Ugliness

Sexualized naked protest using young and attractive women’s bodies have long featured in
the repertoire of protest tools for interventions in public space. Antirape feminist groups
and nonhuman-animal rights activist groups, in particular, have mobilized these bodies to
attract attention to their causes. Contemporary debates have suggested that these sorts of
protest are objectionable, and that they are entwined with contemporary rape culture. This
article complicates these accounts by considering what happens when the naked body is
presented as a grotesquery in the service of these apparently emancipatory politics.
Analyzing two instances of naked protest as case studies, this article examines what
happens to naked protest when the bodies protesting are “ugly” or are rendered so. The
analysis suggests that naked protest featuring bodies that are “ugly” harbors the possibility
of mobilizing a transgressive politics beyond contemporary rape culture. This article has
implications for better understanding how to mobilize protest in a way that is transgressive
and bold without further enshrining rape culture as the normative background against
which it takes place

"A suggestive Mix of Divinity and Bestiality". Friedrich Schlegel's Concept of the (Un-)Human. The mix of "divinity" and "bestiality" as the embodiment of mankind conceived as "infinitely opposed" in Friedrich Schlegel's (1772-1829) earlier essays has eventually been represented as a "harmonious composition" (KFSA 1: 230) in his novel Lucinde (1799). The present paper investigates the extent to which Friedrich Schlegel's narrative transposition of "divinity" and "bestiality" proves itself as relevant for the reflection upon anthropological concepts around 1800 as well as its continuities. Keywords: Friedrich Schlegel, Lucinde, divinity, bestiality, mix.

ed. Mechtild Widrich and Andrei Pop. A collection of essays on ugliness in art and life. Featuring an introduction and annotated bibliography by the two of us. A preview is available by clicking (I am all for sharing, but not other people's work). You may read my essay above under papers.

Here is the table of contents:
Introduction:
-Andrei Pop and Mechtild Widrich, Rethinking Ugliness

The Politics of Ugliness:
-Gretchen E. Henderson, The Ugly Face Club: A Case Study in the Tangled Politics and Aesthetics of Deformity
-Suzannah Biernoff, The Face of War
-Brandon Taylor, Picasso and the Psychoanalysts
-Mechtild Widrich, The ‘Ugliness’ of the Avant-garde

The Experience of Ugliness:
-Edward Payne, Ribera’s Grotesque Heads: Between Anatomical Study and Cultural Curiosity
-Frédérique Desbuissons, The Studio and the Kitchen: Culinary Ugliness as Pictorial Stigmatisation in Nineteenth-Century France
-Kathryn Simpson, I’m Ugly Because You Hate Me: Ugliness and Negative Empathy in Oskar Kokoschka’s Early Self-Portraiture
-Adele Tan, From Political Travesties to Aesthetic Justice – the Ugly in Teo Eng Seng’s D Cells

The Theory of Ugliness:
-Andrei Pop, Can Beauty and Ugliness Coexist?
-Kassandra Nakas, Putrefied, Deliquescent, Amorphous: The ‘Liquefying’ Rhetoric of Ugliness
-Odeta Žukauskienė, Orderly Ugliness, Anamorphosis and Visionary Worlds. Jurgis Baltrušaitis’ Contribution to Art History
-Three Definitions of Ugliness (Diderot 1765, Bolzano 1843, Lee 1882)

-Annotated Bibliography

Nuestro viajero pasea por calles feas, come en bares feos, compra por tiendas feas, encuentra por todo lado personas feas, pero al rodearse de esta fealdad siente como un brote de felicidad en su pecho, una felicidad que no podría experimentar paseando por las ramblas, o entrando en los bares de copas a la moda de Sant Antoni, o comprando ropas de diseño el El Born. Este brote de felicidad le dice: todo lo que te rodea es feo, pero es verdaderamente tuyo. Es horrible, en el sentido que es estéticamente opuesto a todo lo que la historia y la cultura te empujan a desear, pero es auténtico. Lo feo no se presenta como feo y tampoco se suele sospechar que lo haga. Lo feo es feo fenomenológicamente porque lo es ontológicamente. La belleza auténtica puede ser una mentira (como en una famosa serie de anuncios publicitarios de Dove), pero la fealdad auténtica no: no deseando gustar de ninguna manera a nadie, lo feo transmite a quien lo elija un momento de presencia absoluta: yo estoy aquí, en este lugar horrible, pero este lugar no me miente, no me propone nada y tampoco me pide nada: este lugar feo sencillamente es, como un dios primitivo.

The introduction positions the interest in architectural ugliness within an attempt to historicize the anti-aesthetic impulse in postmodern art and the so-called return to aesthetics in art theory since the 1990s. It situates this volume on architecture and ugliness within this field of research as it is being extended to architectural history and theory. Informed by the antinomies between aesthetics and anti-aesthetics, modernism and postmodernism, this volume comes to terms with ugliness, less as a publicly constructed judgement with social consequences than as a resource appropriated through critical architectural practice in different modes of the design process. The introduction provides a working definition of the concepts, the monstrous and the ordinary, that structure the two sections of this volume and situates the different contributions to this volume along those two axes. It explains how the ugly is differentiated from, or modulates in, kindred aesthetic concepts and categories such as disgust, the formless, the sublime, the grotesque, or kitsch.

Keywords
Theodor Adorno, Hal Foster, criticality, the monstrous, disgust, aesthetic judgement, Mark Cousins, Immanuel Kant, postmodernism, grotesque

The author considers the problem of beauty. He identifies beauty as an analogically understood property of reality, of human products (including art), and of the human mode of conduct, and as that which, in the tradition of Western culture, is expressed under the form of harmony, perfection, or splendor, which as beheld and for beholding arouses complacency or pleasure. The article discusses the following topics: classical theories of beauty, beauty in the metaphysical conception, beauty in aesthetics, the separation of beauty from reality, and the problem of ugliness.

I track the titular phenomenon (denied by most theoreticians but affirmed by others, e.g. William James), to the distinction between form and content, and then, more promisingly, to Plato's theory of ideas as presented by Alexander Nehamas, according to which all concrete things participate both in beauty and its opposite. I distinguish this from the flawed relational thesis of Denis Diderot, and end by affirming the value of logical work to history and criticism.

Ugliness or unsightliness is much more than a quality or property of an individual’s appearance—it has long functioned as a social category that demarcates access to social, cultural, and political spaces and capital. The editors of and authors in this collection harness intersectional and interdisciplinary approaches in order to examine ugliness as a political category that is deployed to uphold established notions of worth and entitlement. On the Politics of Ugliness identifies and challenges the harmful effects that labels and feelings of ugliness have on individuals and the socio-political order. It explores ugliness in relation to the intersectional processes of racialization, colonization and settler colonialism, gender-making, ableism, heteronormativity, and fatphobia. On the Politics of Ugliness asks that we fight against visual injustice and imagine new ways of seeing.

The identity of peoples at the begining of the Middle Ages was related, maybe in a more important manner than in other period, to their physical appearance. Etnicity, status, gender were affirmed by the way of clothing, wearing jewels, playing on the physical atus. Corporal dimensions, skin color, conception about beauty and ugliness were used to better understand how the people of this period have seen themselves and the Others, how they accepted or rejected the others on apparent such unimportant basis as physical appearance.

While Kant’s Critique of the Power of Judgment is an important landmark in the history of aesthetic philosophy, the language in which his discussion is framed was in many ways unoriginal. Not only was the term aesthetic in use, but also the general issues and divisions had been established – most immediately to Kant by 18th century empiricists like Hume and Burke. So Kant’s focus on the beautiful and the sublime may simply be understood as conventions of the day. Yet readers looking for Kant’s treatment of ugliness will find very little of his writing dedicated to negative judgments of taste dealing with the repulsive.
What makes this paucity so tantalizing is that there seems to be a number of ways we might imagine Kant giving an account of our experience of ugliness. This has been pursued by interpreters such as Christian Helmut Wenzel and Alix Cohen, and in some sense this involves the reader building an edifice by reversing Kant’s views on beauty. But is ugliness merely the reversal of beauty for Kant, or for anyone? Other interpreters have found it impossible that Kant would countenance ugliness in his discussion of reflective judgments, such as David Shier and Paul Guyer. The reasons for this disallowance are various, and some even ask the reader to reconsider the legitimacy of Kant’s entire aesthetic on account of its failure to feature ugliness.
This paper explores the state of opinion on Kant’s view of ugliness, and notes the implications that these views have for Kant’s entire aesthetic. I then proceed to show how ugliness forces itself into any thorough account of aesthetic experience, showing us something of the emotional, visceral, and cognitive force of the repulsive, unsettling, disgusting, and many other forms of the ugly. Woven through this conclusion is the ability of artisans and audiences to tolerate, accommodate, and even embrace ugliness in contexts of art and aesthetic pleasure.

L’histoire d’Élisabeth Ière d’Angleterre (1533-1603) est avant tout celle d'un corps placé au cœur du culte et du faste monarchique suite à la mort de sa demi-sœur, Marie, le 17 novembre 1558. Siégeant au sommet d’une société de cour qui accorde tant de poids à la beauté et à la vertu, ce corps a la lourde tâche de resplendir de toutes les grâces d’une majesté inspiratrice d’amour et de déférence. C’est pourquoi la reine s’enorgueillit très tôt des plus riches étoffes et d’atours finement travaillés qui forment un langage corporel d'apparat. La beauté prend donc un tour politique, surtout dans l’imagerie officielle. Mais ce n’est là qu’un masque : rien ne saurait arrêter la marche du temps et son impact mortifère sur le corps biologique de la reine vierge. Les années passent et la vieillesse (parangon de la laideur) la prend d’assaut. Une ascèse alimentaire, les exercices physiques, des efforts d’embellissement et le « masque de la jeunesse » dont les artistes la parent dans les portraits n’y peuvent rien changer.

The article examines the reorientations of the appreciation of ugliness within different national contexts in a comparative and relational frame, juxtaposing the Australian, American, British and Italian milieus. It also explores the ways in which the transformation of the urban fabric and the effect of suburbanization were perceived in the aforementioned national contexts. Special attention is paid to the production and dissemination of how the city's uglification was conceptualized between the 1950s and 1970s. Pivotal for the issues that this article addresses are Ian Nairn's Outrage: On the Disfigurement of Town and Countryside, Robin Boyd's The Australian Ugliness, Donald Gazzard's Australian Outrage: The Decay of a Visual Environment, and the way the phenomenon of urban expansion is treated in these books in comparison with other books from the four national contexts under study, such as Ludovico Quaroni's La torre di Babele and Reyner Banham's The New Brutalism: Ethic or Aesthetic?. Particular emphasis is placed on Boyd's articles in The Architectural Review between 1951 and 1970. At the core of the article is the analysis of the debates around ugliness between the 1950s and 1970s within the British, Italian, American and Australian contexts.

On the Aesthetic Gaze, Beauty, and the two Sources of Ugliness

Beauty and ugliness are not extreme poles of the same continuum. The experience of ugliness is fundamentally different, entailing a digestion of primary emotions and reactions that precede the aesthetic and are connected to the (experience of the) threat of the monstrous OR the infection by the formless. This is illustrated with childhood memories of Paul Valéry taken from his 'Inspirations méditerranéennes'.

Pathologizing ugliness refers to the framing of unattractive features as a type of disease
or deformity. By framing ugliness as pathology, cosmetic procedures are reframed
as therapy rather than enhancement, thereby potentially avoiding ethical
critiques regularly levelled against cosmetic surgery. As such, the practice of pathologizing
ugliness and the ensuing therapeuticalization of cosmetic procedures require
an ethical analysis that goes beyond that offered by current enhancement critiques.
In this article, I propose using a thick description of the goals of medicine as an ethical
framework for evaluating problematic medical practices. I first describe the goals of
medicine based on Daniel Callahan’s account. I then propose that the goals work best
in conjunction with ancillary ethical concepts, namely medical knowledge and skills,
standards of practice and medical duties and virtues. Next, I apply the thick description
of the goals of medicine in critiquing the practice of framing ugliness as disease.
Here, I demonstrate ethical conflicts between aesthetic judgments that underpin the
practice of pathologizing ugliness and medical judgments that inform ethical medical
practices. In particular, the thick description of the goals of medicine helps reveal
ethical conflicts in at least three key domains common to clinical practices, which
include (a) disease determination, (b) diagnostic evaluation and (c) establishing clinical
indications. My analysis offers a novel way of critiquing the practice of pathologizing
ugliness in cosmetic surgery, which tends to be neglected by enhancement critiques.

Artykuł mówi o sposobie, w jakim ks. Józef Baka - późnobarokowy polski poeta i misjonarz, jezuita - wykorzystuje estetykę brzydoty (turpizmu) w swoim zbiorze pt. "Uwagi śmierci niechybnej". Utwory z niego pochodzące zostały skrupulatnie przeanalizowane dla ukazania ogromu brzydoty, przemocy, obrzydliwości, brutalności i bylejakości, jakie Baka widzi we wszystkim, co nie ma charakteru sacrum. Wszystko to udowadnia, jak oryginalnym misjonarzem i głosicielem Słowa Bożego był autor.

"The word paternoster has been applied in a variety of senses. In the Middle Ages paternoster became a synonym for lovemaking. An early instance of this usage appears in the anonymous medieval Latin Prisciano regula. Later it occurs in Rutebeuf's Old French De frere Denise and the Middle English Secunda Pastorum. Evidence that the medieval usage perhaps continued into the modern period is found in Thackeray's Vanity Fair and Hugo's Notre-Dame.

The erotic paternoster may have originated in a playful juxtaposition of a holy prayer and an unholy deed, in an awareness that people saying the paternoster often had their minds on their lovers, or in the proximity of the paternoster to the kiss of peace in the liturgy."

"Medieval poets, whether writing in Latin or Old French or Middle English, whether composing love lyrics of narrative works, lavished their efforts on formal descriptions of persons, particularly of young women. When singing the praises of beautiful maidens, the poets followed a rigid canon that determined not only which parts of the body and face they dwelled on and which they omitted from consideration, but also the order in which they examined these features and even the adjectives and similes they used."

Dwurnik's art is progressive and traditional at the same time, analytical and expressive, penetrating in exploration and metaphoric; it can be placed somewhere in the vein of progressive postmodernism. This complexity has actually been noticed by Anda Rottenberg, according to whom Dwurnik succeeded in absorbing intellectually the achievements of Conceptualism. Besides, as Henryk Waniek has aptly put it: 'Dwurnik uses painting as an imperfect means.'" Imperfect painting?! Waniek's oxymoron, a witty paradox, explains why - as the Silesian artist writes subseąuently — 'the aesthete's taste finds no delight' in Dwurnik's art. One could therefore go further on, ióllowing Waniek's guidelines, and place Dwurnik in the tradition of the avant- garde's 'battle for ugliness', voicing a protest against 'comforting' art. Umberto Eco, who reminded us of the relationship of the avant-garde and ugliness, pointed to the element of provocation in it (in particular in the Futurists' work) and to the social indictment (especially in German Expressionism). The Italian writer and scholar also recalled the metaphor used by Nikita Khrushchev, rather accustomed to the aesthetics of Socialist Realism, to whom avant-garde pictures seemed 'painted with a donkey's taił'. In Polish painting, no one had the courage to paint like that before Dwurnik.

Starting from the premise that aesthetics, or better the aesthetic approach, is the conscious sensual perception of beauty (or ugliness), we find that the Egyptians of the Middle Kingdom had a feeling for what was to be considered beautiful (or ugly) either in the natural or man-made environment. The aesthetic approach is frequently put into words in all Middle Kingdom texts of some literary standing, religious, political, didactic or narrative. However, there are no theoretic discussions of this topic in ancient Egypt. Perhaps it is for this reason that it has not been previously examined in Egyptology. Aesthetic metaphors or descriptions refer to a range of objects such as: buildings, objects of applied arts, nature, the human body, i.e. the appearance and charisma of gods and kings, and the 'fine speach'. The beauty of persons and things is generally described with expressions pertaining to visual qualities such as radiance, colour, magnitude, strength. These expressions can be classified and give us Information as to what stimuli triggered the feeling of beauty for a beholder. The aesthetic approach gave an individual who was capable of it  an immediate intuitive cognition of the essence of gods, men and things - reached by means of the physical senses. The aethetic cognition played an important part in the communication between members of the ruling oligarchy in the Middle Kingdom. This article aims at defining the concepts leading them to a mutual understanding on that matter.

Melibea and Dulcinea share a series of physical features which belong to different traditions. Both ladies are highly complex creations that – according to the perspective of the characters by which they are described (Calisto, Sempronio and Areúsa or Don Quixote and Sancho) – are presented to the reader as women of great beauty or of terrifying ugliness. The present article contextualizes the prosopographies of these emblematic female characters within the literary and scientific discourse of medieval and early modern times in order to untangle the different meanings involved in these descriptions.

This chapter focuses on jokes and the idea of the ugly to explore how they function as part of digital memetic social interactions. In the literature on digital memes, the ugly and the joke are seen as important conversational tools in online social interactions. I will first consider literature dealing with the idea of the ugly, locating it in a socio-historical context that shows its significance in internet communication in general and as visual representation in particular inthe context of female body and public space in the PGUF meme. The second part of the chapter considers literature dealing with aspects of conversational style such as the joke and the way they enhance visual digital memetic social interaction.

In his "Aesthetic Theory of Ugliness," Bosanquet develops a theory of beauty as truth which both finds balance with older concepts of formal beauty and reinvents the very paradigm of aesthetic value. Bosanquet adopts a conception of art which seeks to synthesize the formal character of a work with its expressive nature, shifting the meaning of art, and thus the grounds for its evaluation, from an imitative basis to a partly-symbolic one.

Purple is the ugliest color. This subjective statement relates to my individual opinion. Saying 'to each his own' implies that tastes are as diverse as there are individuals. Thus arguing that tastes are relative, for the only reason of being subjective, means there is not any objectivity in the judgment of tastes, either bad or good. Can we maintain that tastes are relative if 'having good taste' means being capable of appreciating and judging at its right value of something? If tastes depend on each, any judgment can actually be right or wrong. But do all judgments have the same value? People follow trends, so we can assume a common sense of beauty and ugliness exists. Do tastes and our common idea of aesthetic change regarding time, place and the field people are evolving into? How do fashion designers deal with aesthetics? Ugliness is the antithesis of beauty: the quality of being unpleasant or repulsive mainly related to the appearance. What makes fashion designers interested in ugliness?

Ugliness is a neglected topic in contemporary analytic aesthetics. This is regrettable given that this topic is not just genuinely fascinating, but could also illuminate other areas in the field, seeing as ugliness, albeit unexplored, does feature rather prominently in several debates in aesthetics. This paper articulates a ‘deformity-related’ conception of ugliness. Ultimately, I argue that deformity, understood in a certain way, and displeasure, jointly suffice for ugliness. First, I motivate my proposal, by locating a ‘deformity-related’ conception of ugliness in aesthetic tradition, offering examples in support, and rejecting related alternative suggestions. Second, I argue that the proposal boasts considerable merits. Not only does it capture much of what we ordinarily think of as ugly, but it also comprises an objective criterion for ugliness, offers unity and comprehensiveness, and is informative and explanatorily potent. Third, I discuss a number of objections, thereby demonstrating that the proposal withstands reflective scrutiny.

Ugliness is largely considered an aesthetic, cultural construct and, though infrequently defined, is often seen as the opposite of existing conceptions of beauty. This definition of ugliness, however, provides little understanding of the lived experience of encountering it, particularly when that ugliness is found upon the face of another. This article explores the questions: what is ugliness? And what does it mean to experience another person as ugly? Through describing the experience of encountering an ugly face, ugliness is explored as a highly embodied, interpersonal experience that implicates the person who sees and recognizes another's ugliness as much as it involves the ugly person, him-or herself. Facing the Ugly Face I can recall the day clearly. It is the first day of gym class and everyone is nervously looking around, trying not to get caught checking each other out. A movement catches my eye and I notice a girl enter the room. Ugggg-her visage immediately strikes me....

With the emergence of Christianity, philosophical aesthetics gained a new concept. Christian aesthetics condition beauty with faith in God, Heaven, virtue, and the following of religious doctrine. It finds its opposition in the Devil, Hell, weakness of spirit, and the breaking of the commandments, which leads man to sin. To help him resist temptation and follow God’s will, the Church in the medieval and early modern periods encouraged the use of ugliness. Through illustrative depictions, it made uneducated, pious, and naïve Christians realize the weight of punishment waiting for them after sinning. The ugly, associated with the Devil and his impact on men, became “the diabolical” within Christian aesthetics after taking on the role of intimidation to “correct” upbringing which would protect the “true” Christian from sin and show him the way to God. Christian aesthetics, and its educational ugliness, were present already in The Freising Manuscripts (972–1039). Consequently, it comes as no surprise that the concept of Christian ugliness remained at the forefront of texts by authors Trubar, Valvasor, and father Romuald throughout the Middle Ages and the early modern period.

Tandis que l’ensemble de la tradition philosophique interroge l’idéal de beauté à partir du concept de pureté, Héraclite nous donne à penser un beau impur et contrarié, comme caractéristique d’un monde fait de mélanges désordonnés. Dans leur aspiration à une pure beauté, les penseurs font abstraction de cette dimension cosmologique. Or, ce geste est lourd de conséquences politiques dans la mesure où il contribue à la condamnation de la laideur et de la diversité humaines, et de ce fait à la clôture du monde.

Stars are often associated with glamour and beauty, but in this paper I would like to question how the concept of “chou” (literally meaning ugliness) is embraced in contemporary Chinese cinema. The popularity of chouxing (ugly star) in the Chinese cinema since the late 1980s has challenged the star system in Chinese film industry during the previous decades when a male actor’s handsome appearance was regarded as an important criterion for him being cast as a leading man. Directing the public attention to a male star’s physical appearance by stressing the attributive adjective chou, this newly-coined word raises a question: how the cinematic emphasis on a male star’s physical appearance engages with the social construction of a star’s screen charisma under the transnational context? To answer the question, this paper takes Ge You (b.1957) as a case study and explores the star’s impersonation of xiao renwu (little character) in Chinese comedies. I argue that the Chinese cinema’s emphasis of a chouxing’s physical appearance is a visual manifest of the character’s imperfectness and ordinariness. Nonetheless, despite the fact that the cinematic emphasis of the star’s unattractive appearance often signifies a little character’s unprivileged social status, it neither marginalises nor makes the character a social outsider. Instead, the imperfectness and ordinariness has endowed the little character with the power as an insider of the Chinese society.

Originally presented at Tolerancia: XV Congreso Interamericano de Filosofía, hosted by  Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú. Lima, Peru, 12-16 January, 2004. Subsequently, published in in Interpretando la experiencia de la tolerancia, edited by Rodrigo Ferradas, (Lima, Peru: Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú/Fondo Editorial, 2005).

Around 1622, Jusepe de Ribera (1591–1652) executed three etchings depicting studies of ears, eyes, noses and mouths, and two prints portraying a small and a large grotesque head. In his 'Studies of Noses and Mouths', Ribera introduces an explicitly ‘grotesque’ element by adding hair-sprouting warts to nose and chin. He further explores this motif in his prints of the small and the large grotesque head, which depict figures suffering from von Recklinghausen’s disease (multiple neurofibromatosis, characterised by large, benign growths), and whose deformities Ribera exacerbates by adding extra warts and tumours. Given the direct connection between his anatomical studies and the five senses, perhaps the two grotesque heads also represent a commentary on sensory extremes. But how can we further interpret these prints and what function did they serve?

Although it has been stated that the etchings ‘contain few internal clues for interpretation’, this essay aims to shed new light on the significance of Ribera’s grotesque heads within the context of his wider production of ‘ugly’ motifs. It argues that these prints do not fit neatly within the category of the ‘grotesque’, but rather fall between the spheres of anatomical study and cultural curiosity. The low subjects they portray were probably destined for high patrons such as the Spanish viceroys of Naples and Sicily, and they can best be understood when contextualised with works depicting bodily extremes commissioned by these patrons, such as the bearded woman, the clubfooted boy, the emaciated penitent and the suffering martyr.

Des fantômes et des cadavres de femmes peuplent les oeuvres de Matsui Fuyuko-inspirées du nihonga, peinture traditionnelle japonaise. L'artiste détourne les codes esthétiques des genres pour proposer une lecture féminine de la douleur et de ce qui est passé sous silence. Au Japon, les fantômes sont majoritairement des femmes victimes des exactions des hommes, qui réapparaissent sous une forme mêlant beauté et grotesque. Entre le bijin-ga, peintures représentant la beauté des corps féminins, et le yūrei-ga, estampes mettant en scène des êtres surnaturels, en passant par les kusōzu, présentation de cadavres servant de support visuel à la méditation bouddhiste sur la mort, les figures féminines de Matsui sont les avatars modernes de la fascination que le morbide et le macabre peuvent inspirer. Avec des cadavres de jeunes filles en fleurs, Matsui représente le cycle de la vie et de la mort ininterrompu, fidèle à la pensée bouddhiste. Dans cet article, notre objectif est de mettre en lumière la nature des mortes dans les oeuvres de Matsui Fuyuko, qui est celle d'êtres complexes, ni totalement charnels, ni véritablement spirituels sous leurs multiples apparitions; des êtres terrifiants dont la venue est porteuse de la réalisation d'une vérité tensionnelle, et révélatrice d'une incommunicable douleur. Nous éclairerons cette vérité à travers l'étude de la représentation des figures féminines réalisées par Matsui dans des arts habituellement masculins, en donnant à voir, de manière paradoxale, leur souffrance; la manière qu'a l'artiste de détourner les codes des genres auxquels elle emprunte l'esthétique, malgré une technique de peinture typiquement traditionnelle; ainsi que la fascination ambiguë que peut avoir le spectateur devant un cadavre en décomposition. Post-scriptum n°29 : « Des oeuvres barbares et délicates : autour d'une contre-esthétique de la laideu » décembre 2020 (https://post-Abstract Ghosts and corpses of women populate Matsui Fuyuko's work that is inspired by nihonga,