visionary anatomies

N AT I O N A L A C A D E M Y of S C I E N C E S

V I S I O N A RY

A N A T O M I E S

This exhibition is made possible through the generous support ofRalph S. O’Connor and the Marian and Speros Martel Foundation.It was organized by the Office of Exhibitions and CulturalPrograms of the National Academy of Sciences.

Contents

FOREWORD

Harvey V. Fineberg, MD, PhD, President, Institute of Medicine

Visionary Anatomies

JD Talasek, Curator of Exhibitions, National Academy of Sciences

Visionary Anatomies and the Great Divide: Art, Science, and theChanging Conventions of Anatomical Representation, 1500-2003

Michael Sappol, PhD, Curator-Historian, National Library of Medicine

PLATES

EXHIBITION NOTES

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

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Visionary Anatomies

FO R E W O R D

Harvey V. Fineberg, MD, PhDPresident, Institute of Medicine

No physician forgets his first exposure to a cadaver or her first handin surgery. The complexity and elegance of the human structure areoverwhelming: How does it work mechanically, as separate parts and asa whole? What makes it function in health, and how does it go wrongin disease? What parts are critical to what biological purposes? Formost clinicians in training, learning from living tissue and learning fromanatomical illustrations go hand in hand. For the neophyte, visualizinganatomic structure is typically easier from the rendered image thanfrom the human body—art can represent reality more vividly than liferepresents itself.

In art, as in biology and medicine, anatomic representation can be apoint of departure rather than an endpoint. The anatomic formbecomes more than an illustration of living tissue; it reveals an intersec-tion of life and imagination and provokes us to think anew about whowe are and of what we are made. The artists who created the images inVisionary Anatomies expose us to our inner selves, highlight selectedparts, and juxtapose (and sometimes rearrange) the physical elementswithin and around us. The works draw from ancient anatomy and frommodern imaging technology. Individually fascinating, they are yet morepowerful as a collection, demanding repeatedly that we take a freshlook at ourselves, our inner being, and our place in the world.

The Academy is pleased to sponsor this exhibition and grateful tothe artists and to our Curator of Exhibitions, JD Talasek, for making it possible.

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THIS ESSAY IS ABOUT A SET OF LONGSTANDING ISSUES in the his-tory of anatomical representation. It is about the conventions that gov-ern the collaboration between artists and anatomists, the setting ofboundaries between art and anatomical science, the dialogue (or lackthereof) between artist and anatomist. And it is about how such mattersaffect, and even shape, our own conceptions of self, our own ideasabout what it means to be a person, our own ideas about who and whatwe are. The illustrated anatomical treatises of the sixteenth and seven-teenth centuries featured a rich ensemble of imaginary figurations andartistic embellishments, with much morbid humor, and much literaryand religious allusion. Sometime between then and now, somethinghappened to anatomy. Nowadays scientific anatomies stick to a straightand narrow path: they don’t allow for any deviations, any correspon-dences between the anatomical body and the moral, cultural world.They don’t allow for any fun, don’t permit, or acknowledge, the pleas-ures of anatomy.

Visionary Anatomies and the Great Divide

ART, SCIENCE AND THE CHANGING

CONVENTIONS of ANATOMICAL REPRESENTATION

1500-2003

Michael Sappol, PhD

Curator-Historian, National Library of Medicine

FI G U R E 1Johann Remmelin (anatomist, 1583-1632), Lucas Kilian (engraver, 1579-1637) Visio secondo tou kataptrou mikrokosmikou… (Augsburg?, 1613).Layered copperplate engraving, National Library of Medicine.

An anatomical Eve, surrounded by floating body parts, stands with one footon a skull. Through an aperture in the base of the skull, the serpent appearsto reach toward an apple. Between Eve’s legs, a plume of smoke rises from avolcanic phoenix nest to obscure her genitalia. The flaps of the plate can beopened up to reveal Eve’s innards.

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VI S I O N A RY AN AT O M I E S

JD TalasekCurator of Exhibitions, National Academy of Sciences

Throughout history, the education and understanding of the humananatomy have been directly influenced by our ability to visually depictthe body’s ingenious design. Since the earliest recorded dissections,anatomists have worked with artists to advance the study of medicinethrough detailed, and even beautiful, renderings, the very sight of whichare intriguing, not only due to the inner workings of the body but alsodue to the ability we posses to discover and depict such wonders.

The histories of medicine, art, and technology are tightly intertwined,each discipline sharing the purpose of explaining and improving theworld around and — in the case of this exhibition’s subject matter —within us. A study of the intersection between these three disciplines atthe point of anatomical representation reveals a complex and contribu-tory relationship.

With the evolution from woodcuts and etchings to X rays andangiograms, our understanding of the body has also advanced. As tech-nology and understanding have progressed, so has an idea that rationalunderstanding of the body should be separate from the emotion and biasof the interpreting artist.

Despite ideas of separation, some artists and scientists continue a dia-logue. These practitioners discover powerful metaphors in medicalimages and the insights that they contain, weaving them together withthe history of art and ideas. Collaborations of this nature often lead tomedical and scientific insight, but there is an element that may be over-

looked in the name of advancement. These collaborations often producework that has the potential to remind us of our humanity and to keepalive our sense of wonder and awe.

The exploration of anatomical images, the diversity of their meaningand interpretation, is the focus of this exhibition. Visionary Anatomiescontains the work of contemporary artists who use medical images andconcepts to express aesthetic, social, and cultural ideas. These artists rep-resent a wide range of media, artistic styles, and schools of thought thatactively exist in the art world today.

To provide an historical context for this exhibition, Michael Sappol’sinsightful essay, “Visionary Anatomies and the Great Divide: Art,Science, and the Changing Conventions of Anatomical Representation,1500-2003,” has been reproduced in this catalogue. Dr. Sappol’s essay,supported by extensive research and writing in the area of anatomicalhistory and art, enlightens a perspective that ties the past to the ideaspresent in the work of contemporary artists.

Recently, there have been several exhibitions that have includedartists utilizing a visual language made possible through the collectiveadvancements of medicine, anatomy, and technology. VisionaryAnatomies was inspired from this active dialogue and most directlyinfluenced by the National Library of Medicine’s Dream Anatomy exhi-bition, curated by Michael Sappol (October 9, 2002 – July 31, 2003).Other exhibitions that have directly influenced Visionary Anatomiesinclude Spectacular Bodies: The Art of Science of the Human Body fromLeonardo to Now (Hayward Gallery, London, October 19, 2000 – January14, 2001), Revealing Bodies (Exploratorium, San Francisco, March 18 –September 4, 2000), The Art of Science (International Center ofPhotography, New York, March 12 – May 30, 2004), and The NewAnatomists (Welcome Trust, London, March 11 – July 16, 1999).

The highest credit and gratitude, however, must be extended to theartists and institutions who willingly and generously allowed work to beincluded in a cross disciplinary exhibition of this nature.

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Playing with Death; Fun with Science

The anatomical revolution associated with Vesalius produced knowledgeabout the body from the appropriation and study of the dead. Anatomywas a dark science. It acquired its mystique from its willful transgressions offunerary custom, its incursions across the boundary that separates life anddeath. Anatomists took, often stole, dead bodies and cut into them.Dissection became the preeminent ritual that inducted young men into thecult of medical knowledge. Medicine became something of a death cult.

Scientific anatomy, of course, was more than just dissection: it trans-lated the observation of the body’s interior from the dissecting table to the pages of a book (and back again to the dissecting table).Representation was a key innovation of the new science of anatomy:ancient anatomical treatises consisted largely or entirely of writtendescriptions of the body; illustrations were rare. After Vesalius, theauthoritative anatomical treatise had to be illustrated, had to have richlydetailed and intensively captioned pictures of the dissected body andbody parts. Given the complexity of the interior of the body, you could-n’t just describe it, you had to show it.

And what was shown was the dead body. Early modern representa-tions of the anatomical body took death head on: the dead mocked theliving; the living mocked the dead; the cadaver was an effigy. It served asa reminder of our mortality, our fallibility, our folly — the fragility ofhuman life and civilization. Anatomy cited or parodied or augmentedlong-established iconic traditions and subjects — memento mori, dansemacabre, Christian and classical martyrology — and newer genres suchas still life, which often used human mortality as one of its tropes. Earlymodern anatomists made their work their pleasure and their pleasuretheir work. But it was morbid play, death play.

FI G U R E 3 Andreas Vesalius (anatomist, 1514-1564), the workshop of Titian (artists)De Humani Corporis Fabrica... (Basel, 1543), pl. 190. Woodcut, NationalLibrary of Medicine.

A dissected body is realistically displayed, hoisted by ropes. But even here,there are aesthetic elements—the figure is placed in a landscape. In the text,Vesalius notes that he has playfully attached the abdominal diaphragm to thewall with its own natural stickiness.

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Anatomy is Us

Let’s begin by stating the obvious: We think of ourselves asanatomical beings. Anatomy is our inner reality: Anatomy is us. Ingreater or lesser detail we all carry around with us an anatomical imageof self — even if we haven’t formally studied anatomy — a pocketmap that divides us into regions and terrains, with internal placenames and borders. And this anatomical self-image has a history —which is the history of anatomical representation — a long history ofcollaboration and negotiation between anatomists, artists, engravers,patrons, printers, and readers. Until the invention of the X ray, sono-grams, MRIs, and the like, the only way to see into ourselves wasthrough the dissection of dead human beings. The dissected cadaverwas our mirror.

Early modern anatomists peered into that mirror—and made faces.A spirit of play pervaded the anatomy of Vesalius and his predecessorsand successors. They earnestly investigated our structure and func-tions, tried to accurately describe and represent the body, but theyalso sought to amuse and entertain and morally instruct and amazestudents and colleagues and patrons and each other, in a captivating,charming sort of way. They were a feisty bunch, constantly challeng-ing and abusing each other, trying to outdo each other with flashierdissections and bigger and more expensive books, filled with morebeautiful and artful and witty and outrageous illustrations of cadaversin silly or provocative poses. Anatomists were performers, showmen,when they did their dissections and delivered their lectures in the pitof the anatomical theater, for audiences that included the local aristoc-racy, magistrates, and the clergy, and their showmanship carried overto their illustrated publications, and to their museums and specimens.

FI G U R E 2Pietro [Berrettini] da Cortona (artist, 1596-1669), Luca Ciamberlano(engraver?, c.1580-1641) Tabulae anatomicae... (Rome, 1741), pl. 16.Copperplate engraving, National Library of Medicine.

This extravagant plate, an early work by baroque artist-architect Pietro daCortona, shows a dissected man holding up an anatomical mirror. The floatingheads are copied from Vesalius’s 1543 De Human Corporis Fabrica.

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Getting Real: The New Aesthetics of Scientific Illustration

Then it all changed. Between 1680 and 1800, the conventions, meanings, audience, and uses of anatomical representation shifted.Anatomists began to develop new criteria for what constituted accept-able scientific illustration. Play and the pursuit of truth became incom-patible. The cadaver was no longer made to pose and dance. The artistwas no longer asked or permitted to embellish the background, to pro-vide fantasy architecture and landscapes for the anatomical figures tofrolic in. The reader was no longer asked to meditate on human mortal-ity. The high spirits and intoxicated humor of anatomical representationwere no longer wanted. The scrutiny of the structure of the body, in allits particularity and specificity, took up all of the representational space.Science, anatomists argued, needed to focus. Suddenly a boundary sep-arated art and science—a rift that ran right through death and the deadbody. Art and science came to be defined in mutually exclusive ways.That separation, with some important revisions, still has force today.

The key text in the new anatomical realism was Govard Bidloo’s1685 Anatomia humani corporis, with illustrations by artist Gerard deLairesse. Although Bidloo included smirking skeletons holding hour-glasses and fashionably modern but symbol-laden anatomical still lives,his anatomy also featured illustrations unlike any that had ever beendone. Dissected bodies and body parts are rendered in harshly hyper-realistic detail. The viewer is spared nothing: we see the raggedness ofthe flesh and the prosthetics of dissection (pins, hoists, ropes, the dis-secting table) and mutilated faces. The overall effect is beautiful, andugly, and disturbing, a nightmare anatomy. Later on, William Hunter(with artist Jan van Riemsdyk) and Albrecht von Haller (with artist C.J. Rollinus) consolidated the new style and theorized it. They entirelyexcised death figures and symbols and grace notes. Like Bidloo, they

concentrated on the particulars of a single, specific dissection of thebody or body part—there are no composites, no artistic beautificationor embellishment. The new anatomy had a relentless gaze that seemedalmost to terrorize its subjects and its viewers.

This is not to say that art and aesthetics were completely expungedfrom anatomy, only a particular kind of art and aesthetics. Obviously,the artful representation of anatomical objects continued to be a crucialpart of the science of anatomy, and anatomists continued to work withartists, and continued to value high artistry, but only of one type: the artof the real.

In the waning years of the eighteenth century, the Scottish anatomistJohn Bell discussed the change. Bell truculently denounced “the vitiouspractice of drawing from the imagination,” instead of “truly from theanatomical table.” He hated anatomical figures

formed from the imagination of the painter merely; sturdy andactive figures, with a ludicrous contrast of furious countenances, and active limbs, combined with ragged muscles, and naked bones,and dissected bowels, which they are busily employed in supporting…or even demonstrating with their hands.

His solution to the “continual struggle between the anatomist andthe painter” was to get rid of the artist entirely and do his own (notably

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When Vesalius entered the scene, things got more serious. Vesaliustook unprecedented care in getting it right. He wrote about the errorsof Galen’s ways, but he also made sure to show them. The clincher wasthe illustrations. Some were done in a highly developed naturalisticmanner: here is the real body, they seem to say. But others show non-existent muscles to make the point that Galen mistakenly describednonexistent anatomical structures, or show a human skull atop a dog’sskull to signify that Galen erred because his knowledge of anatomy wasobtained from dissection of dogs and other animals, not people. NeitherVesalius nor his artists could conceive of, or desire, a work governedentirely by austere naturalism. Quite the contrary, they wanted toentertain their readers and themselves. So when Vesalius entered thescene, things got more serious, but also wittier and more theatrical.

During the next century and a half, anatomy became even wittier,and sillier, and more theatrical. In this period, forms of theater, dance,and literature emerged that are recognizably modern: the ballet andopera, and all kinds of court entertainments. This was the era ofShakespeare, Montaigne, Moliere, Donne, Cervantes, and so on. It wasa time in which great courts and salons and circles emerged, a time whenpeople vied to outdo each other, with manners and repartee and fashion.And it was a time in which people began to perform, and develop, theidea of unique individuality and personality, what literary historianStephen Greenblatt calls “Renaissance self-fashioning.”

In their dissections and written works, early modern anatomistsfashioned themselves. In their book illustrations they modeled the fash-ioned self, in all its variety. In this cultural milieu, the producers andaudience for anatomical representation expected, even demanded, thatanatomical illustration represent the human body morally, socially, the-ologically, theatrically, balletically, literarily, as well as scientifically.Anatomists and their artists taught the moral and scientific truth of thehuman body, and fooled around for no reason other than to have fun.Early modern anatomical illustrations and objects operated in multipledimensions of meaning and function. The anatomist studied dissectedcadavers, and enjoyed manipulating and presenting them; readers andviewers studied dissected cadavers, and enjoyed looking. And this con-vergence of work and play, this multiplicity of function and meaning,was not problematic. (The only one not having fun was the anatomicalsubject, conscripted to serve as the raw material from which anatomicalknowledge was produced, and denied funerary honor.)

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harsh) illustrations (which, to our eyes, have a naïve, gothic crudity).Bell’s colleagues didn’t follow his example: they ceded representation toartists, but took command of the reins. The artist lost creative control.

The triumph of harsh anatomical realism was not, however, the endof history. In the late eighteenth century another anatomical styleemerged that achieved even greater dominance: a universalist anatomythat featured composite, idealized, and often intensely colored views ofthe body. In this genre, bodies and body parts float in air, free of all con-text: anatomy is cleansed of its association with death. The process ofdissection is expunged; the prosthetics of dissection and the dissectingtable are suppressed. Everything except the body is a distraction.Particularity is also an obstacle to the truth: a specific body always haspathologies and idiosyncrasies that obscure the “general” principlesand characteristics of bodies, organs, and systems. Anatomical univer-salism was a style much in vogue in the nineteenth century, the style ofGray’s anatomy, and was featured in the most widely used twentieth-century anatomies.

In both new styles of realism, iconographic, theatrical, and orna-mental elements were purged. Science dealt with the real, with the truthof the body and of the physical universe. Art was given everything else:moral truth, history, aesthetics, embellishments, metaphor, myth.Outside of scientific illustration—in academic art, political cartooning,advertising art, horror films, and other productions of popular cul-ture—imaginative, humorous, and moral representations of theanatomical body continued to be made and viewed.

Continued on page 37

FI G U R E 4Govard Bidloo (anatomist, 1649-1713), Gérard de Lairesse (artist, 1640-1711) Ontleding des menschelyken lichaams... (Amsterdam, 1690), pl. 30.Copperplate engraving with etching, National Library of Medicine.

This stark dissection—with ragged flesh fully displayed and hands bound witha cord—signals a commitment to a higher level of realism. There is no fantasylandscape; the scene is the dissecting room. To our eyes, the picture may suggesta distressing indifference to, or even pleasure in, human suffering.

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Plates

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UntitledPaper collage on board15 x 17.5 inches1991


FREDERICK SOMMER

10 11

Spine/Back (from the Inside/Outside series)Silver gelatin print40 x 30 inches1994

Muscle/Hand (from the Inside/Outside series)Silver gelatin print40 x 30 inches1994

Brain/Dummy (from the Inside/Outside series)Silver gelatin print40 x 30 inches1994

KATHERINE DU TIEL

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PREDRAG PAJDIC

Untitled Pen and ink on canvas 3 canvases, each 40 x 30 inches2004

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CONNIE IMBODEN

UntitledSilver gelatin print20 x 24 inches2002



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PET Study 2 (Lung Cancer): Man Ray/Picabia Imitating BalzacPHS Cologram composed of Duratrans, Kodalith film, and Plexiglas40 x 30 inches2003

ELLEN SANDOR, KEITH MILLER,

JANINE FRON, JACK LUDDEN, (ART)n

WITH JIM STROMMER, SCHOOL OF MEDICINE,

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, LOS ANGELES

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Panorama ParisLambda print31.5 x 78 inches2001

STEFANIE BÜRKLE

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JOY GARNETT

Untitled (X-Ray Series)Oil on canvas9 canvases, each 17 x 15 inches1998

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TATIANA GARMENDIA

Figure 2055Oil and gold leaf on canvas20 x 16 inches2000-2002

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RICHARD YARDE

PM/AMWatercolor90 x 90 inches1999-2001

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Unfathomable LogicMixed media on canvas62 x 51 inches2003

KATHERINE SHERWOOD

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MIKE AND DOUG STARN

Blot Out the Sun #1Lysonic inkjet print on Thai mulberry-and-tissue paper, with wax, encaustic, staples, and wooden frame48 x 78 inches1999-2004

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FR E D E R I C K SO M M E R


Courtesy of the Center for CreativePhotography, Tucson, AZ

© 1999 The Frederick and FrancesSommer Foundation


Untitled Paper collage on board15 x 17.5 inches1991

Courtesy of the Center for CreativePhotography, Tucson, AZ

© 1999 The Frederick and FrancesSommer Foundation

KAT H E R I N E DU TI E L

Spine/Back (from the Inside/Outside series)Silver gelatin print40 x 30 inches1994

© 1994 Katherine Du Tiel


Muscle/Hand (from the Inside/Outside series)Silver gelatin print40 x 30 inches1994



Brain/Dummy (from the Inside/Outside series)Silver gelatin print40 x 30 inches1994


PR E D R A G PA J D I C

UntitledPen and ink on canvas 3 canvases, each 40 x 30 inches2004

© 2004 Predrag Pajdic

CO N N I E IM B O D E N


© 2002 Connie Imboden







EL L E N SA N D O R, KE I T H MI L L E R,JA N I N E FR O N, JA C K LU D D E N,(A RT)n, W I T H JI M ST R O M M E R,SC H O O L O F ME D I C I N E,UN I V E R S I T Y O F CA L I F O R N I A,LO S AN G E L E S

PET Study 2 (Lung Cancer): Man Ray/Picabia Imitating BalzacPHS Cologram composed ofDuratrans, Kodalith film, and Plexiglas40 x 30 inches2003

Courtesy of the International Center ofPhotography, New York

© 2004 Ellen Sandor and (art)n

ST E FA N I E BÜ R K L E

Panorama ParisLambda print31.5 x 78 inches 2001

Courtesy of the National Academy of Sciences

© 2001 Stefanie Bürkle

JO Y GA R N E T T

Untitled (X-Ray series)Oil on canvas9 canvases, each 17 x 15 inches1998

© 1998 Joy Garnett

TAT I A N A GA R M E N D I A

Figure 2055Oil and gold leaf on canvas20 x 16 inches2000-2002

© 2002 Tatiana Garmendia

RI C H A R D YA R D E

PM/AMWatercolor90 x 90 inches1999-2001

© 2001 Richard Yarde

KAT H E R I N E SH E RW O O D

Unfathomable LogicMixed media on canvas62 x 51 inches2003

© 2003 Katherine Sherwood

MI K E A N D DO U G STA R N

Blot Out the Sun #1Lysonic inkjet print on Thai mulberry-and-tissue paper, with wax, encaustic,staples, and wooden frame48 x 78 inches1999-2004

© 2004 Mike and Doug Starn

Plates

(ART)n

(art)n is a group of artists who have beencollaborating with scientists since 1983 to create works that merge art and science. Thevirtual sculpture included in this exhibition, PET Study 2 (Lung Cancer): Man Ray/Picabia Imitating Balzac,2 is modeled on aphotograph of painter Francis Picabia takenby Man Ray. In the original photograph,Picabia is believed to be mimicking the pos-ture of Auguste Rodin’s sculpture Monumentto Balzac (1897-98). The layers of this pieceinclude a PET scan of lung cancer made atUCLA’s School of Medicine embedded into adigitized, three-dimensional model of thelungs. After mapping this onto the virtualsculpture, the image was then rendered assixty-four separate images, each offering aslightly different perspective. When viewedthrough a backlit barrier screen, the assembledimages are perceived by the viewer to exist inthree dimensions. Similarity exists betweenthe way that (art)n builds up the multiple lay-ers of the virtual sculpture and the way thatcontemporary medical scanning technologiesdeconstruct the body in a series of planes.3

ST E FA N I E BÜ R K L E

Berlin-based photographer StefanieBürkle’s work follows in the epic style thathas become associated with contemporaryGerman photography. In her Useful Illusionsseries, Bürkle offers a comparison betweenspaces of science and spaces of everyday lifeto illuminate cultural shifts that occur whentheories are moved into reality. In PanoramaParis, the left half of the photograph shows animage of the Musée National d’HistoireNaturelle, Paris. An anatomical model of aman is shown standing at the head of a roomstacked full with encased creatures, objects ofnatural history. The image exemplifies a nine-teenth-century belief in man’s dominance,through knowledge and classification, over hisworld as well as his own body. Bürkle con-trasts this image with an image of a modern-day public space: a terminal in Charles deGaulle airport, outside of Paris. By juxtapos-ing these two images of public spaces, Bürkleprompts a comparison of cultural and socialvalues, as well as epistemological theory, ofthe nineteenth and twenty-first centuries.

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Exhibition Notes1

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PR E D R A G PA J D I C

London-based artist Predrag Pajdic’smeticulous pen-and-ink works on canvasconjure the traditions of early anatomicaletchings in both craftsmanship and playful-ness. However, unlike earlier traditions ofanatomical renderings, Pajdic does not try tocompete for anatomical accuracy, insteadfocusing on the ability of anatomical repre-sentation to communicate ideas of self. Theseenigmatic pieces, which were created specifi-cally for Visionary Anatomies are open tomany interpretations. His subject is repeatedin a triptych, as if to suggest Freud’s ideas sur-rounding the id, the ego, and the superego.The center figure, like the ego that exists onthe surface and is always visible, does notoffer an interior view. The two flanking forms(id and superego), revealing fantasy structureswithin, seem to contemplate and scrutinizetheir counterpart. The twisting posture is avisual repetition of the imaginative interiors,and the tightly coiled crouched position sug-gests the potential and necessity of action,both of which are physical representations ofthe conflict between id, ego, and superego.


Despite advancements in technology, mostof our models for understanding psychologicalprocesses lie in metaphors. For Baltimore-based photographer Connie Imboden, themost compelling of these metaphors is CarlJung’s evocation of mirrors and water to illus-trate psychological processes and the closeassociation we have between our body imageand our self-identity.4

Connie Imboden’s photographs are psy-chological conundrums based in a visual lan-guage of Jungian process and mythology.Imboden uses the reflective and refractiveproperties of mirrors or water to create herphotographs. By doing this, she challengesthe traditional, objective language that is oftencredited to photography. This process ofreconstructing the body allows her to visual-ly explore the powerful and haunting psycho-logical properties of metaphors used by Jung.

TAT I A N A GA R M E N D I A

Born in Cuba into a family of doctors andcurrently living and working in Seattle,Washington, Tatiana Garmendia was raised adevotee of Santeria – a mix of Yoruba mysti-cism and Spanish Catholicism. She describesgrowing up in a household where the humanbody, in various disguises of dejection andexaltation, was a primary theme in devotionaland medical imagery. As an artist, her explo-ration of the human form is based in remem-bered experiences, juxtaposing scientific certainty against invisible realms, both mysti-cal and physical. The painting that is includedin the exhibition conjures an X-ray-like imageof the human skeleton. The familiar image ofan X ray is challenged, however, by brightcolor and a layer of gold leaf, allusions to therituals and artifacts of her childhood religion.


San Francisco-based photographer Kather-ine Du Tiel creates images by projectinganatomical illustrations onto living bodies andother anatomical forms. The resulting imagesplay with the separation between anatomicalrepresentation and reality. In one image, atextbook image of a back is projected onto amodel’s side. In another, the muscular struc-ture of a hand appears on the surface of theskin rather than under it. The process ofanatomical representation requires a separa-tion between the dissected mind and the dis-sected self. Anatomical representation isalways both Self and Other. Du Tiel’s explo-ration plays with the blurred line between thetwo, suggesting the futility and humor of try-ing to integrate them into one.

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JO Y GA R N E T T

The nine small paintings by Joy Garnett, aNew York artist, were born out of an experi-ence of working with her father, a biochemist.An interest in the representation of invisibleevents that could only be seen through micro-scopic or submicroscopic processes led to anawareness of the problems of visual represen-tation itself. The paintings included inVisionary Anatomies, some of Garnett’s earli-est explorations in this area, are based upon abox of X rays that a friend found discarded onthe street. By subjectively recreating foundmedical imagery, Garnett challenges thenotion of science photographs being factual,neutral records, reminding us that all imagery,both scientific and artistic, requires interpre-tation. The anonymous documents that wereonce useful as diagnostic tools are now ren-dered as paintings hanging in a gallery ratherthan on a physician’s light box. This transitionalters the possibilities of interpretation bychanging the medium as well as the context.

KAT H E R I N E SH E RW O O D

The vocabulary found in San Francisco-based artist Katherine Sherwood’s paintings is derived from two primary sources.Lithographic renderings of the artist’s ownpost-stroke angiograms are layered againstpainted symbols derived from the Lemegeton,5

a seventeenth-century handbook of sorcerycontaining calligraphic emblems believed toembody forces capable of such things as grant-ing wishes and healing illnesses.

Sherwood explores formal similaritiesbetween the emblems and the angiograms.One representation comes from the ancientpractice of magic, and the other is associatedwith contemporary science. The flatness ofthe photolithographic angiograms contrastswith the color and depth of the poured-onpaint in the emblems, a contrast that mimicsthe distance in time between the mediums aswell as the ideas represented by the contrast-ing elements.

In the painting Unfathomable Logic thebold gestural marks refer to the symbol Foras,invoked by practitioners of white magic toteach logic to the bearer. By placing these

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RI C H A R D YA R D E

Richard Yarde’s masterful watercolordraws from esoteric traditions of North andSouth America, Africa, China, and India. Thepiece included in Visionary Anatomies,P.M./A.M., is one of nine large watercolorsincluded in the original installation titledRingshout. The title Ringshout is borrowedfrom the name given to a forbidden but heal-ing religious ceremony performed by AfricanAmericans during the slave era. During theceremony, worshipers danced in a counter-clockwise direction around a central space tocreate a sense of spiritual transformation andcommunity solidarity. The circular form ofthe painting, like the Ringshout ceremonyitself, evokes the cycles of birth, life, death,and rebirth, while the open center of thepainting represents the intersection of thephysical and spiritual realms.

In addition to the African-American allu-sion, the circular shape of P.M./A.M. alsorefers to a twenty-four-hour biorhythmicchart of the time where, it is believed, themaximum flow of vital energy takes place ineach internal organ. Yarde has reduced thecolor palette of his work to indigo and white,

referring to the ancient cloth-dyeing traditionsof Africa.

The coded messages in Yarde’s paintingsare revealed through a combination of pat-terns identifiable as Braille, DNA patterns, X-ray depictions, and ultrasound images. Thesepatterns form a map that defines a personalsystem of communication. Through thisunique system that alludes to historical andcontemporary epistemologies, Yarde exploresthe interconnections between peoples andcultures, both ancient and new.

Work on this piece began while Yarde,who lives in Amherst, Massachusetts, wasdealing with kidney failure. The scale of thework is drawn from the artist’s need to createsomething bigger than life and ultimately big-ger than his own death, which seemed close atthe time this piece was created.

MI K E A N D DO U G STA R N

In Blot Out the Sun #1, Brooklyn-basedMike and Doug Starn compare the similarpatterns of fragile twisting tree branches tothe complex patterns of neural synapses. Acentral theme in the Starns’ current work isthat of light as both subject and metaphor.Light, throughout the history of literatureand art, has served as a symbol of knowledgeand truth. The representation of tree branch-es that grow and twist toward a light sourcefor survival and growth is offered by theStarns as a poetic comparison to the humanmind, twisting and turning toward truth andknowledge.

To produce this piece, the Starns have uti-lized a combination of techniques found inboth the history of photographic processes aswell as tools of the current digital age.Through both traditional photography anddigital printing the images were rendered ondelicate papers such as Thai mulberry and tis-sue, which were then coated in wax andencaustic. The end result of this skillful inte-gration of new and old techniques is an objectthat transcends traditional mediums, poetical-ly embracing the power of a visual languageto communicate ideas.

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Frederick Sommer is best known for hiswork with photography, although his lifetimeof exploration led him to many different out-lets for his ideas concerning architecture,drawing, science, music, and the history andcontinuum of art. Visionary Anatomiesincludes two of his many collages of medicalillustrations carefully cut out of Gray’sAnatomy of the Human Body and other text-books.6 By removing portions of the illustra-tions from their familiar contexts andreassembling them in painstakingly craftedconstructions, Sommer has created newwhimsical relationships that challenge theviewer’s developed presumptions of thehuman body. These constructions allude bothto traditions in medical illustration and tosurrealism. By taking the influence of theartist’s hand to an extreme, Sommer’s workreminds us that the same source material caninspire a variety of interpretations, and that inboth art and science the most rewardingresults often come from radical re-imaginingof preconceived notions.

marks over her own angiogram, Sherwooddoes more than compare the formal qualities.There is a blending of epistemological ideasthat are both rational and mysterious,reminding us that our bodies are not merelytheoretical sites but physical ones that existand function in evolving cultures.

The symbol Foras, according tothe Lemegeton, has the ability tomake the bearer wise, witty, andwealthy. Additionally, it restores

lost property, and teaches logic and the virtuesof stones and plants.

1. Except where otherwise noted, works were lentby the artist.

2. The work by (art)n was borrowed from theInternational Center of Photography, New York, NY.

3. For more information on work by (art)n, seeCarol Squiers’s essay in the catalogue The Art ofScience. The Art of Science was the fifth and final exhibition in the series Imaging the Future: TheIntersection of Science, Technology, and Photography,hosted by the International Center of Photography,March 12 – May 30, 2004.

4. Jung, C. G., The Archetypes and the CollectiveUnconscious, trans. R. F. C. Hull, vol. 9, part 1, 2d ed.(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1990), p. 20.

5. The Lemegeton is also known as The Lesser Keyof Solomon. The calligraphic emblems are said to havebeen drawn by King Solomon.

6. The work of Frederick Sommer was borrowedfrom The Center for Creative Photography, Tucson, AZ.

Selected Bibliography

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Our Cadavers, Ourselves; or the Return of the Anatomical Repressed

This essay began with the assertion that we think of ourselves asanatomical beings, a self-image derived from the work that anatomistsand artists have collaboratively produced over the centuries. We all havemultiple identities, some loudly proclaimed, some understated or evenimplicit. Anatomical identity is one of the latter. It’s so pervasive, soroutine, that we don’t tend to notice it. In the year 1700 most people inEurope and North America thought of themselves as an unstable amal-gam of meat, spirit, reason, and corruption, or as a microcosm of theuniverse. Only a thin upper crust of learned physicians and gentlemenhad ever seen a detailed anatomical illustration or thought of themselvesas anatomical entities. That is obviously no longer the case—for manyAmericans, the first unit on human anatomy occurs in kindergarten—but even if we had never been taught anatomy in school, we would stillsee the anatomical body in the doctor’s office, magazine ads, and televi-sion shows, and see our own bodies represented in X rays, and otherimaging technologies. So the subject of anatomical representation andthe boundaries between art and science is not purely academic: it hasreference to our own experience.

If we believe anatomy is our inner reality, then science has the mostlegitimate claim to be the highest authority over it. But the artist also hasclaims to be a privileged representer of anatomical truth. Since theadvent of romanticism in the early nineteenth century, the artist has

FI G U R E 5 Katherine Du Tiel (artist, b. 1961) Pregnant Man (San Francisco, 1994).Photograph, National Library of Medicine.

Katherine Du Tiel plays with the disjuncture between anatomical representa-tion and reality. In this photograph she projects an anatomical diagram of apregnant woman onto the body of a man.

Continued from page 6

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Cazort, Mimi, Monique Kornell, and K.B. Roberts. The IngeniousMachine of Nature: Four Centuries of Art and Anatomy. Ottawa,Canada: National Gallery of Canada, 1996.

Cork, Richard. “Beneath the Skin.” The New Anatomists website of The Wellcome Trust, 1999:http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/en/old/MISexhTWOana.html.

Jung, C. G. The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious. Trans.R.F.C. Hull. Vol. 9, part 1, 2d ed. Princeton, N.J.: PrincetonUniversity Press, 1990.

Kaufman, Frederick. “Elemental Vision: Matter, Paradox and OtherAbsorptions of Doug and Mike Starn.” Aperture. Summer 2005. pp. 48-63.

Kevles, Bettyann Holtzmann. Naked to the Bone: Medical Imaging inthe Twentieth Century. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers UniversityPress, 1997.

Martin, Kemp, and Marina Wallace. Spectacular Bodies: The Art andScience of the Human Body from Leonardo to Now. Berkeley, CA:University of California Press, 2001.

Moxham, Bernard. “The New Anatomists.” The New Anatomistswebsite of The Wellcome Trust, 1999:http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/en/old/MISexhTWOana.html.

Riva, Anna. Secrets of Magical Seals. Los Angeles, CA: InternationalImports: 1975.

Sappol, Michael. A Traffic of Dead Bodies: Anatomy and EmbodiedSocial Identity in Nineteenth-Century America. Princeton, NJ:Princeton University Press, 2002.

Squiers, Carol. The Art of Science. New York, NY: InternationalCenter of Photography, 2004.

Talasek, JD. Foreword to Connie Imboden. Baltimore, MD: WalterGomez Gallery, 2003.

Yau, John. “The Body of Paint.” Katherine Sherwood. San Francisco, CA:Gallery Paule Anglim, 2001.

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ous and not-so-serious conditions. We are continually directed to mon-itor our bodies, and we do.

Yet we also feel disembodied. We spend much of our lives sitting incars, or in front of computers and television screens, doing almost noth-ing with our bodies. We substitute packaged versions of doing for morefully experiential activities: we open a plastic bag and feel like we’recooking. We’re protected from the experience of pain by painkillers.Medical and funerary professionals nervously place a veil between usand death and the dead body. Not surprisingly, we feel deprived of bod-ily life; our bodies are absent.

And we need something strong to reconnect ourselves to our bodies,to feel contact with life and with death. An aura of realness — the realbody, real anatomies, the real self — emanates from the sculptures ofHirst and Quinn, and the Mutter Museum, Hunterian Museum, theNational Museum of Health and Medicine, and other anatomical dis-plays. Art is good for you, science is good for you. So the moral justifi-cation is there, but what brings the customers through the turnstyle isthe pleasure of looking at real bodies and body parts, even two-dimen-sional visual representations based on “the real body” — a species ofvoyeurism, or maybe narcissism. Anatomists, microscopists, molecularbiologists know such pleasures, but they would rather not publiclyavow or acknowledge them. At least not since Govard Bidloo and hissuccessor anatomists began to draw the line, some 250 years ago.

That refusal has a positive as well as a negative valence. We believethat respect for the dead should be a universal right: anatomy’s cultureof discretion is not only a defining characteristic of the contemporaryprofession, it is also our version of funerary honor. And the boundarythat helps define our version of human dignity and human rights. Webelieve that it’s wrong to sell our body parts or bodies, wrong to makeshows out of the dead, or parts thereof, for strictly commercial gain.

These ideas are deeply rooted in anatomical history. For centuries,anatomists took their bodies where they wanted, and made sport of

them, to the distress of a large segment of the public. In Britain andAmerica, there was much resistance to the anatomical taking of bodies:in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, anatomists knewthat transgressions might provoke a crowd of angry townspeople tostorm the school and take back their dead. The profession never fullyacknowledged the legitimacy of their opponents’ objections, but as theirsource of cadavers switched from illegal body-snatching to legal (but stillinvoluntary) appropriation of the bodies of the poor, a shroud of discre-tion descended upon the anatomical enterprise. That discretion has, ifanything, deepened, now that anatomists are faced with the practicalneed to show respect for their cadavers so that they won’t offend thefeelings of those who voluntarily donate their bodies, and the need toadhere to still the bioethical standards of informed consent that came inthe wake of the exposure of Nazi and Tuskegee medical experiments.1

Not surprisingly then, the anatomical profession, and a segment ofthe public, is alarmed when anatomical artists rip off the shroud. Theyare professional provocateurs, who smuggle bodies and body partsacross the boundaries of propriety, and use them as effigies to mark thespot. Vesalius and Hunter and Bidloo didn’t have this principle: theyfelt free to take the bodies of criminals, outcasts, and indigents and usethem as they wished. The moral boundary was then still unmarked.Whereas now, the moral boundary — like the boundary between artand science — seems almost a fact of nature. And we take pleasure andumbrage when anatomical artists put on their extravaganzas, andremind us, in both cases: not so.

Michael Sappol is the author of A Traffic of Dead Bodies: Anatomy and EmbodiedSocial Identity in Nineteenth-Century America (Princeton University Press, 2002).He is currently preparing an exhibition on the history of forensic medicine, which isscheduled to open at the National Library of Medicine in May 2005.

1. The recent UCLA body parts scandal in the United States (and Alder-Hey Scandal in Great Britain) demonstrates that the older imperative also continues to motivate theanatomical culture of professional discretion: the desire to cover up the abuses of the profession.

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assumed the role of prophet, divinatory, a reader of augers and signs.And such is arguably still the case, even in the era of modernism andpostmodernism. In traditional academic art, which still has many adher-ents, anatomy is the technical knowledge out of which the artist craftsrepresentations of the human figure. The new art anatomy is more con-ceptual. It plays with anatomy as a vocabulary of selfhood, an emblemof human reality, the inner self.

Katherine Du Tiel, for example, projects anatomical illustrationsonto the human body and plays with the discrepancy between the realbody and the representation. Du Tiel highlights the discrepancy bymaking deliberate mistakes. She projects a front onto a back, a womanonto a man, a side onto a front, and sometimes she shows written labelsand things out of scale, just to let us know that we’re not looking atsome new technology of anatomical imaging, that we’re looking at our-selves, and something else.

For the new conceptual anatomical artists, anatomy is simultaneous-ly the icon of the body as it exists under the regime of Reason, with abig R—and the undomesticated body itself. We identify with the imagesof anatomy, which are fashioned from real bodies, but our identificationdoesn’t exactly fit, always requires adjustment. The works of DamienHirst, Marc Quinn, and other now-fashionable anatomical artists seemto say that the self is a fragile construction, cobbled together from falli-ble technologies and a biological given of flesh and fluids, liable tobreakage and spoilage. Hirst famously created sculptures out of actualdissections of animals. Quinn made a portrait bust of himself, using hisown frozen blood. The piece, entitled Self, would have a very differentmeaning had it been made from stage blood instead of the real stuff.Ditto with Hirst’s animal dissections: their realness is the whole story.

Quinn and Hirst are often accused of attention-mongering, vulgari-ty, cheap sensationalism, and an unhealthy self-preoccupation amount-ing to narcissism. They were, of course, introduced to the American andBritish public in a controversial group show called Sensation. The

charge has some justification: given the crowded cultural marketplace inart, it’s no surprise that artists and exhibitors will resort to almost anysubject or medium to get attention. But let’s not forget, Vesalius and hiscolleagues and successors also vied for attention, for readers and stu-dents and patronage, and also depended on their ability to amaze: thescience of anatomy, with its dissection performances and strange repre-sentations of dissection, was an early modern version of the “stupidhuman trick” (a very smart stupid human trick). It’s easy to resent anddeplore the way that anatomical artists recruit our attention, and capi-talize on it. Our culture privileges reason and spirit over the flesh, andsubstance over surface — even as it revels in fleshiness and sumptuousouter wrappings and coverings. On that basis perhaps we can indictanatomical art for bad faith. But it’s a fact of life: in our society, only theflashiest grandstanders can make themselves visible in the blizzard ofcompeting cultural productions. The new anatomical artists try to playit both ways: they want to make us think, but also make us look. Likepornography, the viewer’s response to their body art is immediate, aconditioned response. We want to see. (And maybe also to feel superi-or to what we see.)

But to stop there is too easy. Why is anatomical art so popular in thepresent moment? Why does the new conceptual art anatomy speak sopowerfully to us? Here’s my theory:

The anatomical identity that we carry around with us coexists with,and even infuses, other representations of the body. We swim in a sea ofbody representations: images of beautiful bodies, funny bodies, athlet-ic bodies, dead and dying bodies, bodies on television and film and theweb, and in newspapers and magazines. In this media multiverse, we areconstantly exhorted to attend to our bodies: how we look, how we feel.And in response, we survey and shape and transform and fret over our-selves. We diet and train at the gym and do physical exercise, yoga,swing dance, martial arts, more than any other people in history. Weexamine ourselves for acne and breast cancer and a thousand other seri-

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The Office of Exhibitions and Cultural Programs wishes to expressgratitude to the following institutions and individuals for support inthe creation of this exhibition:

Dr. Harvey Fineberg, MD, PhD President of the Institute of MedicineMichael Sappol, PhD, Curator-Historian, National Library of Medicine,

Bethesda, MD

The Center for Creative Photography, Tucson, AZ Gallery Paule Anglim, San Francisco, CAInternational Center of Photography, New YorkLocks Gallery, Philadelphia, PANational Library of Medicine, Bethesda, MD

© 2004 Michael Sappol, PhD. Visionary Anatomies and the GreatDivide: Art, Science, and the Changing Conventions of AnatomicalRepresentation, 1500-2003 Catalogue © 2004 National Academy of Sciences

Catalogue Design: Spur Design

On the Cover: Ellen Sandor, Keith Miller, Janine Fron, Jack Ludden,(art)n, with Jim Strommer, School of Medicine, University ofCalifornia, Los Angeles. PET Study 2 (Lung Cancer): Man Ray/PicabiaImitating Balzac (Cropped), 2003

Acknowledgments

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