“Wendy Steiner is an original thinker, and I always look forward to her next book with pleasure, and with the anticipation that my education will be enhanced. In this study, she explores the apparent distance between artist and model as a space of the most profound and ramifying intimacy. In lucid prose she explores psychological, philosophical, political, and aesthetic relations at play in modeling. She draws on a wide range of thinkers from Kant to Judith Butler; writers, such as Nathaniel Hawthorne, and a particularly rich reading of J. M. Coetzee; and artists, such as Bob Dylan and the architect Peter Eisenman. Against this broad background, Steiner—who once herself modeled for a New York Times piece on stylish women academics—writes with eloquence and precision about the unexpectedly rich body of questions raised by the act of modeling.”

Michael Holquist, Columbia University

“Surveying the field of contemporary culture with grace and wit, Wendy Steiner comes to the surprising conclusion that ‘a revolution is underway in the general understanding of beauty.’ The Perfected Form of the engineered celebrity and supermodel—and such things as Platonic architecture and sculpture—is giving way to a more interactive beauty. The real real engages the audience in vital interaction—does not petrify as a Medusa head—a Reality squared”

Charles Jencks, author of Critical Modernism

"An eloquent study of contemporary visual and literatur culture. . . What Steiner’s stylish study of our preoccupations with authenticity finally suggests, poignantly enough, is that no amount of verisimilitude can do away with the artifice of art."

Times Literary Supplement