Steiner, Wendy — The Trouble with Beauty

London William Heinemann Ltd First Edition, First Printing pp. 291. 8vo. Black boards, gilt lettering to spine. Black-and-white photographs, portraits, illustrations, etc. No detectable flaws, fine and housed in near fine lightly rubbed dustjacket. Near Fine Steiner explores the twentieth century's troubled relationship with beauty. Where previous eras had celebrated beauty as the central aim of art, the twentieth century modernist avant-garde were deeply suspicious of beauty and its perennial symbols, woman and ornament. Modernism's rejection of traditional tenets of beauty--harmony, empathy and femininity--still reverberate through both art and society today.