musingsonwomenshealth.com

Reflections on 40 years as a doctor in Women's Health

Evil is simply Good tortured by its own thirst


I suppose it shouldn’t be a complete surprise that ugliness came to symbolize vice -at least in Renaissance Art. And for some people, perhaps there’s something a bit Schadenfreudish in it: that those people whose very appearance revolts them are receiving their imagined just rewards, and that, on the other hand, beauty should not be maligned; it should not require someone -an Auriga– to whisper in the ear of an attractive woman (let’s say) that she, too, is mortal like the rest of us. I don’t really understand, what constitutes ugliness though… is it something that a reflection in a mirror can capture when I first get up in the morning? Or is it more of a feeling, a mood which comes over me if I am depressed…?

I wonder if there is an analogy in literature: how we imagine a character we have first met through a story we have read for example. I’m sure we all have a mental picture of Quasimodo, the hunchbacked hero of Victor Hugo’s 19th century novel ‘The Hunchback of Notre Dame’. He is the deaf and almost blind bell-ringer of the famous Cathedral in Paris. Quasimodo had several physical deformities rendering him ‘ugly’ and therefore to be villified. Although I haven’t delved into its academic literary appraisal, I think Hugo’s intent was to describe Quasimodo as someone difficult to fear though, and indeed to imagine as someone who was as lovable as a homely family pet.

There have been many film and TV adaptations of the story, but none of the ones I have seen came anywhere close to how I imagined Quasimodo would look. His ugliness and deformities that I read about simply failed to convey evil either in my mind or on the screen, no matter the makeup, no matter the music, no matter the acting… So is ugliness, a construct? An eye-of-the-beholder thing? As Shakespeare wrote in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, ‘The lunatic, the lover, and the poet, are of imagination all compact’.

For most of us in the real world who just exist on the sidelines, the rules seem less strenuously applied -if applied at all. We are the unexamined crowd whose members are unnamed, and seen only as a backdrop unless someone breaks ranks and throws down a gauntlet far enough from the throng to be noticed.

During the Renaissance a person’s appearance was often felt to reveal their inner character, their value to a vain society. It is less so now, but the impression has not completely disappeared I fear. We’re not sure what to consider ugly, anymore: even the language we now use to describe the wide variety of human bodies and faces, as well as emotional and mental states, is often positive rather than negative, accepting rather than rejecting, pitying not condemning -carefully neutral…

 Even so, if I concentrate on symmetry, for example, I see little variations in others which, after noticing them, sometimes become bothersome; it is the contrast which jars; the contrast which creates the dynamic tension. Once in my long ago youth, when we were riding our bikes together, I noticed that my best friend Teddy had big ears -bigger than mine at any rate. But I liked Teddy and he wasn’t at all ugly. I mentioned my thoughts about his ears one day and rather than getting angry, he smiled and told me he had the same thoughts about my nose: it was bigger than my face needed. We looked at each other and began to laugh; it was what we were inside that mattered to each of us. So, I suppose I don’t really understand what ugliness means – or what ugliness is, for that matter…

But maybe it doesn’t always work like that; when Renaissance artists like Leonardo da Vinci gained a richer understanding of human anatomy, an idealized conception of beauty took shape in European culture, with specific proportions and physical features prized above all others.[i] Depending upon the context of the portrayal, any variations were suspect; ugliness became a foil to beauty. But even da Vinci once suggested that the two aesthetics appeared more powerful when seen in contrast. Without one, viewers can’t fully appreciate the other: they are two sides of the same coin.

In Renaissance depictions, artists were often dismayed by disproportionate bodies, dislocations, malformations and hybridizations, using such features to depict ‘the villainous, the wicked and the mad … with strong social and moral connotations.’ Anyone who was considered marginalized or socially inferior—including individuals with dwarfism or court jesters (who were often chosen for their deformities)—could be labeled ugly simply for being different.

So too, ‘people perceived as sinners came under scrutiny in Renaissance art, with their outward appearances mirroring their vices. An envious woman might be shown as a wizened witch, for example, while a  tax collector deemed guilty of greed might present a face twisted with avarice.’

I don’t know very much about Art history and what little I do understand is mainly what I’ve learned from the television series Fake or Fortune, I’m afraid. Otherwise, apart from my daughter’s drawings from her very earliest school years and their easily discoverable Provenance, I feel largely adrift. In those days it was all too easy to praise the unchanging genre (daddy pictures were what she usually showed me): all crafted with love, but too much of a kind to remember the details.

One picture still stands out in my memory, however: a drawing of a terribly misshapen head that was scowling at something undisclosed. I asked her about the head and why it was so distorted (I’d hesitated to call it ugly in case she took my evaluation as a criticism).

“It’s my Art teacher,” she replied with a big smile. “She was being bad to Janice because she caught her eating crayons.”

I just had to ask. “So why was Janice eating her crayons?”

I remember my daughter shrugging as if there were so many things adults didn’t know. “She was hungry, Daddy. It was almost snack time, and Miss Wren should have known.”

I suppose I should have thought of that. Maybe Renaissance people should have asked more questions as well, eh?

[i] https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/renaissance-art-linked-beauty-with-virtue-and-ugliness-with-vice-see-how-painters-from-leonardo-da-vinci-to-botticelli-viewed-physical-attractiveness-180988584

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