Books
Short Takes
by Dale Williams
Concepts of cleanliness change with time and place. CLEAN: AN UNSANITISED HISTORY OF WASHING (Profile, $37.99) by Canadian journalist Katherine Ashenburg explores Western Europe’s evolving attitudes towards private and public hygiene and finds the history of washing is neither as linear nor as logical as we might have thought. From ancient Turkish steam baths and Roman affinity with hot water to northern Europeans’ historic fondness for cleaning their houses and linen but not their persons, she explores fads, fashions and beliefs in hygiene. Our modern germ phobia may be the new religion, she concludes – the medieval saint’s loathing of the human body being replaced by a new credo of bodily perfection.
The odour of sanctity was indeed a fairly ripe one, according to Toby Green in INQUISITION: THE REIGN OF FEAR (Pan, $27.99). In medieval times, holy Spanish Christians did not wash, because frequent bathing was a sign of Jewish or Moorish (Muslim) blood. Spain lacked the witch-hunts of northern Europe because it already had large racial sub-groups that could be scapegoated, and did not need to create imaginary ones. This fascinating examination of the impact of the Spanish Inquisition in Europe and as far away as Africa and South America has many modern resonances, as it looks at the misuse of power for the purposes of sexual licence, ethnic cleansing and asset grabs. The Inquisition provided the first seeds of totalitarian government, Green observes, and of institutionalised racial and sexual abuse. A splendid insight into the human mind, with surprises on every page.
“I am no painter,” wrote Michelangelo, believing his sculptures would be his monument. But the freshly restored glories of the Sistine Chapel have led to a renewed appreciation of the genius of his painting. British art critic and television presenter Andrew Graham-Dixon’s small but powerful MICHELANGELO AND THE SISTINE CHAPEL (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, $53) leads the reader round the various elements of the fresco cycle, discussing the artist’s thought processes and revealing a host of meanings and allusions largely lost to the modern viewer. Michelangelo’s wrestling match with his own mutating painting style in the course of the four-year project resulted in the first Mannerist works, explains Graham-Dixon. The brief life of the artist that he weaves in to the story manages to be both scholarly and entertaining. Concepts of cleanliness change with time and place. CLEAN: AN UNSANITISED HISTORY OF WASHING (Profile, $37.99) by Canadian journalist Katherine Ashenburg explores Western Europe’s evolving attitudes towards private and public hygiene and finds the history of washing is neither as linear nor as logical as we might have thought. From ancient Turkish steam baths and Roman affinity with hot water to northern Europeans’ historic fondness for cleaning their houses and linen but not their persons, she explores fads, fashions and beliefs in hygiene. Our modern germ phobia may be the new religion, she concludes – the medieval saint’s loathing of the human body being replaced by a new credo of bodily perfection.
