The Cultural History of Ugliness

Author Name: Gretchen E. Henderson

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It's a provocative book. By exploring our relationship with what we label ugly (or beautiful), Henderson forces us to examine our tastes, our fears, our social convictions, and our everyday concept of justice. This call to attention is always useful, and indispensable in a biased age like ours. Alberto Manuel/Literary Review - Gretchen Henderson's Cultural History of Ugliness glides at a pleasurable high speed across broad sectors—cultural, historical, biological—and is spellbinding. The very existence and struggle of the ugly is an (urgent, powerful, and necessary) reminder that the world is not ours alone. TLS - If beauty is in the eye of the beholder, then so is ugliness. For proof, look no further than the history of the concept itself, recently analyzed by Gretchen E. Henderson. Despite some objectively unsavory moments—for example, in some American cities like Chicago and Omaha, ugly laws barring people with disabilities from public spaces remained in place until the late 20th century—any violation that once seemed ugly is now seen as progress. “Rather than being viewed as purely binary oppositions,” Henderson writes, “ugliness and beauty can be thought of as a twin star system, each orbiting and attracting the other, and we can admire both.” Lily Rothman/Time Magazine—This book is a delightful and fluid cultural history, informing and provoking a different perspective. History Today—In this sweeping survey, Gretchen Henderson examines various notions of ugliness. Her explorations range from medieval gargoyles to Dr. Frankenstein’s monster, from the Nazi concept of art to jazz and Brutalist architecture, and pose the question: Is ugliness necessarily the opposite of beauty? Is it an important component of diversity, or is it something more complex, both aesthetically and philosophically? In her study, ugliness ebbs and flows, provokes thought, and defies simple definition. New Statesman