Extreme Beauty: The Body Transformed

New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2001. 168 pages, colour illustrations; 31 cm. Catalogue accompanying an exhibition at the Costume Institute, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York from December 6, 2001 through April 2002. Near fine. Firm binding, clean inside copy. Light shelfwear to wraps. Another copy available. OVERSIZE! No priority/air, except by special arrangement. "Over time and across cultures, extraordinary manipulations of the body have occurred in a continuing evolution of the concept of beauty. This exhibition will offer a unique opportunity to see fashion as the practice of some of the most extreme strategies to conform to shifting concepts of the physical ideal. Various zones of the body - neck, shoulders, bust, waist, hips, and feet - have been constricted, padded, truncated, or extended through subtle visual adjustments of proportion, less subtle prosthesis, and often deliberate physical deformation. Costumes in the exhibition - ranging from a 16th-century-style iron corset to Jean Paul Gaultier's notorious 'Madonna' bustier - [are] augmented by anthropological and ethnographic examples and by paintings, prints, and drawings, including caricatures by Cruikshank, Daumier, Rowlandson, and Vernet." - Publisher.. Paperback. Very Good. 4to.