Art, Sex and Eugenics: Corpus Delecti

by Fae Brauer (Editor), Anthea Callen (Editor)

This book reveals how art and sex promoted the desire for the genetically perfect body. Its eight chapters demonstrate that before eugenics was stigmatized by the Holocaust and Western histories were sanitized of its prevalence, a vast array of Western politicians, physicians, eugenic societies, family leagues, health associations, laboratories and museums advocated, through verbal and visual cultures, the breeding of 'the master race'. Each chapter illustrates the uncanny resemblances between models of sexual management and the perfect eugenic body in America, Britain, France, Communist Russia and Nazi Germany both before and after the Second World War. Traced back to the eighteenth-century anatomy lesson, the perfect eugenic body is revealed as athletic, hygienic, 'pure-blooded' and sexually potent. This paradigm is shown to have persisted as much during the Bolshevik sexual revolution, as in democratic nations and fascist regimes. Consistently posed naked, these images were unashamedly exhibitionist and voyeuristic. Despite stringent legislation against obscenity, not only were these images commended for soliciting the spectator's gaze but also for motivating the spectator to act out their desire. An examination of the counter-archives of Maori and African Americans also exposes how biologically racist eugenics could be equally challenged by art. Ultimately this book establishes that art inculcated procreative sex with the Corpus Delecti - the delectable body, healthy, wholesome and sanctioned by eugenicists for improving the Western race.

Genres: Art History

316 pages, Hardcover

First published November 1, 2008

Reviews

[Ietrio · Rating 1 out of 5]

Incapable to make a whole book, some academic paper pushers have ganged together in order to beef up that CV and step up on the academic ladder.

[Sherman]

Read part of the introduction and decided it wasn't a book to just read as one does the next work of fiction or non-fiction so I'm setting it aside for now. I was interested to come across today an article in my freelance indexing that dealt with signs of imperfection in early 20th-century Vienna (on Loos and others in Art bulletin, Sept. 2012). I didn't see "eugenics" in the article but it sure floated in familiar waters.