Rating: 
Summary: Late-Victorian male psyche exposed
Review: Dijkstra's book is a wonderful dissection of the sexual subtexts of late-Victorian art, a genre packed with very telling and, by our standards, near-pornographic images under the guise of religious or mythological subjects. Analysing art that was designed to titillate - and frankly, still does - is a difficult brief. But in my view, Dijkstra successfully avoids a "Look how disgusting this is!" tone, and provides an insight into the many female stereotypes in Victorian art: temptresses, vampires, victims, invalids, degenerates, and more. My one major criticism is that the text too blatantly pushes Dijkstra's interpretations of the paintings ("Was this woman [looking at a goldfish bowl] ... seeing something more than just the goldfish swiming aimlessly in a circle? ... Wasn't she also a goldfish herself, and wasn't her environment, to a large extent, the goldfish bowl of her own "useless existence"? No wonder, then ... her melancholy expression"). In my view, this polemic tone weakens Dijkstra's point. The pictures, which are well supported by quotes from contemporary fiction and other sources, speak perfectly well about the weirdness of the late-Victorian male psyche.
Rating: 
Summary: IDOLS OF PERVERSITY
Review: I bought this because I enjoyed Steve Martin's novel "Shop Girl." His heroine says that "Idols of Perversity" is her favorite book. I have to admit that I couldn't get through it, not that it's a bad book, but it wasn't light reading.
--
Review by Thomas David Kehoe, author of "Hearts and Minds: How Our Brains Are Hardwired for Relationships."
Rating:
Summary: Steve Martin's "Shop Girl" recommends this
Review: I bought this because I enjoyed Steve Martin's novel "Shop Girl." His heroine says that "Idols of Perversity" is her favorite book. I have to admit that I couldn't get through it, not that it's a bad book, but it wasn't light reading.
--
Review by Thomas David Kehoe, author of "Hearts and Minds: How Our Brains Are Hardwired for Relationships."
Rating:
Summary: IDOLS OF PERVERSITY
Review: I don't know how this qualifies as a direct written review, but I was so inspired by this book when I first read it at least 10 years ago, (I've reread it a few times each year in between) that for at least 10 years, greatly in part as a gesture of gratitude to Mr. Dijkstra, I have anxiously been working to compliment the fine research of Mr. Dijkstra by "re-illustrating" it with contemporary images from "this past century." He has been an inspiration to me, I hope he will be impressed with my gesture. (From one century into this next, -More from me later!) Pepe Paras
Rating:
Summary: Important discussion of sexual archetypes
Review: I read this book several years ago and to put it simply, it shook up my perceptions about the imagery used in art during that time. Suddenly I saw these beautiful, lithesome, sinuous or passive figures of women as statements of deep-seated fears and misperceptions about women and non-white, non-Anglo Saxon Europeans during that era. It is an important study.
Rating:
Summary: Important discussion of sexual archetypes
Review: I read this book several years ago and to put it simply, it shook up my perceptions about the imagery used in art during that time. Suddenly I saw these beautiful, lithesome, sinuous or passive figures of women as statements of deep-seated fears and misperceptions about women and non-white, non-Anglo Saxon Europeans during that era. It is an important study.
Rating:
Summary: An amusing compendium of pictures the author would condemn
Review: If you are familiar with Max Nordau's -Degeneration-, or Mario Praz's -The Romantic Agony-, this book belongs on the same shelf with them. Only this time, it is 90's political correctness & feminism that supply the moralizing. Preaching makes the pictures more interesting.
Rating:
Summary: An amusing compendium of pictures the author would condemn
Review: If you are familiar with Max Nordau's -Degeneration-, or Mario Praz's -The Romantic Agony-, this book belongs on the same shelf with them. Only this time, it is 90's political correctness & feminism that supply the moralizing. Preaching makes the pictures more interesting.
Rating:
Summary: A worthy heir to Max Nordau and Mario Praz
Review: If you have read Nordau's -Degeneration-, you will find that the most appealing part of that tome to the present day reader will be the fact that it serves as admirable Baedeker to the highlights of late 19th century (mostly French) literature. It does so in the form of a moralistic tract, founded in the public-healthism of Nordau's era, and specifically Cesare Lombroso's attempt to create a "science" of what might be best termed as forensic phrenology. [Lombroso maintained that criminals displayed hereditary "atavistic" traits, and that therefore by looking for facial features he deemed "atavistic," criminal tendencies could be weeded out of the population. Nordau then applied Lombroso's criteria to identify many literary titans as atavistic moral degenerates.]
More people may be familiar with Mario Praz's -The Romantic Agony-, again a tract tinged with moral hostility against the stasis and cruelty of "decadence," that once again serves as a lovely field guide to Symbolist and late Romantic poetry. Praz, perhaps fortunately for his present reputation, sticks with non-falsifiable and purely artistic criticisms.
The point here is that Nordau's and Praz's books in fact add relish and anticipation to the literary works they describe despite their moralistic thunders against them. It's applying reverse psychology to the Paglia/Spenser effect --- for Camille Paglia's -Sexual Personae-, whatever other merits or demerits it may have, has won more readers for Spenser's -Faerie Queene- these past several years than the poem probably had over the past century.
-Idols of Perversity- purports to analyze images from late 19th century art in the light of feminist doctrine, with an eye to the (rather obvious) thesis that these figures represent male sexual fantasies, often misogynistic, and not flesh and blood women. Unlike most other tracts of cultural criticism that start from the moral assumptions of identity politics, Dijkstra's at least has the merit of actually persuading its readers that the hypothesis it wishes to develop is true.
On the other hand, the moralizing tone of the work gives it a place on the same shelf as Nordau and Praz; more so because the book is of necessity handsomely illustrated with dozens of interesting fantasy paintings, many by largely forgotten artists --- the fact, of course, that first attracted my attention to it in the first place. If you have any interest in these pictures at all, -Idols- is a handy reference guide, and Dijkstra's text serves the ironic purpose of making the pictures seem that much more wickedly fun, just as his distinguished predecessors do.
Rating: 
Summary: Old Fashioned PC
Review: Politically Correct is the term to use here. Dijkstra is brilliant in his research methodology and thematic organization. In this way his work provides a valued scope and clarity that is hard to find anywhere. Sadly enough, the PC slant is out and his arguments are blowing wind. If Dijkstra had written this book in the height of their careers, both Theda Bara and Nazimova would be out on the street looking for jobs. But Dijkstra's biological 'wisdom' is not updated by sexual selection theory. A good book and of a much greater value is George Hersey's Evolution of Allure which I suggest as an accompaniment to this book. Hersey is playful and ironic, a real antidote to the serious malaise of post-whatever it was. I would also recommend Wendy Steiner's Venus in Exile for its critical examination of Kant's influence on late-XIXth c. aesthetics. Her argument is much more intelligent and rational. Dijkstra is very jugmental and critical of artists of the late XIXth c. and he comes across this way because he lacks an understanding of biology. Fortunately, he doesn't claim any either. I was especially shocked at his dismissal of Oscar Wilde at the very end of the book. There is no understanding of Wilde's playful side, or of his delicate shifting of masks. No critical appraisal of Wilde's reading of evolutionary theory (cf Smith and Helfand "Oscar Wilde's Oxford Notebooks")There is no discussion of Frazer or Harrison, but plenty on Lombroso, Spencer, and Nordau. After reading Paglia's tour de force Sexual Personae, Dijkstra sounds like a whiner. With the unbalanced bias of this book, the uncautious reader may believe Dijkstra is right about everything he says. One slip he makes is to get palid Pater involved in the Massacre of the Innocent females. Now Pater couldn't wield a sword if his life depended on it. Yet in his angst, Dijkstra puts Pater on the side of the goats and Vernon Lee with the lambs. He doesn't mention that Lee emulated Pater beyond words and wrote tenderly about him in her "Renaissance Fancies and Studies". Neither did he mention Lee's (deliberate) gender confusions upon describing Heloise and her love of Abelarda. "She repudiates the supposed purity and piety, blazons out her wickedness and hypocrisy, and cries out, partly with the horror of the sacriligious nun..." HMM Lee was a lamb with a billy goat's gruff. As for Wilde, Dijkstra heads straight for Salome and without examining Wilde's slippery fish love of the paradoxical, grabs the executioner's sword to slay both John the Baptist and Wilde. Whew! On the whole, Dijkstra shows no sympathy or justice at all in his anger. He sends them all to the guillotine, that is, after he has examined their heads for lice. Again, I think Dijkstra's research is unmatched in the field, but his ideas are old fashioned and he really didn't advance much beyond Mario Praz who worked this field in the early twentieth century. Praz shows a keener sensibility for the literary and even touched on themes like ekphrasis in late XIXth c art. I wonder how many PC or pomo writers would even read Lessing and know the references. Critics have a choice of making their career politics or literature. Dijkstra walks the razor's edge. He may save the head, but he loses its connection to the body. Unless you just want to sound overly educated and very correct in your politics, I suggest moving beyond this study and examining other arguments that don't just "fit in" with campus policing authorities. I would suggest that you buy this book however, because it is an unparalleled thematized catalogue raisonee. It may make you nauseous, but it's good nonetheless. Although the critical worth is minimal, Dijkstra's research is thorough. I gave it one star just to even out the enthusiasm here.
|
