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Germaine Greer : The Beautiful Boy Hardcover – Illustrated, November 15, 2003

by Germaine Greer (Author)

4.1 28 ratings

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Provides a collection of more than two hundred images from Western art that explores the beauty of male imagery.

Print length

256 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Rizzoli
Publication date

November 15, 2003
Dimensions

8.74 x 1.13 x 11.32 inches
ISBN-10

0847825868
ISBN-13

978-0847825868
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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Greer has made a career of the controversial polemic, most explosively in the 1970s with The Female Eunuch, brazenly arguing for women's sexual liberation. Decades later, the Australian-born sensualist seeks to redress another wrong: heterosexual women's insensitivity to the boy as sexual object. Considering the utter fetishization of contemporary youth culture, it's difficult to sustain the argument that nubile lads are being neglected. But the present day isn't the volume's strength; the most modern icons include Elvis, Boy George, Kurt Cobain, Jim Morrison and Robert Plant-nary a boy band member. The more compelling passages investigate shifting representations in classical art-Cupid first depicted as sly aggressor, seducing his own mother, only to be desexualized in the more restrictive 19th century, conveniently cloaked by a drape or angel wing. Except for a final chapter that glosses over the works of female artists, Greer hardly plunges into her initial aim "to advance women's reclamation of their capacity for and right to visual pleasure." What does it mean for women to sexualize dewy, girlish boys created by male artists? To swoon over Caravaggio's provocative urchins, Michelangelo's languorous Dying Slave or Eakins's supple-skinned bathers? It's not clear, but then nuance has never really interested Greer. Short on argument but long on lush reproductions of languid young men, the collection is better viewed than read. 200 color and b/w photographs and illustrations.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

The author of the feminist classic The Female Eunuch (1970) aims (in part) "to advance women's reclamation of their capacity for and right to visual pleasure" by encouraging women to gaze with desire at naked boys, mature enough for sex but too young to shave. Such nudes abound in Western art from pre-Hellenic times onward because, among other things, they were deemed sexually safe for men in patriarchal societies to look at. As Greer demonstrates with intelligence and dash throughout this near-immaculate (if her description is correct, one image is laterally reversed) book, they reward the mind as well as the eye. Her text considers them topically and historically, arguing that while the boy was long the preferred vehicle for celebrating human beauty in art, different meanings attached to the boy in different eras and contexts. Inevitably, what Greer sees in certain pictures doesn't square with what the excellent reproductions show, but that never subverts her arguments or blunts her points. If this is radical feminist art criticism, bully for it! Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Rizzoli; First Edition (November 15, 2003)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 256 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0847825868
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0847825868
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 8.74 x 1.13 x 11.32 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #1,726,616 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #9,741 in Art History (Books)

Customer Reviews:
4.1 28 ratings

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4.1 out of 5

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Don Michael

Great add to any art library

Reviewed in the United States on November 19, 2016

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The pictures are beautiful, for sure, yet the text is as wonderful.

One person found this helpful

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al

a great art book

Reviewed in the United States on June 6, 2012

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kinda like a history of art. there is not much real nude pix most of it is paintings. showing you the art through the years.

2 people found this helpful

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Kindle Customer

Listen to the Nay-Sayers

Reviewed in the United States on July 22, 2019

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I was expecting a book on Art History - something along the lines of traditions of representation, changing concepts of beauty, in different periods of history - the kind of study that's already been done a million times on women. And there is a little of that. However, the bulk of the book is a disturbing psuedo-feminist essay that I found beyond disgusting. I avoided writing this review for weeks because I would start rehearsing this long-winded take-down of how vile this essay was and just be like, "No, no... it doesn't need a rebuttal... do NOT obsess over this..." But it still really bugs me, so I'll just give it a quick little summary. Imagine the most insane, sadistic, dehumanizing speeches in some of De Sade's ugliest books (the mother in Philosophy of the Bedroom, for example) - and now put those speeches in the mouth of a women who means them most sincerely, thinks she's being clever, and honestly believes that speaking in this incredibly dehumanizing and cruel way about men and boys is somehow empowering to women. To call her view of males miandrist, hostile, degrading, cruel, dehumanizing... those are the words excessively nice people - Amy Grant and Florence Henderson types - would come up with if you asked them to review it. A truly honest review would use words like, dementia, psychosis, delusion. In short: It's the King in Yellow of sex essays - It's a deeply disturbing book and you'll be better off NOT reading it.
As for the Art book I thought I was getting - as other people said, the paintings are very small, low res and difficult to see. In America, if a painting is in the public domain, you can just scan it right out of a library book without paying to license an image from a professional archive. I'm pretty sure that's what they did, and they just kept the photos really small to try to cover up the fact that they didn't pay for them. There WAS a tiny bit of what I was looking for - for example, discussions of the various representations of characters like Cupid or Hercules at various times in history - conventions and changes in conventions over time. There WAS a bit of that, and that was what I wanted. But it was very disorganized. Things were totally out of order chronologically - painters weren't always credited and years weren't always given. Still, there was a LITTLE bit of good stuff there, but it was mixed right in with the crazy. The BEST thing you can say for this book is that it will give you leads for artists and traditions to look up in better books.
One other thing - the word "boy" is applied bizarrely and liberally. Basically anybody under the age of 35 is considered a boy. It looked like the book meant boy to mean teen to early twenties - you know, young male. But it's just anybody male who vaguely qualifies as "young."

15 people found this helpful

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R. Windsor

Stunning as an Art Book

Reviewed in the United States on December 20, 2006

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If you purchase this book with the knowledge that it is not a book of photographs, but a stunning collection of artwork images throughout the ages, you will not be disappointed. Agree with Greer's text or not, the works presented are beautifully reproduced and there are many of them.

I would challenge the reviewer who claimed this is not a coffee table book. It is precisely that. Not just for it's imagery, but for the conversations it can lead to.

I am extremely pleased with this purchase.

10 people found this helpful

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N. Maync-Matsumoto

Beauty belongs to those who see it.

Reviewed in the United States on February 24, 2019

Terrific book. For me it's about the perception of beauty, the yet un-empowered nude male, necessarily young, or it wouldn't be beauty. Thank you for this great book.

Reviewed in the United States on March 13, 2007

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Germaine Greer does it again, and disappoints us once more with her bitterly distorted interpretation of the common place and obvious while presenting herself as the discoverer of something new and interesting. While at once extolling the beauty of growing boys she at once reveals her resentment at the reality of the adult male body, oddly dismissive of the fact that those boys will be such men in very short order indeed. We cannot remain puerile to suit embittered women unable to hold a sensible place in adult society. Trying to maintain their beauty as an ideal is doing boys no justice whatsoever. More work on their transition into manhood would have given this work some value beyond its shallow, superficial, low-end coffee-table presentation.

19 people found this helpful

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Theseus

Lovely, Wide-Ranging, Inquisitive

Reviewed in the United States on June 17, 2012

First -- if you want a book of photos of pretty 14 year old dudes, this isn't your book!

Greer, here paired with Rizzoli, presents us with a loving, provocative look at the history of young men as sexual objects. Her main argument is that up until the 19th century, young men -- not women -- were studied and depicted with "heart-stopping immediacy."

As you might expect, this is beautifully illustrated book with large and well-chosen illustrations largely drawn from the last 500 years of painting. Rizzoli is to be praised for the book design here. This is a book of text and image and Rizolli wisely avoided the temptation of making this a hand-hurting, 7 pound "coffee table book." The book they've given us can be read or flipped through. As you might expect, the level of reproduction of these images is very good, the dustjacket is aesthetically pleasing, and the book is a solid thing, bound in cloth with a sewn binding.

3 people found this helpful

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Amazon Customer

Another great book from the mother of 'The Female Eunuch'

Reviewed in the United States on November 21, 2003

Germaine Greer has done it again! This beautifully crafted and insightful book will most likely be cause of a controversy - which will assuredly germinate from the `conservative' circles - especially in the North America and particularly in the USA. Greer discusses a subject that had been for a long time, and still remains, a taboo. By discarding prudish notions of the early 19th century, Greer is spearheading a discourse on a long-forgotten (or may be forcefully suppressed) and admittedly important subject of the male body. Greer traces the image of the `young male body' through art, history and literature, she does it in a masterful and coherent language; this will be very useful to many students of Arts and Literature. This book is certain to make a great addition to any shelf, despite its size, unless of course you are Jerry Falwell.

21 people found this helpful

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nicolas grosjean

Un superbe album

Reviewed in France on June 19, 2014

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A déguster si vous aimez contempler les corps des jeunes gens. Avec en plus toute l'histoire sur l'évolution des moeurs en ce qui concerne les relations avec les éphèbes.

One person found this helpful

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AIMA07

Livre arrivé en mauvais état

Reviewed in France on June 6, 2019

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Livre passionnant mais arrivé en mauvais état et sentant l'humidité. Dommage.

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Pierre Sauzeau

the beautiful boy

Reviewed in France on May 27, 2013

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un beau livre à l'idée originale et intéressante, très bonne présentation. Des défauts de détail mais la thèse est provocante et apporte quelque chose

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Germaine Greer : The Beautiful Boy Hardcover – Illustrated, November 15, 2003

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