Medical Illustration and History
bioephemera | September 12, 2009According to Reuters, Gunther von Hagens of Body Worlds fame is going to create an entire exhibit showing plastinated cadavers in sexual poses. He already includes two "copulating cadavers" in his current show:
German politicians called the current "Cycle of Life" show charting conception to old age "revolting" and "unacceptable" when it showed in Berlin earlier this year because it included copulating cadavers.The way a plastinate is exhibited can vary from country to country to reflect local sensibilities. A vote of local employees decided that one of the copulating female cadavers should…
bioephemera | August 28, 2009
Blue Barnhouse Letterpress is simply awesome. I was idly coveting these classy anatomical heart thank-you cards when I discovered they actually have a special card FOR COLONOSCOPIES:
No, not even letterpress can make these brutal (and hopefully fictitious) colonoscopy implements "classy." But that's not stopping me from blogging it.
bioephemera | August 9, 2009
R-Evolve, 2009
Jud Turner
To complement my previous entry on bikes with an anatomical inspiration, here are some bike-and-bone inspired sculptures from Jud Turner, who is currently showing work at Device Gallery in San Diego.
R-Evolve, the sculpture above, was created for a group show, Joyride, in conjunction with the Bicycle Film Festival and NYC's Anonymous Gallery.
Turner's artist statement places him squarely in the sciart camp:
Quantum physics tells us that apparently solid objects are comprised of vast empty spaces, populated by tiny particles whose individual relationships create…
bioephemera | August 7, 2009
Father Heart, 2006
Black Nickel on Rolled Steel; Glass Tank - 80cc with pedal
Josh Hadar
It's always puzzled me that bicycles don't take better advantage of the gleaming potential of curvacious, polished metal. Why are most bike frames so boring and triangular? Fortunately Josh Hadar has come to the rescue, with his beautiful curved steel custom bicycles. They're all lovely, but when he adds blown glass "hearts" to their steel ribs, his bikes seem positively. . . alien. Isn't it interesting that adding elements of human anatomy makes the bikes seem more unnatural? More bikes (and the…
bioephemera | July 22, 2009
Do You Like My Hat?
Lori Field
Lori Field uses mixed media, including encaustic, to create collage dreamscapes inspired by medical and botanical illustrations. Apparently two-headed kittens are also a theme. See more at the artist's gallery website. Check out The Little Death and Frog Princess.
found via dr.hypercube
bioephemera | July 20, 2009
Reader Mike sent me the link to this Coke commercial a while ago. I love the exasperated brain pulling himself around - he's like a mob boss driven crazy by his stupid henchmen. Their other ads aren't quite as funny, because they make you overthink the situation (if the eyeball can't drink Coke because it has no mouth, how is it talking?)
bioephemera | July 6, 2009If anything can put you off bacon, this awesome vintage French ad will!
While the ad appears bizarre to us today, it makes sense in a different social context - one in which animals exist primarily to serve human needs, and all's right with the world when they're fulfilling that function.
I find it especially interesting to consider the parallel between this ad - a happy pig slicing itself up for consumption - and the tradition of human anatomical models holding their own innards open for examination. Bizarre and disturbing, yes - but mainly because we're looking at them with modern eyes.…
bioephemera | July 2, 2009
Ornament(al) Skull
Noah Scalin
Anatomophiles alert: tomorrow, Noah Scalin, proprietor of the Skull-A-Day blog and author of Skulls, opens a new show at the Quirk Gallery in Richmond, VA.
I just typed "Richmoaned". Does that qualify as a Freudian slip? Or something else?
bioephemera | June 24, 2009
The "gastronomical cocktail" called "sex on a drip" is just one reason to hop a plane to Singapore and visit The Clinic, a theme restaurant that's probably not for the squeamish.
Their website boasts, "Clinic's unique alfresco is easily identified by its hospital whites, colourful pills, syringes, drips, test-tubes, and paraphernalia in all manner of the clinical, all in tribute to the tongue in cheek pop art of Damien Hirst." I don't know about Hirst - rotting, half-preserved sharks don't make me hungry - but their website is definitely fun in a trippy, pharma-chic way, complete with…
bioephemera | June 19, 2009An amazing find from Street Anatomy. Vanessa's team has outdone themselves scouting this one - wish we knew more about its creator!
Update: Vanessa at Street Anatomy did find the creator, Elmer Preslee Industries. And you can view their flickr set here (thanks @TheDarkEngine).
bioephemera | June 18, 2009
Joanna of Morbid Anatomy is on a quest to locate private collections of medical oddities. She's already sussed out fourteen such hidden wunderkammern and photographed their treasures, but she wants to find more:
"Who are these private collectors, and what sort of treasures do they possess? How might their methods of displaying collections differ from institutional approaches? Are we reaching a historical moment similar to the pre-museum era of private cabinets, in which the most interesting artifacts are now in private rather than public hands?"
It's a really interesting question.…
bioephemera | June 16, 2009
A beautiful anatomical ad campaign for the Zurich orchestra, via fubiz via Notcot.
Of particular interest I think is this comment on the thread at fubiz, from kmaz: "Music, and overall classical music, plays on emotion, not on the nervous system. instead of putting the music emotion above all, it takes it down heavily and awkwardly, to tie it with simple physic reactions." Really? "Plays on emotion, not on the nervous system"? Pardon me, but to a neurobiologist, that dichotomy is nonsensical. Our emotions and our nervous systems are inextricably entwined. Further, the complex physics and…
bioephemera | June 16, 2009
Der Mensch als Industriepalast (Man as Industrial Palace)
Fritz Kahn, 1926
Pintura/Anatomias, Sintonizando
Fernando Vicente, 2000
The suddenly blogospherically ubiquitous pinup-artist turned anatomical illustrator Fernando Vicente is clearly influenced by German artist Fritz Kahn. If this is your cup of tea, you'll probably also like "An Iconography of the Industrial Body: Fritz Kahn, Popular Medical Illustration and the Visual Rhetoric of Modernity," a talk by Michael Sappol of the National Library of Medicine, curator of Dream Anatomy and author of A Traffic of Dead Bodies: Anatomy and…
bioephemera | June 13, 2009As a fan of maps, typography, and anatomy, I think this is a pretty sweet mashup.
From orkposters.com via Street Anatomy.
bioephemera | June 12, 2009
Turns out DC has, or once did have, a hidden subterranean labyrinth - and you thought it was just a plot device from last fall's South Park election special! Even better, it was dug by a lepidopterist. Take that, you engineers!
ONE of the oddest hobbies in the world is that of Dr. H. G. Dyar, international authority on moths and butterflies of the Smithsonian Institution, who has found health and recreation in digging an amazing series of tunnels beneath his Washington home.
The New York Times revealed its 50 most looked-up words, and Nieman Journalism Lab had commentary:
"All of the 25-cent…
bioephemera | June 4, 2009
Wound Man (click for larger image)
Wellcome Library
Operation Board Game
Hasbro
bioephemera | May 30, 2009In the June Atlantic Monthly, Joshua Wolf Shenk has a long, moving article about what may be the longitudinal study of all longitudinal studies - the Harvard Study of Adult Development (Grant Study), begun in 1937. Its creator Arlie Beck planned to track 268 "healthy, well-adjusted" men from their sophomore year at Harvard through careers, marriage, families, retirement and eventually death - and somehow, from this glut of longitudinal data, to glean the secrets of "successful living."
But the portrait Shenk paints is as full of pathos as it is of success.
Delving into the case files, now…
bioephemera | May 23, 2009
Morgan Care Pharmacy on P St. in Georgetown has all the character so sorely lacking from new drugstore franchises. Drugstores used to be so different: as a child, I savored root beer floats at our local drugstore soda fountain counter. (I know, very Norman Rockwell of me.) Are there any pharmacy soda fountain/luncheonette counters left today?
bioephemera | May 17, 2009
Another fabulously weird map, from the great blog Strange Maps. This one is entitled "The Man of Commerce" and dates to 1889.
According to the American Geographical Society Library,
The highly detailed 31" x 50" map/chart conflates human anatomy with the American transportation system, in an apparent attempt to promote Superior as a transportation hub.Its metaphor makes West Superior "the center of cardiac or heart circulation"; the railways become major arteries; and New York is "the umbilicus through which this man of commerce was developed."The explanatory notes conclude: "It is an…
bioephemera | May 10, 2009
Okay, these dolls by David Foox are just plain disturbing. And they're not just a concept - you can actually BUY ONE.
Via Street Anatomy.