Anatomy - Corpus

Elegant feet and gentle noses: anatomical drawing and personhood

30 October 2017 2 Comments

Monica Carroll and Adam Dickerson

A description of a collaboration between a writer (Monica Carroll) and a philosopher (Adam Dickerson).

Through Husserl’s phenomenology we explored the idea of forms of writing that could be coherent with lived experience and with an experience of the body. We found that specialised forms of description, such as anatomical description, shaped and portrayed some parts of lived experience while leaving others parts unspoken. Our explorations in this field produced an artists’ book of loose-leaf folios that point towards unspoken areas of the body, both animated and lifeless.

Anatomy nesting dolls

11 September 2017 1 Comment

Kezia Field

The human foot is a masterpiece of engineering and a work of art.” Leonardo da Vinci

For years, as as an art educator and artist, I’ve had an ongoing preoccupation with body parts, especially with anatomical systems and human organs as artistic imagery. This fascination has lead me to research a variety of vintage anatomical illustrations by scientific and medical artists such as Georg Stubbs, William Braune, Nicolas Henri Jacob, Anton Nuhn and Leonardo da Vinci.

These illustrators were professional artists with advanced education in both the life sciences and visual communication. I like the idea that these artists collaborated with scientists and physicians, and that they transformed complex visual information into visual images with potential to communicate to broad audiences. As digital photography and other digital media have come to dominate the medical illustration world, the demand for these artists has declined. So, I say to myself, perhaps my art can fill this void.

Johann Remmelin: a story of a 17th century anatomy flap book

6 March 2017 2 Comments

Dr Katherine Hall

In 1613, Johann Remmelin (1583-1632) published the first edition of his anatomy flap book. A 1667 edition, printed from the same printer blocks as the first, is held in the Health Sciences Library at the University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand. Recently, with colleagues Dr Simone Marshall and K. John Dennison, I had the opportunity to study it closely.

Our cadaver is male…

6 February 2017 Leave a Comment

Isabelle Lomax-Sawyers

The Anatomy Lesson of Dr Nicolaes Tulp. Rembrandt, 1632. — *The Anatomy Lesson of Dr Nicolaes Tulp*. Rembrandt, 1632.

Our cadaver is male. He was old when he died. I don’t remember his face.

There are maybe ten of us in our white coats. We crowd around the table where he lies in an open black body bag, his head resting on a block of wood. We drape a paper towel over his genitals. We have seen human remains before, single limbs unpeeled to varying degrees. He is whole. He is the first one that is ours.

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Wild play: the education behind a great anatomist.

5 September 2016 1 Comment

Louisa Baillie

A baby, the family’s tenth and last child, is born in 1728 to a Scottish couple farming at East Kilbride, south of Glasgow. He is named John, with the hope that he will survive infancy, unlike a previous baby, also named John. The family is described as “struggling”. So it is likely there was no servant help for the substantial daily work load. I will imagine that near the house is a ‘kail yard’ to hoe, to grow kail (kale) the most commonly cultivated green. Close by are hens and a milking cow. On the farmland itself grow oats, and sheep and cattle. At lambing/calving season those farm animals require intense tending. I’ll bet that often the wind’s maw is bleak and cold. Animals are culled and butchered for home use, and sheep shorn for wool to spin then weave. Regularly the men tramp on and beyond the farm to hunt or snare wild game such as salmon, trout, rabbit, hare and grouse. Domestic tasks include milking of the cow, and from that milk the making of butter and cheese. There are clothes to stitch, candles to make, floors to sweep, a kitchen table to scrub, fires to tend, meals to cook and of course the physically demanding job of filling tubs with water for the hand washing of clothes. Why am I describing this? [Read more…] about Wild play: the education behind a great anatomist.