A Brief History of the Smile

Rating:
Summary: it made me smile
Review: I loved this book. It was full of useless information (the most fascinating kind) and was obviously a labour of love. I never knew about sheelas. (I always thought they were middle aged Australian barmaids.) The fact that this book is so engaging, so resolutely cheerful, and written with such a sustained lightness of touch is all the more surprising since it was written by a Trumble. (Trumbles being, in my experience at any rate, genetically predisposed towards gloominess, and not given overmuch to smiling.) Maybe it will be left to another, more upbeat family to compose "A Brief History of the Frown".

Rating:
Summary: A Happy History
Review: Say "cheese." If you say cheese, you are ready for the photographer to render a picture-perfect portrait complete with smile. That's the way it has been since around 1920, when photographers at British public schools developed the tradition. And yet that is not the way it has always been, according to _A Brief History of the Smile_ (Basic Books) by Angus Trumble, a lively history of a subject no one might expect to have a history. The photographer Cecil Beaton instructed his subjects to say "lesbian." In Australia there is a fashion for saying "money." Spaniards say "patata" (potato) and the Japanese use the English word "whisky." The Czechs used to use the Czech word for cheese, but now say "fax" which may hurtle them into modernity. Plenty of languages don't have a smile word; the photographers just ask for a smile and the subjects do the best they can. We don't smile just for the photographer, of course, and Trumble, a museum art curator, has a lot more to say about his subject, a pleasant history that he happily says is "about smiling in the broadest possible sense."

The origin of this book was a surprise invitation to Trumble to address a convention of dentists. As a curator of art, he was thought by the dentists to have something to say on the representation of teeth and beauty. He began to examine smiles in art. You can bet the _Mona Lisa_ is here, as is Frans Hals's _Laughing Cavalier_. There is a famous "archaic smile" on early Greek sculpture. The figures of young men and women stand stiffly, but their mysterious smiles give them a reassuring amount of life. Dutch and Flemish painters of the 17th century had a favorite subject of the "hennetaster," or "chicken groper," a boy who smiles as he feels up a hen to see if she has an egg on the way. These enormously popular paintings were riotously funny to their owners and the guests to whom they were displayed; the humor in part derived from the interchangeability of the Dutch words for bird, birds, or hens with those for genitalia, women, coitus, and other double entendres. The mysterious figure of the sheela incongruously may be found in Irish churches; she grins as she displays her genitals. This image distressed art historians, one of whom depicted the sheela simply with her hands on her hips. The figure is not like a repulsive gargoyle, however, and harks back to the magical women who would, for a fee, lift their skirts and show their genitals as a way of granting good luck. Jesus smiles as he undergoes crucifixion in an abbey in Eichstatt, and some of the Romanesque sculptures, which otherwise have very small mouths, are brightened by surprising smiles.

This is a charming miscellany. Here you will be able to find a little bit about gurning, not grinning, which is an extreme form of making faces, in competition, no less. Lipstick sales go up when economics go down. Geishas stained their teeth black to set them off against faces painted dead-white. The nerves that make a natural smile are different from the ones activated when we force a smile, and so the two smiles look different; sometimes neurological patients will be able to do one of the smiles but not the other. 30% of Americans show their canine teeth when they smile, and only 67% turn up the corners of the mouth when they smile. No one really knows why tiny babies smile except that it is a trick calculated to make the adults around them like them; of course it works. Laughing has been thought to be bad taste; Lord Chesterfield advised his son, "The vulgar often laugh, but never smile; whereas well-bred people often smile, but seldom laugh." King James enjoyed pulling other people's teeth as a pastime, and would pay them for the privilege. We are smiling more heartily now; Trumble says this is because of modern dentistry, which encourages display of healthy teeth, and modern photography, which can catch a spontaneous smile when previously sitters had to keep immobile for long periods of time to make a portrait. In chapters on themes such as Decorum, Lewdness, Deceit, and Desire, Trumble has covered more about smiles than you ever thought there could be. He has a penetrating but light touch; this is not only a history of smiles but a stimulus to them.

Rating:
Summary: A warm, engaging and delightful little book
Review: This book was really a lot of fun to read. Angus Trumble is obviously a very knowledgeable expert in the field of art history (and it appears a lot of other things), but he brings a wit and whimsy to the subject that really transforms the material and makes art a delightful experience. I enjoyed every minute of it.