Sculpture, Sexuality and History, 1st ed. 2019 Encounters in Literature, Culture and the Arts from the Eighteenth Century to the Present Genders and Sexualities in History Series

This book investigates the wide-ranging connections between sculpture, sexuality, and history in Western culture from the eighteenth century to the present. Sculpture has offered a privileged site for the articulation of sexual experience and the formation of sexual knowledge. As historical objects, sculptures also draw attention to the different ways in which knowledge about sexuality is facilitated through an engagement with the past. Bringing together contributors from across disciplines, including art history, classics, film studies, gender studies, history, literary studies, museum studies, queer theory and reception studies, the volume presents original readings of sculptural art in relation to antiquarianism, aesthetics, collecting cultures, censorship and obscenity, psychoanalysis, sexology, and the experience and regulation of museum spaces. It examines how sculptural encounters were imagined and articulated in literature, painting, film and science. As a whole, the book opensup a new understanding of the ways in which sculptures, as real or imagined objects, have fundamentally shaped approaches to and receptions of the past in relation to sex, gender and sexuality.

1. Introduction: Sculpture, Sexuality and History; Jana Funke and Jen Grove.- PART I:  The Desire for the Living Statue and the Desire for the Past.- 2. Antiquarian Pygmalions: The Female Body, Ancient Statuary and the Idea of Imaginary Transport in the Eighteenth Century; Katharina Boehm.- 3. Longing for the Past: Eichendorff’s Marmorbild, Historical Experience, And the Sexuality Of The Masterpieces Room; Elsje van Kessel.-  4. Women, or Wax? Eros, Thanatos and Sculpture in Cinema; Vito Adriaensens.-  PART II: Sculptural Decency: Reception, Censorship and Liberation.- 5. The Indecent Body of Sculpture: Theodor Storm’s Realist Psyche; Catriona MacLeod.- 6. ‘A Token of Triumph Cut Down to Size’: Jacob Epstein’s Rock Drill as Fetish Object; Bernard Vere.- 7.  Ethics and Erotics: Receptions of an Ancient Statue of a Nymph and Satyr; Victoria Donnellan.- PART III: Queer Possibilities of Statuary.- 8. 'FirmOutlines and Hard Muscles Immortalised': Ancient Statuary and EP Warren’s 'Uranian Ideal'; Jen Grove.- 9. Encountering the Niobe’s Children: Vernon Lee’s Queer Formalism, Empathy and the Ethics of Sculpture; Francesco Ventrella.- 10. The Queer Materiality of History: H.D., Freud and the Bronze Athena; Jana Funke.- 11. ‘Britain’s Most Romantic Museum’ or a ‘Temple of Lust’?: Statuary, Lesbian Spectatorship and the V&A; Amy Mechowski.- Index.

Offers a new understanding of the different ways in which the reception of statuary has been shaped by debates about sexuality and history Explores how sculptures have opened up debates about queer desires and identities, as well as obscenity, censorship and morality Brings together leading international experts and cutting-edge scholars from an extensive range of disciplines