The Classical and the Grotesque
Associated with rationalism, the classical provides the normalizing aspects of western culture and high culture. The classical body is closed, self-contained, monumental, symmetrical, masculine, and sleek. The classical model of progress corrects and erases mistakes. Opposing the classical is the grotesque, which leaves room for chance, for error. Historically the “grotto-esque” refers to the excavation in fifteenth-century Rome of Nero’s…