Venus in Exile

Whereas previous eras had celebrated beauty as the central aim of art, the modernist avant-garde were deeply suspicious of beauty and its perennial symbols, woman and ornament, preferring instead the thrill and alienation of the sublime. They rejected harmony, empathy, and femininity in a denial still reverberating through art and social relations today. Exploring this casting of Venus, with all her charms, into exile, Wendy Steiner's brilliant, ambitious, and provocative analysis explores the t