Monstrous Beauty: Eighteenth-Century Fashion and the Aesthetics of the Chinese Taste

Abstract

My topic, broadly speaking, is the aesthetics of exoticism. What are the origins and cultural significance of that seductive allure we identify with aestheticized emblems of otherness? How can their uncontested appeal in the modern world be understood from the complementary vantage points of consumer culture and the philosophy of art? There are few richer contexts within which to explore these questions than early eighteenth-century Britain. The period once known best for the stately couplets of Augustan poetry has received attention more recently as the site of the origins of modern aesthetic theory, the birth of the consumer society, and the consolidation of nationalist pride in the cornucopia of exotic commodities procured through a rapidly expanding overseas trade.1 The pervasive cultural motifs reflected in morally fraught debates over standards of taste, changing patterns of consumption, and the social effects of luxury coalesce in the period's pronounced and deeply ambivalent fascination with that style in the decorative arts known as chinoiserie.2