UGLY: An Alternative Look at Western Art

“Beauty has only one form; ugliness has a thousand.” – Victor Hugo, preface to Cromwell, 1827

For many people, the history of Western art exists as an imagined litany of beautiful artworks, a chronology of idealized figures and finished objects. This exhibition gathers artworks that ask us to reconsider those assumptions.

Most simply, ugliness has been conceived as the inverse of beauty, but there has always been more at stake than mere aesthetic preference. Throughout history those notions have been imbued with moral values: beauty most frequently is equated with ideals of goodness, truth, and order, while the mundane, the irrational, the evil, the deformed, and the excessive are relegated to the realm of ugliness. Over time, just as moral values have shifted, both the appearance and usefulness of ugliness have taken on different meanings and different roles, often in surprisingly powerful ways.

This collection of objects does not offer a counternarrative to a history of beauty. It might, however, suggest fissures in such a history. Ugliness pushes at the boundaries of what we know and find comfortable. It can also make us more active viewers, prompting us to react, question, and take a second look.

Lotus Cross Painter, Pyxis, 575–565 BC

Earthenware vessel, Mildred Lane Kemper Museum of Art, WU 3263

Although the ancient Greeks remain most strongly associated with refined sculptures of idealized bodies crafted according to mathematical proportions observed in nature, strange, hybrid entities populated the vernacular imagination and arts. Thus, in a sharp contrast to Aristotle’s call for art as an imitation of that which is noble and lofty, we see a cosmetic jar encircled by half-human, half-bird Sirens. According to ancient mythology, the Sirens, though physically repulsive, could lure sailors to their death with beautiful songs; here they suggest the seductive—but perhaps also dangerous—power of the makeup that the jar once held.