A book on this topic is long overdue and it was worth the wait. Hallie Franks’s wide-ranging and highly learned study interrogates the modern reception of ancient sculptures of Venus as “embedded in and read through the intersections and overlaps of modern conceptions of gender, race, regionality, class, and sexual behavior.” The author deftly weaves back and forth from classical antiquity to modern pop culture, Renaissance painting to conceptual art, Winckelmann to the trans-Atlantic slave trade, revealing the pervasive resonance of this ancient ideal for women even today. This book is also timely: reading it in the first, disorienting months of the second Trump administration, I was struck by its particular relevance for today’s contentious debates surrounding DEI, “correct” gender expression, (white) race preservation, control over women’s bodies and reproduction, and many others. Franks clearly articulates the importance of understanding the historical underpinnings of such issues, not to blame them on an imagined Classical past, but to disentangle modern issues from the ancient.
Each chapter, including the introduction and conclusion, opens with an example of contemporary art or popular culture that references both “Venus” and themes of the chapter. The Introduction begins with a discussion the KKW Body fragrance, which was packaged in a bottle supposedly modeled on the naked torso of Kim Kardashian—an unlikely springboard for the smart discussion to follow. Franks helpfully defines basic terms for nonspecialist readers (Aphrodite and Venus; nude/naked; “the male gaze”; female/woman; ideal), and positions herself a cisgender, white, non-disabled art historian.
The first four chapters are dedicated to the pre-modern contexts from which modern ideas surrounding Venus emerged. Chapter one, “Divine: the Aphrodite of Knidos,” stands on its own as a critical introduction to the Knidia, the ancient literary and visual sources, and modern scholarship. Franks’ sensitive reading emphasizes the visual signifiers of aidos as an expression of Aphrodite’s divinity, but argues that in the modern period “her divinity drops away entirely. And in this context, the confusion of marble and flesh become a moral obsession.”
Chapter Two, “Corrupt: the Venus de Medici and the Venus de Milo,” introduces the concept of “white trash” through the lens of Britney Spears, and argues that a similar entanglement of gender, race, regionalism, and class existed for the reception of the Venus statues. Whereas the Venus de Medici was celebrated for her exemplary beauty for much of the eighteenth century, changes in taste in the nineteenth century made the Venus de Milo the more desirable type—in part because “without arms, she evades the torturous ambivalence of the ‘pudica pose’.” Of course, arguments over the morality of the Venuses are bound up in the nudity of the statues, and it is worth emphasizing that male nudes are not discussed in moral terms. Franks concludes: “Style, chronology, quality, and morality were themselves enmeshed, and they were further embedded in and read through the intersections and overlaps of modern conceptions of gender, race, regionality, class, and sexual behavior. Living people negotiate their place in and their ways through these same systems.”
Franks addresses the construction of “whiteness” and the projection of racial ideologies onto marble sculpture in Chapter three: “Pristine: A Goddess in White Marble”. The “APESHIT” video by Beyoncé and Jay-Z, in which living black bodies are celebrated in juxtaposition to ancient sculptures and other famous works in the Louvre, serves as a catalyst for discussion. I was interested to learn about the extensive scholarship on “APESHIT”, and appreciate that Franks has brought the discussion to classicists. Franks emphasizes that the Greeks did not conceive of “white” as a racial category. Skin color was not correlated with biological race, but “a gendered term, appealing in women, but effeminizing when applied to men.” Nevertheless, ancient marble statues of Venus were appropriated in the nineteenth century to represent “an ideal of ‘European, racially white, noble femininity.’”
Chapter Four, “Moral: Translating the Ancient Body”, traces the role of Venus in the emergence of physiognomic and phrenological thinking. Franks argues: “As avatars of physicality as it once existed, ancient sculptures seemed to promise that, under the right circumstances, the perfection of the ancient Greek body and the ancient Greek might be reproduced in the modern world. But it was only accessible to a very few, who, by birth, race, and status were already believed to be in proximity to the ancient ideal.” By the turn of the twentieth century, Venus was firmly established as the model of beauty for modern women to emulate.
The role of Venus in the eugenics movement is discussed in the context of dress reform in Chapter Five: “Natural: Venus as Dress Reformer”. While both are relevant to the overall theme of women’s health, the use of classical models by eugenicists is so insidious, and the scholarship so expansive, it deserves its own chapter. Likewise, dress reform could have been explored in greater depth. The role of ancient models in dress reform has roots in Neoclassical dress styles of the early nineteenth century, which emulated ancient dress through the use of imported white muslin and corseting that emphasized the bust rather than the waist. Neoclassical dress helped to establish the aesthetics of the classical model long before the rejection of the corset in the twentieth century. Although Franks is primarily interested in the nudity of Venus, garments are essential to achieving the ancient ideal, as demonstrated by her discussion of Shapermint shapewear, for example.
The final two chapters demonstrate how twentieth-century misappropriations of Venus are responsible for our modern obsession with fitness and diet culture. As Franks argues in Chapter Six, “Fit: Venus and Physical Culture”: “If the corset no longer controlled women’s bodies, women would have to do it themselves” through exercise—but not too much, which would result in a barbaric Amazonian body. The necessity of confirming to the ideal ascribed to (if not necessarily upheld by) Venus, has broader societal implications: “The fostering of women’s health and beauty, and its exclusive imagination as a young, white, native, middle-class, cis-conforming, able, heterosexual, sexually moral [her italics] woman was not just about the individual; it was understood as central to the civic health and survival of the nation.” Chapter Seven, “Canonical: The Measure of Beauty,” outlines how women literally and figuratively measure themselves according to an unachievable standard, leading to current body culture with its concomitant disordered eating, over-exercising, and poor mental health.
Nevertheless, the conclusion reminds us that Venus “is not—was never—a woman.” Adherence to this imagined ideal only serves capitalism, not ourselves. The final message: it is time to move beyond “Venus envy” and get on with the important work of being human.
The text is well edited and without errors. The limited number of illustrations is understandable as a means of controlling production costs, though regrettable given the richness of the visual sources. I was delighted to note that museum acquisition dates were provided for all ancient objects.
In sum: this is an important, and timely, volume that deserves a wide readership. Accessible to advanced undergraduates and graduate students, it should be required reading in courses on gender and Classical reception. But the real contribution of this volume is that it demonstrates the essential relevance of Classical Antiquity for current discussions of gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, and other social issues. I very much hope that Franks’ insightful and highly relevant work is read far beyond our discipline.