As the saying goes, “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” and over the centuries in every part of the world, the concept and standards for beauty have always been in endless flux. It has therefore been virtually impossible to capture the various attributes and shades of beauty into what might be called a standard, universal formula, but this has not stopped philosophers, poets, and artists over the ages from attempting to define, capture, and express beauty in their own terms for their own time.
In
History of Beauty (Rizzoli, 438 pages), a 2004 book that has now gone through several editions, acclaimed novelist and scholar Umberto Eco takes the modern reader to a thought-provoking journey into the aesthetics of beauty as they evolved from the time of the ancient Greeks to the present day. He makes a close examination of the development of the visual arts and literature in each era, then broadens this study to cover beauty in relation to the idea of love, to the desirability of men and women, and to ugliness and cruelty.
“The great charm of Eco’s work is that it is both grand and companionable, mixing erudition and philosophical sophistication with contemporary notions of the cool and the fashionable,” says Arthur Krystal in “Hello, Beautiful: What We Talk About When We Talk About Beauty,” his review of Eco’s book in
Harper’s Magazine. “One may disagree about Eco’s choice of illustrations or the emphasis he places on certain periods, but there’s no disputing his desire that beauty be seen in as serious and comprehensive light as is possible in a one-volume work.”
Read “The Ugly Truth,” Mike Phillips' review of Umberto Eco's The History of Beauty in the January 29, 2005 issue of TheGuardian.com now!Read Arthur Krystal’s “Hello, Beautiful” in Harper’s Magazine now! THIS REVIEW IS NO LONGER AVAILABLE ON THE WEBABOUT THE AUTHOR:An acclaimed writer and an academician, Umberto Eco is president of the Scuola Superiore di Studi Umanistici, University of Bologna. He is the author of the best-selling novels
The Name of the Rose and
Foucault’s Pendulum. He also wrote
The Island of the Day Before and the more recent
Baudolino.
COMPANION READING:In
On Ugliness (Rizzoli, 456 pages), a provocative companion volume to
History of Beauty published in 2007, Umberto Eco makes an unusual and eclectic study of ugliness as the opposite of beauty, arguing that cultural and historical contexts determine how beauty and ugliness are portrayed and received. Says Amy Finnerty in her review of
On Ugliness for the December 2, 2007 issue of
The New York Times: “Selecting stark visual images of gore, deformity, moral turpitude and malice, and quotations from sources ranging from Plato to radical feminists, Eco unfurls a taxonomy of ugliness. As gross-out contests go, it’s both absorbing and highbrow.”
Read “Not Pretty,” Amy Finnerty’s review of On Ugliness in The New York Times now!
