"As you mention, in terms of sexuality, there is Wilhelm Reich but, on the one hand, you get the extreme prudishness of the Chinese Communist Party that emphasized pre-marital chastity, prudishness to the nth degree. I am less knowledgeable about sexuality in the former Eastern Bloc, though I suspect it never approached the repressiveness of China."
Very true about prudishness in China, but not entirely fair to blame it on the commies. CK Liu has just published 3 parts of a 4-part series on Asia and modernity (Asia TImes) in which he sketches out a fairly long and solid tradition of social conservatism in China. A revolution that is engineered from above is not likely to change age-old social and sexual practices. And if one form of authoritarianism is substituted for another, there's not going to be much of a change in sexual repression since, as Reich argued, authoritarianism depends upon that kind of repression.
As for beauty and the left -- beauty is a kind of austere abandonment. Many leftists fear abandonment ("how undisciplined comrade!) and so, they just wind up with the austerity. A pity. But in some ways a perfect reaction to the sensual aestheticism of capitalism which, since it cannot define character in terms of ethical action, defines it in terms of aesthetic appreciation. Something like 90% of the writing about art/beauty reads like gastro-porn and is pretty useless. --Beauty: how to consume it so that everyone will be persuaded that you are old money and fully entitled to it... -- that's the drift. Beauty -- how to be consumed and transformed by it -- that's a story still waiting to be told.
Amen to all those that complained about the uglyness of left publications.
Joanna