By Grace Heinz & Mia Funk
What is ugliness? What is beauty? How has our conception of beauty changed over the years? How do traditional notions of beauty inform our ideas about ugliness? How are our ideas of beauty related to human health, wealth, and happiness? And how related are they to aesthetics and symmetry? Do our experiences of sound, touch, and scent influence our initial perceptions of beauty and harmony? Do our ideas of beauty change as we age? With the rise of globalization and how global dominance shifts, how does this change what we perceive and beautiful?
From Feb. 27th to April 26th, 2025, the Skarstedt Gallery in London is exhibiting a collection of paintings, sculptures, and photographs, entitled On Ugliness: Medieval and Contemporary. The exhibit features George Condo, Cindy Sherman, Nicole Eisenman, Jameson Green, Martin Kippenberger, Barbara Kruger, Jacob de Litemont, Pablo Picasso, Stefan Rinck, Pensionante del Saraceni, Thomas Schütte and several unknown artists living in the Middle Ages.
While ranging in content and character, the theme of the exhibition remains the same. The various artists feature beings and bodies that society generally deems ‘ugly’. There are crooked noses, misshapen eyes, and contorted limbs. George Condo’s Study for Metamorphosis depicts a woman in a pose typical for a nude painting, save for her jeering, scrunched-face. Cindy Sherman’s Untitled #140 from her Fairy Tale Series features a pig-nosed boy furtively sneaking food.
The pieces involved share the same subversion of audience expectation. When we look at poised women and fairytale children we expect a level of charm and awe. We want to be transfixed but also pleased by what we are seeing. The works instead put ugliness, usually tucked away in the world of art, front and center stage. We are thrust into the world of the unconventional; the twisted, shunned, and grotesque. How do we confront these works of art when we are so habituated to the conventional beauty normally displayed to us?
The exhibition calls into question the importance of ugliness in art throughout all ages. Whether we like it or not, the repulsive and unsightly are integral to our understanding of art. Art is usually defined through the word create. That is, when we look at and create art, we bring pieces of ourselves into existence. Different facets that have not yet had the chance to surface. Naturally, not all modes of our beings are beautiful and aesthetically pleasing. Sometimes, they are dark, complex, and messy. To hide these parts of ourselves is to deny our full range of emotions and actions.
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Whatever is fitted in any sort to excite the ideas of pain, and danger, that is to say, whatever is in any sort terrible, or is conversant about terrible objects, or operates in a manner analogous to terror, is a source of the sublime; that is, it is productive of the strongest emotion which the mind is capable of feeling .... When danger or pain press too nearly, they are incapable of giving any delight, and [yet] with certain modifications, they may be, and they are delightful, as we every day experience.”
― EDMUND BURKE
A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful
