| Sculptor and critic Ted Prescott discusses twentieth-century American art, how the human figure has been portrayed in art historically, and the book and gallery show titled A Broken Beauty. The book, which Prescott edited and to which he contributed, studies in print the themes the show attends to in images; the latter comprises the work of fifteen artists, all of whom present alternatives to the depictions of beauty and the body that have dominated different ages. In the Classical period (as in modern advertising), Prescott explains, bodies are shown as perfect forms that deny the reality of mortality and the Fall. In the twentieth century, however, art depicts the human figure as distorted and dismembered. Prescott and the others involved in the Broken Beauty project acknowledge mortality and the Fall in their work, but illustrate beauty in the midst of suffering, loss, and brokenness. |
A Broken Beauty (Eerdmans, 2005) |
