the Black body exists in a complex fear/fantasy matrix,
asit bears the brunt of society’s ugliest pathologies. Utilizing the Blackbody
as a focal point (as radical Sameness, not as radical Otherness) thispaper
will explore new and divergent modes of historiography, with theintention
of engendering an equivalence.
Traditionally employing
therhetoric of Otherness and marginalization, Black art discourse (in itsresistance
to mainstream neglect and erasure) has in many respects performeddifference,
locking Black artistic production into a separate history.Similarly, Eurocentric
historicizing efforts have continuously ignoredAfrican and African-American
modernist contributions, creating a skewed,and altogether sterilized vision.
Eurocentric and diaspora aesthetics alikeexist as divergent, counter-histories
that reinforce and maintain the illusionof inherent difference. Thus, conventional
art historical research formsa constellation of sovereign histories founded
on essentialism and culturalpurity. We [art historians, critics, curators]
perform and maintain ritualseparation: ritual classification and hierarchy.
Considering the effectsof postcolonial and postmodern paradigms in contemporary
cultural discourses,this paper re-examines the Black body within art history
as resistant tosocial and histo rical division: divisions that create inadequate
and incompleteresearch on both sides of the mythical racial divide.
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Sweeping Sacred Floors
with Her Hair: Polybius IX.6
and the Republican
Woman’s Crinis Passus
Jennifer Eyl
Department of Classics,
San Francisco State University
In describing the
eventsof 211 BCE during the second Punic War, Polybius (IX.6) tells us that
thewomen of Rome swept the temple pavements with their [unbound/disheveled]hair,
beseeching the gods to protect the city from Hannibal, whose intractablearmy
was suddenly camped five miles away. Polybius indicates that thissupplication
ritual, mentioned also in Livy (III.7 and XXVI.7), was reservedonly for
the most severe moments of civic crisis. This paper examines thestatus of
Republican women’s disheveled hair (crinis passus) as a powerfulsymbol and
vehicle for ritual liminality, as well as a superior tool formediation between
the human and divine realms.
The approach of this
paperis twofold. After examining artistic and literary images of Republicanwomen’s
bound vs. unbound hair, I first argue that bound female hair stoodas a societal
standard— a symbol in Republican Rome of normalcy and femalecompliance to
ordered culture. With ritually unbound hair, however, womentransgressed
this cultural boundary and placed themselves at the thresholdbetween social
order and chaos, between the tangible and intangible. Abrief analysis of
the language of disheveledness elucidates the associationbetwe en a woman’s
unbound hair and the threat of unstructured abandon.Secondly I argue that,
while in this liminal state, a woman’s unbound hairimproved her capacity
for mediation by untying/unblocking her lines ofcommunication. The untying
of knots to reinforce prayer is seen elsewherein Roman ritual.
Scholarship on Roman
women’shair has often focused on the elaborately coiffured styles of the
Imperialperiod. This paper serves to deepen our understanding of how women’s
hairwas perceived and treated in Republican Rome. The paper also attempts
tofurther our understanding of how hair was used ritually to mark a womanin
the anomalous "betwixt and between" state and to increase the urgencyand
clarity of Republican prayers.
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Maya Masquerade:
Bodily Inscription from Classic to Colonial
Fernando Rochaix
Department of Art History,
University of Texas at Austin
The Maya of Méxicowere
the first known people of the New World to keep historical records.From
50 BCE, until the Spanish conquest in the 16th century, they avidlyinscribed
texts on every man-made surface around them. Two Spanish chroniclersfrom
the colonial period report that glyphic inscriptions even coveredthe body
through the practice of tattooing, scarification, and body painting.While
these testaments are our best-written accounts for the varietiesof Maya
body markings, they nonetheless contain contradictory elementsand raise
problems on colonial readership.
Previous scholarship
hasoften ignored or left an cient Mayan body inscriptions unexplained. This
paper is an effort to interpret the tattoos and scars generated incolonial
descriptions, using helpful examples found in the Classic artof the pre-conquest
Maya. Body art can be found on human and non-humancharacters in various
monumental reliefs, ceramic vessels, and personalartifacts. Some scholars
propose that imperial Mayan ritual practice, preformedexclusively by elite
personages, alone explain the abundant use of bodilyinscriptions found in
art artifacts. I instead suggest a model for thesocial construction of the
human body in ancient Maya life, based on theform of inscriptions left on
body and the communal process of reading theseimages by a larger demographic.
For the ancient Maya
tattoos,scarification, and body paint were community markers, references
to religiousbelief extending beyond imperial elites to every level of Mayan
society.At the core of my argument is the centrality of anthropocentricism
andanimism in Maya religion, and how this shaped image making in the Classicperiod.
For the ancient Maya the human body was a vessel for animatingenergies and
entities. Writing on skin drew attention to the presence ofa flesh, to a
sacred container, one that simultaneously enclosed a sacredhuman body, and
equally belonged to an aesthetic dialog found in Mayanart practices. Animism
is therefore represented, through the interchangeableplay of new body parts
and new sheaths of skin. The skin, and its relationto the body, can thus
be understood as a nexus of public, private, andaesthetic relations.
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Modern Primitive
Body Art of the Early 1990s:
Performativity, Ritual
and Communitas
Ketti Neil
Department of History
of Art, Bryn Mawr College
This discussion focuses
onModern Primitive body art performances and happenings that took place
innon-traditional venues in the early 1990s, in which connections betweenbloodletting
and ritual transformation were explicitly emphasized. The development
of this type of "extreme performance" has been interpretedby RoseLee Goldberg
to reflect the artistic solidarity of marginal culturesagainst the conservative
backlash of that period. My focus here is to investigateexamples of these
performances with regard to scholarly theories about"performativity," and
to offer some insights into ritual notions of communitasand subcultural
bonding.
An analysis of three
differentperformances -- Ron Athey’s Martyrs and Saints, Jesse G.’s Flesh
Hook Suspension,and Ball Dances by Black Leather Wings -- will be used to
illustrate varyingdegrees of separation and interaction between the artists
and their audiences.The performers’ physical enactments of actual blood
rites will be examinedin relation to ideas about subjectivity, realness
and temporality; theblurring of artistic boundaries; and the issue of audience
involvementand consent. What happens when the body of the performance
itselfis creatively perforated, pushed or extended? How does this artistic
modificationcreate a liminal shift in perception, linking performers and
audience inthe shared flow of communitas? An investigation of these and
other questionswill play into my exploration of Modern Primitive body art
as a form ofritualized spectacle that was generative as well as reflective
of subculturalsolidarity.
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The Ecclesiastical
History III.5-7: Bodies of Punishment and Worship
Peter Parisi
Department of Classics,
Rutgers University
Throughout the EcclesiasticalHistory,
Eusebius develops the notion that ascesis most truly expressesthe Christian's
love of Christ. Furthermore, because Eusebius associatesChrist--who is the
Logos or Divine Word--with true wisdom, the love ofChrist is also, literally,
philosophy, the love of wisdom. While Eusebius'predecessors had already
made this association, he develops it into theparadigm of Christian worship.
At the same time,
Eusebiushas committed himself to narrating "the consequences which arose
for theJewish nation as a result of their betrayal of Jesus" (1.1). A major
partof the 'punishment' he describes is starvation. The precedent for thispunishment
is given in Book I, where the historian portrays starvationas the most painful
result of the Fall (1.2). Just as Moses restored orderto the world and ended
the Jews' suffering by bringing the divine law,Christ, as the divine law
personified, came to the world to end man's separationfrom God. In Eusebius'
account, the crucifixion of Christ and subsequentmartyrdoms of early Christian
leaders represents a second rejection ofGod by the Jews.
E.H III.5- 7, a major
episodein this narrative thread, reveals much about Eusebius' method. In
thispassage, he combines historical and scriptural sources to portray the
destructionof Jerusalem as the fulfillment of a divine plan. In constructing
thispolemic he is helped by his source Josephus' own attribution of "the
fallof the Jewish state" to the death of a single, just man: th e high priestAnanus
(Bellum Iudaeum, III.318--22). Throughout his description of thepunishment
of the Jews, Eusebius, by treating the martyrs as analogs ofChrist, reinforces
the idea that love of God is best expressed by asceticpractice. The story
of the rich woman who is driven by famine to cook andeat her child unites
the two themes of ascetic philosophy and the punishmentof the Jews.
Focusing on IIL5-
7, thispaper examines Eusebius' notion of the body as the locus of both
worshipand punishment.
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An Afternoon at the
Morgue: The Pleasure of Pain
Elizabeth Carlson
Department of Art History,
University of Minnesota
The morgue in Paris
was opento the public from 1804 to 1907 and attracted thousands of visitors
daily- men and women, upper and lower classes, Parisians and tourists. Thispaper
does not intend to recount the history of the public morgue, itscontribution
to medical innovations, or the individual accounts of bodiesexhibited. This
paper, instead, will address the theatricality of the morgueboth in terms
of the display of the corpse and the spectators' relationshipto that display.
Using archival accounts and illustrations of the Parismorgue, I will attempt
to answer the question, "why did the morgue attractsuch a huge and varied
audience?" and examine the strange coupling of entertainmentand horror within
it. By claiming the morgue as performative, we can moreclearly see how the
act of viewing dead bodies became a theatrical spectacle.Not only did the
morgue employ props such as velvet curtains to enhancethe display of co rpses,
but also sold souvenirs such as miniature replicasof the trunk where a young
girl was found dead.
The paper further
arguesthat masochism was inherent in the spectacle and the attraction of
thepublic morgue. Leopold von Sacher-Masoch's novel Venus in Furs (1870),published
at the height of the morgue's popularity imitates not only theexperience
of pleasure and pain, but also the theatricality and the fascinationwith
the white cold body. Sacher-Masoch's novel lays out three specificcomponents
to masochism: suspense, fantasy and fetishism. Like Severinin Sacher-Mascoch's
novel, the spectators at the morgue found pleasurein the suspense, tension,
and anxiety of the unknown. Each day spectatorsflocked to the public morgue
to see literal illustrations of newspaperaccounts. The viewers fantasized
about the story behind the corpses exhibitedin individual cells. With velvet
drapery and the application of make-up,the morgue fetishized and aestheticized
these statuesque bodies, as theywere exhibited behind glass, but never touched.
Within the theatrical environmentof fantasy, suspense and, discipline, the
public became not simply viewersof corpses, but actors in this masochistic
performance, taking pleasurein the horrors of the morgue.
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