Article
Scatology and the Realist Aesthetic
Art Journal
(2014)
Abstract
Scatology in Western art of the post-Renaissance period has generally been discussed within the context of two related aesthetic categories, the comic and the grotesque.1 Otherwise put, students of scatological imagery have focused primarily on its power to arouse laughter and its capacity to shock, repulse, and alienate. These two distinct approaches to scatology correspond to prevailing normative attitudes toward bodily elimination and excrement held in the Western world since the Renaissance.2 They also, inasmuch as can be assessed, correspond to the intentions of the artists who have made scatological imagery an integral part of their work. These include, in the first instance, humoristic draftsmen—Pieter Bruegel, Honoré Daumier, Wilhelm Busch, and George Grosz, to name only a few—artists who made a living by satisfying the human desire for laughter. For some of these, scatological imagery lent itself to burlesque humor that owed its effect solely to the exhilarating power of the excremental.3 Others, following Horace's precept ridendo dicere verum,4 used scatological images in a satiric mode, as a means to deliver political and social critique or moral lessons of various kinds.5 Since examples of the satirical use of scatology are discussed in two articles in this issue, no more need be said about them in the present context.
Keywords
- Scatology,
- Western art,
- post-Renaissance period
Disciplines
Publication Date
May 7, 2014
Citation Information
Petra T. Chu. "Scatology and the Realist Aesthetic" Art Journal Vol. 52 (2014) p. 41 - 46 Available at: http://works.bepress.com/petra_chu/12/