A Brief History Of The Smile [Hardcover]

Angus Trumble (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 6, 2004

It has been said that supreme enlightenment is reflected in the holy smile of the Buddha. Yet, the Victorians thought of open-mouthed smiling as obscene, and nineteenth-century English and American slang equated "smiling" with drinking whisky. Every smile is the product of physical processes common to all humans. But since the dawn of civilization, the upward movement of the muscles of the face has carried a bewildering range of meanings. In A Brief History of the Smile, Angus Trumble deftly weaves art, poetry, history and biology into an intriguing portrait of the many nuances of the human smile. Elegantly illustrating his points with emblematic works of art, from 18th and 19th century European paintings to Japanese woodblock prints, Trumble explores the meanings of smiling in a variety of cultures and contexts. But he also asks key questions about the behavioral and psychological aspects of smiling: When and how in infancy does human smiling become a profound act of communication? Is smiling unique to human beings? How does smiling function to foster our attachments to each other? Effortlessly mingling erudition, wit, and personal anecdote, Trumble weaves a seamless interdisciplinary tapestry.An established talent in the art worlds of Europe, Europe and Australia, Trumble challenges our most deeply held assumptions about smiling. In his analysis of Jusepe de Ribera's Girl Playing a Tambourine, Trumble explores the sinister side of the smile-the leer, the snarl, the lewd grin. And from J.A. Ingres' portrait of the Princesse de Broglie, he extracts the implications of "public" smiling, the tension between decorum and beauty. Trumble brings his expertise as a writer, historian and thinker to bear on the art of smiling in this charming and distinctive work.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

All smiles may be triggered by an "instantaneous chemical reaction in the brain," but that's where their similarities end, says art historian and curator Trumble in this eclectic and engaging look at the phenomenon throughout art and history and across cultures. He breezily traces the representation of the smile, from its mild, mask-like expression in early Greek sculpture to its ever-debated, enigmatic presence on da Vinci's Mona Lisa, to its gaping glory days in 17th-century Dutch and Flemish painting. Unabashed tooth display in formal portraiture was frowned upon right up to the 20th century, when sufficient progress had been made in the fields of photography and dentistry to usher in the wide-mouthed grin. Trumble travels east to explain the Indonesian smile, often misread by Westerners as unconditionally welcoming, and to present the evolutions of the Muslim concept of purdah, "the most obvious form of modesty or physical concealment," as well as the Japanese custom of tooth-blackening, which coyly flirted with Oriental notions of "exposing and concealing." Readers learn that Buddha's transcendent beam represents intelligence, compassion and ethereality, while the fleeting appearance of the "Gothic smile" in 12th-century Christian iconography is considered a departure from more characteristic Jesus imagery. Trumble also tackles a bit of science, detailing the smile's physiological mechanisms; child development, explaining the involuntary radiance of infants; and trends, examining our celebrity-crazed, Angelina-lipped pop culture. Since Trumble sets out to tackle "the smile in the broadest possible sense," his resulting chronicle, while packed with factoids and whimsy (who knew George Washington wore a makeshift bridge of carved hippopotamus teeth?) feels fun but diffuse.
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Review

"'Satisfyingly rich, consistently surprising and gloriously irreverent'. The Daily Telegraph 'A beautifully written book'. New Scientist 'Thanks to Trumble's curiosity, breadth of knowledge and naughty sense of humour, the overall effect is delightful'. Psychology Today" --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 240 pages
• Publisher: Basic Books; 1st Printing edition (January 6, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0465087779
• ISBN-13: 978-0465087778
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.4 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,579,486 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Happy History, June 7, 2004

By 

R. Hardy "Rob Hardy" (Columbus, Mississippi USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: A Brief History Of The Smile (Hardcover)

Say "cheese." If you say cheese, you are ready for the photographer to render a picture-perfect portrait complete with smile. That's the way it has been since around 1920, when photographers at British public schools developed the tradition. And yet that is not the way it has always been, according to _A Brief History of the Smile_ (Basic Books) by Angus Trumble, a lively history of a subject no one might expect to have a history. The photographer Cecil Beaton instructed his subjects to say "lesbian." In Australia there is a fashion for saying "money." Spaniards say "patata" (potato) and the Japanese use the English word "whisky." The Czechs used to use the Czech word for cheese, but now say "fax" which may hurtle them into modernity. Plenty of languages don't have a smile word; the photographers just ask for a smile and the subjects do the best they can. We don't smile just for the photographer, of course, and Trumble, a museum art curator, has a lot more to say about his subject, a pleasant history that he happily says is "about smiling in the broadest possible sense."

The origin of this book was a surprise invitation to Trumble to address a convention of dentists. As a curator of art, he was thought by the dentists to have something to say on the representation of teeth and beauty. He began to examine smiles in art. You can bet the _Mona Lisa_ is here, as is Frans Hals's _Laughing Cavalier_. There is a famous "archaic smile" on early Greek sculpture. The figures of young men and women stand stiffly, but their mysterious smiles give them a reassuring amount of life. Dutch and Flemish painters of the 17th century had a favorite subject of the "hennetaster," or "chicken groper," a boy who smiles as he feels up a hen to see if she has an egg on the way. These enormously popular paintings were riotously funny to their owners and the guests to whom they were displayed; the humor in part derived from the interchangeability of the Dutch words for bird, birds, or hens with those for genitalia, women, coitus, and other double entendres. The mysterious figure of the sheela incongruously may be found in Irish churches; she grins as she displays her genitals. This image distressed art historians, one of whom depicted the sheela simply with her hands on her hips. The figure is not like a repulsive gargoyle, however, and harks back to the magical women who would, for a fee, lift their skirts and show their genitals as a way of granting good luck. Jesus smiles as he undergoes crucifixion in an abbey in Eichstatt, and some of the Romanesque sculptures, which otherwise have very small mouths, are brightened by surprising smiles.

This is a charming miscellany. Here you will be able to find a little bit about gurning, not grinning, which is an extreme form of making faces, in competition, no less. Lipstick sales go up when economics go down. Geishas stained their teeth black to set them off against faces painted dead-white. The nerves that make a natural smile are different from the ones activated when we force a smile, and so the two smiles look different; sometimes neurological patients will be able to do one of the smiles but not the other. 30% of Americans show their canine teeth when they smile, and only 67% turn up the corners of the mouth when they smile. No one really knows why tiny babies smile except that it is a trick calculated to make the adults around them like them; of course it works. Laughing has been thought to be bad taste; Lord Chesterfield advised his son, "The vulgar often laugh, but never smile; whereas well-bred people often smile, but seldom laugh." King James enjoyed pulling other people's teeth as a pastime, and would pay them for the privilege. We are smiling more heartily now; Trumble says this is because of modern dentistry, which encourages display of healthy teeth, and modern photography, which can catch a spontaneous smile when previously sitters had to keep immobile for long periods of time to make a portrait. In chapters on themes such as Decorum, Lewdness, Deceit, and Desire, Trumble has covered more about smiles than you ever thought there could be. He has a penetrating but light touch; this is not only a history of smiles but a stimulus to them.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Amusing,Very Interesting SMILE History!, February 15, 2005

By 

S. Henkels (Devon, Pa United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: A Brief History of the Smile (Paperback)

Mr. Trumble is an art historian with a terrific wry sense of humor, and great knowledge about his subject! His talk to some dentists led him to research the long and mostly amusing history of the smile. Analyzing Greek,Chinese, Cambodian sculptures, some of the best known western SMILE paintings,Japanese geishas (who dyed their teeth black), early US Presidents (a bit dour until the advent of Teddy Roosevelt),Darwin's thoughts on the facial habits of his new-born babes, and a lot more, we are led through a smiling tour de force. This is the kind of book you'll read closely the first time, and then probably browse thru for interesting and amusing tidbits.So why not click the order button right now!

7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars it made me smile, March 6, 2004

By 

nick trumble - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Brief History Of The Smile (Hardcover)

I loved this book. It was full of useless information (the most fascinating kind) and was obviously a labour of love. I never knew about sheelas. (I always thought they were middle aged Australian barmaids.) The fact that this book is so engaging, so resolutely cheerful, and written with such a sustained lightness of touch is all the more surprising since it was written by a Trumble. (Trumbles being, in my experience at any rate, genetically predisposed towards gloominess, and not given overmuch to smiling.) Maybe it will be left to another, more upbeat family to compose "A Brief History of the Frown".