Immortality Medicine

Bodysong is a film that was created in 2003 that basically shows the process of human life (womb to tomb) without any dialogue. The entire soundtrack was done by Radiohead!

Preview the film below.

I just found out about an excellent looking exhibition now on in Dunedin, New Zealand; the exhibition is called “Still Life: The Art of Anatomy,” and it frames a variety of historical and contemporary anatomical teaching tools held in public and private hands–including models and illustrations–as artworks in a fine art setting.

Images of the exhibition above and full details below; if you are based in New Zealand, be sure to check this out!

Still Life: The Art of Anatomy
Saturday, 10 July 2010 – 12 September 2010
Dunedin Public Art Gallery
Dunedin, New Zealand

Noted Dunedin based filmmaker and medical doctor Paul Trotman, has worked closely with the Dunedin Public Art Gallery in researching Dunedin’s rich collections towards the realization of Still Life: The Art of Anatomy. This exhibition brings together an array of historical and contemporary items, such as Dr John Halliday Scott’s elegant anatomical drawings and old master prints, through to porcelain and wax casts of aspects of the body and the latest interactive computer generated 3D anatomical models. Still Life provides a stunning insight into this complex subject and also reveals the important lineage that science and art shares through the analysis, distillation and depiction of the human form.

You can find out more by clicking here or here.

EM over at Merit Badger made this delightful new poster for Julia Robert’s latest film, Eat Pray Love, re-imagined as Eat Brains Love.

Personally, I would see this version. It looks like it won’t be shot entirely in soft lighting and the thought of Zombie Roberts nomming on James Franco’s brains is kind of hot.

[via tdw]

The remainder of August will be a very exciting and busy time for Morbid Anatomy Presents at Observatory. The weeks ahead will bring a New Zealand-based medical museum curator giving a virtual tour of his collection, Wellcome Collection curator Kate Forde lecturing about popular anatomical museums of 19th Century Europe as explored in last years popular “Exquisite Bodies” exhibition (for which I provided curatorial assistance), a screening of obscure films which influenced the Brothers Quay, an art exhibition opening party, and illustrated lectures on hermaphroditism, posthumanism, Japanese paper theater and spiritualism by a variety of artists, scholars and authors.

Full details for each of the seven (!!!) events follow below. Very much hope to see you at some, all, or even one of these amazing events!

“Angels, Animals and Cyborgs: Visions of Human Enhancement”
An illustrated lecture by Salvador Olguin
Date: Friday, August 20
Time: 8:00 PM
Admission: $5
Presented by Morbid Anatomy
** Note: This event is followed by the free Substructure Superstructure exhibition–featuring artworks by Friese Undine– opening party, which will begin at 9:30.

Posthumanism is currently a hot term in certain scientific and academic circles. Deplored by many as yet another fashionable post, defended by its supporters as a term that reflects our current fears, hopes and changing reality, posthumanism is an attempt to think seriously about the effects that technology and its rapid pace has in our society, our bodies and our minds, and to consider that these effects might change the human species as we know it.

Throughout history, the desire to transcend the limitations of our condition as biological beings has been constantly present. From theological discussions regarding the nature of the human body after the resurrection of the flesh, to the projections of today’s futurists, and including figures such as the Golem, Frankenstein’s monster, angels and cyborgs, our culture has imagined bodies with wider possibilities than ours. Myth, science, art and literature have treated the topic of body enhancement, considering its pros, its cons and its limitations. In a time when pacemakers, prostheses, cloning and cryogenics are making these old dreams of human enhancement a reality, it can be fruitful to look back and compare the wildest fantasies of posthumanism with its intellectual predecessors, to get a better picture of what is going on.

This lecture will touch on some key examples of visions of human enhancement, in order to put the hopes and dreams of posthumanism in perspective, and try to sketch a genealogy of this set of ideas.

Salvador Olguin was born in Monterrey, Mexico. He holds a Master’s degree in Humanities by the Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey, and he worked as an Assistant Professor and Course Coordinator for three years in that same institution. He is a writer and playwright, and has published poems and essays in magazines –such as Tierra Adentro, Parteaguas, Revista de Literatura Mexicana Contemporánea and the journal Anamesa, among others– both in Mexico and the United States. His research interests orbit around the conjunction of death, the body, technology and representation. He quit his former job and life in order to come to New York, where he is currently a second year student in the Draper Masters Program in Humanities and Social Thought.

“Manga Kamishibai: The Art of Japanese Paper Theater, 1930 to 1960″
An Illustrated Lecture and artifact demonstration by Eric P. Nash, author of Manga Kamishibai: The Art of Japanese Paper Theater
Date: Monday, August 23rd
Time: 8:00
Admission: $5
Presented by Morbid Anatomy and part of the Oxberry Pegs Presents series
*** Please note: Books will be available for sale and signing and authentic kamishibai theatre will be available to view

Before giant robots, space ships, and masked super heroes filled the pages of Japanese comic books–known as manga–such characters were regularly seen on the streets of Japan in kamishibai stories. Manga Kamishibai: The Art of Japanese Paper Theater tells the history of this fascinating and nearly vanished Japanese art form that paved the way for modern-day comic books, and is the missing link in the development of modern manga.

During the height of kamishibai in the 1930s, storytellers would travel to villages and set up their butais (miniature wooden prosceniums) on the back of their bicycles, through which illustrated boards were presented. The story boards–colorful, hand-painted, original art drawn with the great haste that signifies manga, glued on cardboard and lacquered to protect them in the rain–told stories ranging from action-packed westerns to science-fiction stories to ninja tales to monster stories to Hiroshima stories to folk tales and melodramas for the girls. Golden Bat, a supernatural, cross-eyed, skull-faced superhero; G-men; Cinderella; the Lone Ranger; and even Batman and Robin starred in kamishibai stories. The storytellers acted as entertainers, acting out the parts of each character with different voices and facial expressions, and sometimes too, they became reporters, when the stories were the nightly news reports on World War II. Kamishibai was so popular and widespread, that when television hit Japan in the mid-1950s, it was known as denki kamishibai–electric paper theater.

Tonight, author Eric P. Nash will tell the story of kamishibai as detailed in his gorgeous new book Manga Kamishibai: The Art of Japanese Paper Theater. He will also bring in a genuine kamishibai set from the 1930s and make copies of his book available for sale and signing.

Eric P. Nash has been a researcher and writer for the New York Times since 1986. He is the author of several books about art, architecture, and design, including Manga Kamishibai: The Art of Japanese Paper Theater, MiMo: Miami Modernism Revealed, and The Destruction of Penn Station. His work has also appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The San Francisco Chronicle and Discover magazine.

Hermaphrodites: Sex Undetermined
An illustrated lecture by Artist and Animator Halli Gomberg on the 1937 publication Genital Abnormalities Hermaphoditism & Related Adrenal Diseases
Date: Tuesday, August 24th
Time: 8pm
Admission: $5
Presented by Morbid Anatomy
***PLEASE NOTE: Please be advised that this event will contain graphic images that may be offensive to some viewers.

Although American society prides itself on the appearance of sexual liberation, intersexed people–traditionally called hermaphrodites–remain a taboo subject. Little is known and much is speculated. It is a topic that both fascinates and repulses, and too often it is easy to overlook the human element and instead see an object of confused sexuality and genitalia.

Tonight’s lecture looks to break through some of these walls with the discussion of the book Genital Abnormalities Hermaphoditism & Related Adrenal Diseases. Published in 1937 by John Hopkins University, this medical text contains over 50 years of studies on intersexed cases; procedures used to “fix” this problem, and most importantly the stories of the people whose lives were forever altered by the result of a genetic mutation. Discussed will be the surgical techniques employed on patients (predecessors of today’s genital reassignment surgeries), the lives of the patients behind the case numbers, and lastly modern repercussions of Hermaphoditism.

Halli Gomberg is a 2011 candidate for Master of Fine Arts in Design and Technology at Parsons, The New School. There, she specializes in motion graphics and interactive web technology. She has always fostered a passion for the obscure and forgotten elements of humanity. This has led her to build an impressive curiosity cabinet of rare medical photos, books, religious reliquaries, and antique glass. Her animation and physical computing work can be seen here.

Exquisite Bodies: or the Curious and Grotesque History of the Anatomical Model
An illustrated lecture by Wellcome Collection Curator Kate Forde
Date: Thursday, August 26
Time: 8:00 PM
Admission: $5
Presented by Morbid Anatomy

Tonight, Kate Forde of London’s Wellcome Collection will deliver an illustrated lecture detailing the rise and fall of the popular anatomical museum in 19th century Europe as detailed in The Wellcome’s recent ‘Exquisite Bodies’ exhibition.

The ‘Exquisite Bodies’ exhibition, which was curated with the assistance of Morbid Anatomy’s Joanna Ebenstein, was inspired by the craze for anatomy museums and their artifacts–particularly wax anatomical models–in 19th century Europe. In London, Paris, Brussels and Barcelona displays of wax models became popular with visitors seeking an unusual afternoon’s entertainment. The public were invited to learn about the body’s internal structure, its reproductive system and its vulnerability to disease–especially the sexually transmitted kind–through displays that combined serious science with more than a touch of prurience and horror.

At a time when scandal surrounded the practice of dissection, the medical establishment gave these collections of human surrogates a cautious welcome; yet only a few decades later they fell into disrepute, some even facing prosecution for obscenity. This talk will trace the trajectory of these museums in a highly illustrated lecture featuring many of the historical artifacts featured in the show.

To find out more about the exhibition ‘Exquisite Bodies,’ click here and here.

Kate Forde is Curator of Temporary Exhibitions at the Wellcome Collection, London. She is interested in the role of museums in the shaping of cultural memory and in the display of fine art within science-based institutions. Her current research is taking her from the great dust-heaps of Victorian London to Staten Island’s landfill Fresh Kills for an exhibition with the working title ‘Dirt’. You can see a preview of tonight’s lecture by clicking here.

It’s Scotland Jim, But Not As We Know it: The W.D. Trotter Anatomy Museum – A Brief History
An illustrated lecture and virtual tour by Chris Smith, Curator of the W.D. Trotter Anatomy Museum, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand
Date: Friday, August 27
Time: 8:00 PM
Admission: $5
Presented by Morbid Anatomy

Tonight, Chris Smith, curator of the W.D. Trotter Anatomy Museum of the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand, will give a brief history of the Museum, its collections and the role it plays today. As part of the southern-most Medical School in the world, this isolation can be both a hindrance as well as of benefit; but with its foundation built upon a strong Scottish heritage, the traditions of Anatomical Teaching have been sustained and continue to strengthen in this proud institution. From the early plaster, wax and papier-mâché through to todays technologies of 3D imaging and plastination, you will be given a whirlwind tour of this collection and some of the personalities responsible for its creation and development over the last 135 years.

Chris Smith is a trained Secondary School Teacher with 10 years experience in teaching and education and a passion for the collection, teaching and preservation of history. Chris changed gears in 2005 to take up the role as Anatomy Museum Curator and Anatomy Department Photographer at the University of Otago. In this role Chris has maintained and further developed the use of anatomical specimens, both historic and modern, for teaching and research, as well as increasing public awareness of the collection and the history of the museum and department. In 2007 and 2008 he traveled to Thailand as part of the Bio-archaeology team to excavate and photograph human remains at Ban Non Wat (Origins of Angkor Project), a prehistoric Neolithic to Iron Age site. He regularly attends conferences within New Zealand and neighboring Australia, visiting institutions and collections and in 2008 received a Queen Elizabeth the 2nd (QEII) Technicians’ Study Award, which enabled him to visit institutions and collections in United Kingdom and attend the European Association of Museums of the History of Medical Science Congress held that year in Edinburgh. It was at this event that he and Joanna crossed paths and as such with a visit to meet new family in the US in 2010 and making contact with Joanna, he has been put in this privileged position of being able to share a little about ‘his’ museum.

Animators The Brothers Quays Have Watched and Other Likely Things
A collection of short films presented by SVA’s Thyrza Nichols Goodeve
Date: Monday, August 30rd
Time: 8:00
Admission: $5
Presented by Morbid Anatomy and part of the Oxberry Pegs Presents series

Although The Brothers Quay are a union of imagination completely their own, they have been influenced by specific Eastern European animators. On August 30th Thyrza Nichols Goodeve will present a selection of films from Walerian Borowczyk, Jan Lenica, Priit Pärn, Yuri Norstein, and Igor Kovalyov followed by various animations from the Polish and Zagreb school who might sit happily, albeit covered with dust, inside a Quay-esque universe.

Thyrza Nichols Goodeve is a writer and interviewer active in the field of contemporary art and culture. She is on the School of Visual Arts faculty, active in the MFA Art Writing and Criticism Program, the art history program, and the masters computer art and film programs. She teaches also in the MFA Digital + Media Program at the Rhode Island School of Design and is the program co-ordinator for the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) “MICA in NYC (DUMBO)” Summer Intensive program in Brooklyn, New York. She has published in Artforum, Parkett, Art in America, Artbyte, Guggenheim Magazine, The Village Voice, Tribeca Trib and Camerawork.

Documenting the Invisible: Spiritualism, Lily Dale, and Talking to the Dead
An illustrated lecture by photographer Shannon Taggart
Date: Tuesday, August 31
Time: 8:00 PM
Admission: $5
Presented by Morbid Anatomy

Spiritualism is a loosely organized religion based primarily on a belief in the ability to communicate with spirits of the dead. The movement began in upstate New York in 1848 when two young girls named Margaret and Kate Fox claimed to be in contact with the spirit of a dead peddler buried beneath their home. Photographer Shannon Taggart first became aware of Spiritualism as a teenager when her cousin received a reading in Lily Dale, NY, The World’s Largest Spiritualist Community. A medium there revealed a strange family secret about the death of their grandfather that proved to be true. Taggart became deeply curious about how someone could possibly know such a thing.

Thus began a five year photography project focused on Modern Spiritualism. During her image making she immersed myself in the history and philosophy of Spiritualism, had more readings than she can count, experienced spiritual healings, took part in séances, attended a psychic college and sat in a medium’s cabinet, all with her camera. Despite this exposure she finds herself no closer to any definitive answer of what it all means. She feels as if she has peered into a mystery.

Shannon Taggart is a freelance photographer based in Brooklyn, New York. She received her BFA in Applied Photography from the Rochester Institute of Technology. Her images have appeared in numerous publications including Blind Spot, Tokion, TIME and Newsweek. Her work has been recognized by the Inge Morath Foundation, American Photography, the International Photography Awards, Photo District News and the Alexia Foundation for World Peace, among others. Her photographs have been shown at Photoworks in Brighton, England, The Photographic Resource Center in Boston, Redux Pictures in New York, the Stephen Cohen Gallery in Los Angeles and most recently at FotoFest 2010 in Houston. For more about Shannon Taggart, visit www.shannontaggart.com.

You can find out more about these presentation here, here, here, here, here, here and here. You can get directions to Observatory–which is next door to the Morbid Anatomy Library (more on that here)–by clicking here. You can find out more about Observatory here, join our mailing list by clicking here, and join us on Facebook by clicking here.

This in-hospital poster campaign was designed for Organ Donation at the AUB Medical Center. I love the headline treatments!

Agency: JWT Dubai // Art Director: Nizar Swailem // Copywriter: Ash Chagla // Digital Illustrator: Nabil Kamara

Transport of the Bavaria (torso), 1850, Alois Löcherer.

Found at the ICP-Bard MFA Blog. Click on image to see much larger, finer image.

I am not particularly a fan of the Saw franchise. Friends begged me to see the second one with them, and although I had never seen the first, I finally agreed. I laughed through most of the ridiculous movie. I also hate stories with killers who apparently have high morals and want to teach their victims a lesson. As far as I am concerned Jigsaw from these movies and John Doe of Se7en can shove it. All that aside, this new motion poster for Saw 3D is beautiful.

I love that the heart is black and fists are punching their way out.

See it in motion via http://saw3dmovie.com/Poster/

Here’s the trailer in case you are interested:

[via First Showing]

Thanks to Dlisted for linking to this awesome skull cake. theCHIVE (go to their site for more pictures) just put up pictures, so I don’t know who made it. Either way it looks delicious. I would want mine with a nice gelatinous filling.

Gigposter by artist Denny Schmickle. Yay!

Kris Kuksi is the skilled artist behind these totally intricate mixed media sculptures. His use of anatomy is fascinating and his personifications of death are striking and beautiful. In the artists own words:

Kuksi’s art speaks of a timelessness–potentiality and motion attempting to reach on forever, and yet pessimistically delayed; forced into the stillness of death and eternal sleep. He treats morbidity with a sympathetic touch and symbolizes the paradox of the death of the individual by objective personification of death. There is a fear of this consciousness because it drops in upon us without mercy, and yet there is a need to appeal to it in order to provide a sense of security, however deluded that sense may be. Kuksi’s art warns us that this appeal is irrelevant, and that we should be slow to create a need for it. His themes also teach us that although death may pursue us arbitrarily, we should never neglect to mourn the tremendous loss of individual potential.

More of his stunning sculpture work as well as drawings and paintings can be seen on his site: Kris Kuksi

[via bestbookmarks]

All of these wonderful circus images are found in the Le Cirque Flickr set of DoubleM2; you can see the entire wonderful set by clicking here.

Via one of my new favorite websites, Turn of the Century.

…He had, in Castra Regis, a large collection of curious and interesting things formed in the past by his forebears, of similar tastes to his own. There were all sorts of strange anthropological specimens, both old and new, which had been collected through various travels in strange places: ancient Egyptian relics from tombs and mummies; curios from Australia, New Zealand, and the South Seas; idols and images–from Tartar ikons to ancient Egyptian, Persian, and Indian objects of worship; objects of death and torture of American Indians; and, above all, a vast collection of lethal weapons of every kind and from every place–Chinese “high pinders,” double knives, Afghan double-edged scimitars made to cut a body in two, heavy knives from all the Eastern countries, ghost daggers from Thibet, the terrible kukri of the Ghourka and other hill tribes of India, assassins’ weapons from Italy and Spain, even the knife which was formerly carried by the slave-drivers of the Mississippi region. Death and pain of every kind were fully represented in that gruesome collection.

That it had a fascination for Oolanga goes without saying. He was never tired of visiting the museum in the tower, and spent endless hours in inspecting the exhibits, till he was thoroughly familiar with every detail of all of them. He asked permission to clean and polish and sharpen them–a favour which was readily granted. In addition to the above objects, there were many things of a kind to awaken human fear. Stuffed serpents of the most objectionable and horrid kind; giant insects from the tropics, fearsome in every detail; fishes and crustaceans covered with weird spikes; dried octopuses of great size. Other things, too, there were, not less deadly though seemingly innocuous–dried fungi, traps intended for birds, beasts, fishes, reptiles, and insects; machines which could produce pain of any kind and degree, and the only mercy of which was the power of producing speedy death….

This quotation is drawn from chapter 11–entitled “Mesmer’s Chest”–of Bram Stoker’s 1911 publication Lair of the White Worm which went on to inspire Ken Russell’s suitably over-the-top film of the same name.

You can read this book in its entirety by clicking here. You can purchase a print copy by clicking here. You can find out more about the film by clicking here. You can also come visit my copy of Lair of the White Worm at the Morbid Anatomy Library, where it resides in the “gothic” section.

The image you see above is sourced from the exhibition catalog Darwin: Art and the Search for Origins which was published to accompany an exhibition held last year at the Frankfurt museum Schirn. The photo is captioned: “View into the Zoological and Anthropological section of Gabriel von Max’s ‘Scientific Collection,’ circa 1892.” To check out (and purchase) the catalog for the exhibition (highly HIGHLY recommended!) click here. To watch musician/performance artist Momus (!!!) giving a tour of the exhibition–including the installation of the von Max collection–click here. For a more traditional walk through the exhibition, click here.

Special thanks to Christine Edmonson of the Cleveland Museum of Art for turning me onto this wonderful book and exhibition.

XK: E-SCAPE REMIXED from XNOGRAFIKZ on Vimeo.

Video: Arturo Gil / CoMa
Audio: CoMa / Juan Arias a.k.a SubnorRework of “E-Scape” by visual artist Control Machine (CoMa). Comissioned by Lightrhythm Visuals
Published in the “Notations 01″ DVD Compilation.

I’ve never seen anatomical visuals used in such a trippy way!  There are so many layers in this video that it begs to be watched multiple times.  If you watch closely enough you’ll flashes of an image of a female wax model from the famous La Specola museum in Italy.

Next Sunday at 4:30 PM as part of the Coney Island Museum’s “Ask the Experts” Series, Evan Michelson–co-proprietor of Obscura Antiques and Oddities and Morbid Anatomy Library Scholar in Residence–will be giving a reprise of her popular “Culture of Curiosity” lecture, which some of you might have seen at Observatory last November.

If you missed it the first time, or were made curious enough [sic] about the topic to want to know more, do yourself the favor of heading down to Coney to hear Evan wax poetic [sic] in a new and expanded discussion of “the continuing appeal of curated chaos in the home.”

Full details follow; very much hope to see you there!

“The Culture of Curiosity”
An illustrated lecture by Evan Michelson of Obscura Antiques and Oddities
Date: Sunday, August 15
Time: 4:30 PM
Admission: $5
Location: The Coney Island Museum

From humble parlor to Princely treasury, the Culture of Curiosity has endured for hundreds of years. In equal parts uncanny obsession, camp statement, melancholy musing, frivolous commentary and timeless metaphor, ultimately it’s all about mystery.

Come and join Evan Michelson (Morbid Anatomy Scholar in Residence) in an exploration of the continuing appeal of curated chaos in the home.

Evan Michelson is an inveterate collector and museum aficionado. She has spent a lifetime obsessing over specimens, lurking in crypts, touring necropoli and gathering information on all things fading from the collective memory.

For about two decades Evan was in and out of various aggressively confrontational/decadent bands. She is currently co-owner of Obscura Antiques and Oddities, and Scholar-in-Residence at the Morbid Anatomy Library. She lives in Victorian excess with her husband, a few pets, and many esoteric and uncanny objects.

You can find out more about the event by clicking here. Hope to see you there!

The above photo is a Wax Department Store Mannequin from the Early 20th Century from Evan Michelson’s incredible home collection, as seen in my recent exhibition The Secret Museum. You can find more images of her collection here.

“Get a Spine” by Stephanie Stump, is part of a project called Unsaid Thoughts, which is based on successfully being able to communicate with others. People would be able to post ideas they wished to say on a blog, and then certain ones were actually created by hand.  Once the piece was created, it was sent back to the submitter to then use it to communicate their true feelings.  This spine was created with letterpressed polymer clay.  The text on it reads, “For you, since you don’t have one of your own.”

Damn, that would make me cry.

Ben Brown is an Australian illustrator whose work ranges from the above awesome zombie-like renderings (of David Bowie, Nirvana, The Beatles, and Grace Jones), to a children’s book about a surfing dinosaur. You may recognize some of his more famous band posters, such as the two Pearl Jam ones below.

I love his work because it combines creepy and playful. There is a definite eeriness to seeing Kurt Cobain as a zombie, and it is also a wicked illustration. And while Brown has a distinct style, he is not afraid to try different things and keeps from being a one note.

Check out his site for other works including some skate decks, a Mad Magazine cover, and a lot more zombies and skeletons.

[via ChangeTheThought]

This anatomical wax model shows the internal organs in a female torso and head, including the lungs, liver, stomach, kidneys and intestines. Complete with the veins and arteries, the heart is entirely removable. The figure was made by Francesco Calenzuoli (1796-1821), an Italian model maker renowned for his attention to detail. Wax models were used for teaching anatomy to medical students because they made it possible to pick out and emphasise specific features of the body, making their structure and function easier to understand. This made them especially useful at a time when few bodies were available for dissection. The model was donated by the Department of Human Anatomy at the University of Oxford.

Object number: 1988-249

Yet more (recent posts here: 1, 2, 3) riches from the London Science Museum’s magnificently inexhaustable Brought to Life web exhibit. You can see much, much more by clicking here. Also, please click on images to see them in their full large-scale glory.

He shoots in concentration camps, sterile medical laboratories, crumbling archives, curious private collections. He notes that about 90% of his work is done in the Catholic world, places “richly fixated on the body of Mary, the body of Christ, the bodies of the martyrs” and with a “history of sensually violent and death-riddled art.” It’s a tradition that doesn’t exist in North America, and his book serves as a reminder of “everything we left; everything that made us, and somehow drove us to undo that and make ourselves over.–”Jack Burman: Book of the Dead,” The Canadian National Post

Canadian photographer Jack Burman’s new book–titled, simply, The Dead–is a breathtaking book. Gorgeously produced and sober, this quiet and lovely book is filled with Burman’s large-scale photographs exploring the topic of death via a meditative documentation of a variety of human remains. Many of the 52 images which make up this book picture artifacts–from specimens to mummies to medical preparations–that will be familiar to aficionados of medical museums and ossuaries, but the quiet restraint and rich detail Burman achieves in his classically composed images elevate the book above the usual fare.

The book is published by The Magenta Foundation; you can find out more about it–and purchase the book in one of its three editions–by clicking here. You can also come pay the book a visit in the Morbid Anatomy Library where my copy resides atop the New Arrivals pile. You can read more about the book in the recent Canadian National Post article quoted above by clicking here.

The pathological fantasy seen above featured in the fascinating looking book Pohádky Pro Dosp?lé or Fairy Tales For Adults, written by Jean Qui Rit and illustrated by Artuš Scheiner and published in 1925.

This image is sourced from josefskrhola’s Flickr Stream and can be found in his wonderful (and highly recommended) “Fairy Tales & Adventure Stories” Flickr set, which includes, among other things, many more images from this same book. Click here to view the full set; click on image to see much larger more wonderful version.

Found via hypnerotomachi(n)a.

I am in love with Victor Rodriguez’s work. He’s a master at hyperrealistic painting and has the most amazing portfolio. His work has been all over the world, and hopefully one day in my own house.  Take a look at the master’s work here!

They’re all around us…in our homes, in our places of work, in our backyards, and in the air…what are we talking about? Insects. On this week’s Cityscape, we’re exploring the world of bugs. We’ll talk with the author of a new book called Insectopedia, visit a Manhattan eatery that serves grasshoppers (and eat them too), talk with a Brooklyn artist who dabbles in insect photography and meet a pair of professional “insect-pinners” in SoHo.

The recent Cityscapes radio show “Bugging Out” plumbs the fascinating world of insects, as described above; one segment–that about the “Brooklyn artist who dabbles in insect photography”–features an interview with me about my insect photographs as shown in the recent Entomologia exhibition at Observatory.

You can give the show–which is interesting from start to finish!– a listen by clicking here. You can find out more by clicking here. All images are mine, from Observatory’s recent Entomologia exhibition; you can find out more about the show, which was brilliantly curated by Michelle Enemark, by clicking here. More about the book Insectopedia by clicking here.

Please note: The photographs you see above from the Entomologia exhibition are still available for sale; if interested, please contact me.

Todd Baxter is one of my favorite photographers and I am so excited his images are for sale.  The above print titled, “Eaten by Bear” is apart of the series called Owl Scouts, which you should check out as well!   This print is 44″ x 42″ and only 30 exist.  You can become a fan here to keep up with future print sales and new work!  Hoorrray Todd!

Augustine included curiositas in his catalog of vices, identifying it as one of the three forms of lust (concupiscentia) that are the beginning of all sin (lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes, and ambition of the world). The overly curious mind exhibits a “lust to find out and know,” not for any practical purpose but merely for the sake of knowing. Thanks to the “disease of curiosity” people go to watch freaks in circuses and charlatans in the piazzas. Augustine saw no essential difference between such perverse entertainments and the “empty longing and curiosity [that is] dignified by the names of learning and science.”

I just came across a nice meditation on the history of the debate of curiosity as value or vice on the website of Author William Eamon, author of Science and the Secrets of Nature and The Professor of Secrets: Mystery, Medicine, and Alchemy in Renaissance Italy:

The Disease Called Curiosity
Nowadays we think of curiosity as an emotion necessary for the advancement of knowledge, indeed as the well-spring of scientific discovery. It was not always so.

Saint Augustine, in the fourth century, stated the traditional medieval view of curiosity, and it wasn’t favorable. In the Confessions, the Bishop of Hippo made inquisitiveness in general the subject of a vicious polemic, thereby setting the tone for the debate over intellectual curiosity for centuries. Augustine included curiositas in his catalog of vices, identifying it as one of the three forms of lust (concupiscentia) that are the beginning of all sin (lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes, and ambition of the world). The overly curious mind exhibits a “lust to find out and know,” not for any practical purpose but merely for the sake of knowing. Thanks to the “disease of curiosity” people go to watch freaks in circuses and charlatans in the piazzas. Augustine saw no essential difference between such perverse entertainments and the “empty longing and curiosity [that is] dignified by the names of learning and science.”

No difference between gawking at freaks in a sideshow and making investigations in natural philosophy? That’s what the saint said: “From the same motive,” Augustine wrote, “men proceed to investigate the workings of nature, which is beyond our ken—things which it does no good to know and which men only want to know for the sake of knowing.” Augustine’s severe judgment of intellectual curiosity, linking it with the sin of pride, the black arts, and the Fall, became conventional in medieval thought. In the Renaissance, it gave rise to such memorable characters as Doctor Faustus, who bartered his soul to the devil to satisfy his insatiable curiosity and quest for power.

Yet gawking curiosity was the perpetuum mobile of Renaissance science. Early modern curiosity was insatiable, never content with a single experience or object. Whereas Augustine linked curiosity to sensual lust and human depravity, Renaissance natural philosophers saw it as being driven by wonder and the engine of discovery…

…Venice’s maritime empire and its rich craft tradition provided plentiful fuel for wonder and curiosity. The continual contact with exotic commodities, whether herbs from the New World, mechanical toys from Persia, or fake dragons and basilisks, fueled Renaissance curiosity. All that evoked curiosity and wonder became prized objects for collectors, who displayed rare and exotic natural and artifical objects in curiosity cabinets, like peacocks proudly displaying their colorful feathers—indeed, peacock feather, too, were prized objects for collectors.

Pharmacies displayed the curiosities of Renaissance culture. The cabinet of pharmacist Francesco Calzolari at Verona, pictured here, displayed dried herbs, minerals, preserved animals, birds and snakes, including a supposed unicorn horn.

Such objects would become the “curious” things of early modern science. Saint Paul’s admonition, Noli alta sapere, “Do not seek to know high things,” gave way in the Renaissance to Horace’s more hopeful Sapere aude, “Dare to know.”

The transformation of curiosity in the Renaissance was a precondition of modernity. Without curiosity, there can be no scientific discovery, and without discovery, there can be no new knowledge.

You can read this piece in its entirety–and find out more about William Eamon and his work– by clicking here.

Image caption: Pharmacies displayed the curiosities of Renaissance culture. The cabinet of pharmacist Francesco Calzolari at Verona, pictured here, displayed dried herbs, minerals, preserved animals, birds and snakes, including a supposed unicorn horn.

This Thursday August 5th at Observatory, Lord Whimsy, as part of his lecture “Nature as Miniaturist: An Illustrated Survey of the Bogs of Southern New Jersey“ will be displaying the epic carnivorous plant-filled container bog seen above. Said bog is also, as it turns out, for sale; you can even take it home with you after Thursday’s event if so inclined!

Full info follows, as found on Lord Whimsy’s website; if you are interested, you can email Whimsy at email [at] lordwhimsy.com.

Mr. Bill Smith was kind enough to lend one of his container bogs (pictured above) for my Observatory talk this Thursday night in Brooklyn. He would like to inform you folks out in the netiverse that he is offering this three year-old bog garden for sale at the very reasonable price of $200–an excellent bargain, since purchasing these mature plants separately would cost considerably more.

The container is hollow resin, and can be left outside year-round without worry of cracking. The plants in the bog include: Purple Pitcher Plant (Sarracenia purpurea ‘Jersey Girl’), Yellow Trumpet Pitcher (S. flava), Catesby’s S. purpurea x S. flava hybrid pitcher plant (S. x Catesbei), Grass Pink Orchid (Calopogon tuberosus), ‘Hamilton’ dwarf cranberry, Spade leafed sundew (Drosera intermedia), and Thread leafed sundew (D. filiformis). A marvelous, mature grouping of classic North American bog plants, suitable for rooftop gardens and decks. No fertilizer necessary. Very low maintenance: just keep in full sun with regular waterings. Can be left outside year-round. All plants are cold hardy in zone 6b.

Interested parties may contact me (email [at] lordwhimsy.com) and claim their purchase after my lecture on Thursday evening.

Similar container bogs of all sizes can be had at Rarefind Nursery.

You can find out more about Lord Whimsy’s presentation here. You can get directions to Observatory–which is next door to the Morbid Anatomy Library (more on that here)–by clicking here. You can find out more about Observatory here, join our mailing list by clicking here, and join us on Facebook by clicking here.

This is the latest anatomical breakdown of a beloved childhood toy by Jason Freeny. He provides a detailed breakdown of all of Mr. Potato Head’s parts, and we mean all parts…

This print is available on Jason’s site for $59!

[spotted by Ryan]