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Encountering the Niobe’s Children: Vernon Lee’s queer formalism and the empathy of sculpture

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posted on 2023-06-09, 12:26 authored by Francesco VentrellaFrancesco Ventrella
The materiality of sculpture was essential to Vernon Lee’s psychological theory of aesthetics based on the beholder’s physical responses. Through collaboration with her lover Clementina Anstruther-Thomson, Lee developed a theory of embodiment based on German psychological empathy theories which was reliant on gallery rather than laboratory experiments. This chapter focuses on the reception of their work within the psychological circles of the time and, in contrast to interpretation of the two women’s intellectual collaboration as a transposition of lesbian desire, I argue that Lee’s dialogue with Karl Groos around the concept of “inner mimicry” is essential to examine how sculpture also allowed her to explore sexuality plastically. Originating in late-Victorian discourses around formalism, Lee’s aesthetic engagement with the past represents an ethics of embodiment that resonated with modern theories of sexuality.

History

Publication status

  • Published

File Version

  • Accepted version

Publisher

Palgrave MacMillan

Page range

195-219

Pages

280.0

Book title

Sculpture, sexuality and history: encounters in literature, culture and the arts from the Eighteenth Century to the present

Place of publication

Cham

ISBN

9783319958392

Series

Genders and Sexualities in History

Department affiliated with

  • Art History Publications

Full text available

  • Yes

Peer reviewed?

  • Yes

Editors

Jana Funke, Jen Grove

Legacy Posted Date

2018-03-12

First Open Access (FOA) Date

2021-01-05

First Compliant Deposit (FCD) Date

2018-03-12

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