Beautiful Democracy: Aesthetics and Anarchy in a Global Era

Specifically, Castronovo is interested in both popular and academic debates about beauty in the United States from 1877 to 1936, and his impressive archive includes the work of the popular reformer Jacob Riis, the critics W. E. B. Du Bois and William Dean Howells, the writer Frank Norris, as well as academic syllabi, dissertations, plans for extension courses, and university textbooks from the period. Metaphorical substitutior can always be undone: police clubs, once madi superfluous by flowers, reappear at scenes ol aesthetic instruction, Castronovo writes demonstrating how, for instance, Riis's magic lantern shows tended to explode into violence as common folks rejected what they saw as an attempt by highbrow artists to discipline them (p. 52).