The book caught my eye when i was browsing around in my university's bookshop.
Great looking cover i must say. It was love at first sight. How i wish i can get a copy of that but it will cost me around $80 aussie dollars. The book describes and portrays the various definitions of beauty throughout the different periods of human civilisation and is accompanied with masterpieces from western art. Oh, there is another book called On Ugliness as well by the same author. Highly recommended for people who are avid fans of western art and literature.
Description of the book from Amazon.com
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but it also has a lot to do with the beholder's cultural standards. In History of Beauty, renowned author Umberto Eco sets out to demonstrate how every historical era has had its own ideas about eye-appeal. Pages of charts that track archetypes of beauty through the ages ("nude Venus," "nude Adonis," and so forth) may suggest that this book is a historical survey of beautiful people portrayed in art. But History of Beauty is really about the history of philosophical and perceptual notions of perfection and how they have been applied to ideas and objects, as well as to the human body. This survey ranges over such themes as the mathematics of ideal proportions, the problem of representing ugliness, the fascination of the exotic and art for art's sake. Along the way, the text examines the intersection of standards of beauty with Christian belief, notions of the Sublime, the philosophies of Kant and Hegel, and bourgeois culture. More than 300 illustrations trace the history of Western art as it relates, in the broadest sense, to the topic of beauty.
I attended the speech given by Mandla Mandela yesterday evening. He's the eldest grandson of Nelson Mandela who celebrated his 90th birthday recently. He holds a Marketing degree too, besides his political science degree. The evening started off with a traditional Australian aboriginal dance to welcome the guests. I have never seen such aboriginal dances before so it's a great experience for me. Mandla Mandela went on to talk about his family history and how he is going to continue Nelson Mandela's legacy. Long but enriching speech. Warm and down to earth man, i guess he is trying hard to step out of his grandfather's shadow and want everyone to see him as a separate individual with his own identity, not just another Mandela. Hope that the apartheid system and beliefs are wholly abolished.
Love,
Christine
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