Category Archives: Anatomy

Just in time for Day of the Dead, London-based medical illustrator, Emily Evans has released 10 of these gorgeous prints exclusively for Street Anatomy! I had the opportunity of bringing these prints back with me to Chicago directly from Emily’s studio in London. Available for $50 at the Street Anatomy store.  [Update: only 3 left]

• A3 11.7″ x 16.5″ Giclee print on Canson Aquarelle rag paper
• Gorgeous print quality on artistic paper gives the print a hand drawn feel
• Signed by artist
• Prints hand imported directly from London, UK
• Only 10 available

Emily says of her piece:
“Inspired by the Mexican ‘Day of the Dead’ celebrations, which celebrate those that have passed as well as remind the living of their own mortality. La Calavera Catrina (The Elegant Skull) was depicted by Posada as an upper class woman who was still at the mercy of death regardless of her status. This piece represents the idea of our own anatomy and mortality lying beneath the values of beauty and sexuality which bring power in modern times.”

Available for $50 at the Street Anatomy store.

If you have any inquires, please don’t hesitate to contact me personally at vanessa[a]streetanatomy.com

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Bonni Reid, another Canadian lady like myself, is a Vancouver based artist, designer, and animation colour stylist. Her style seems to mesh the mechanics of the external world with the mechanics of the inner world: the anatomy and the psychology.

Her entire website is filled with little anatomical gems, from the heart in the menu to the banner of exhibit B.
Check out all of her work on her personal website, bonnireid.com.

Source:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/streetanatomy/OQuC

Mark Dery, one of my favorite all time thinkers and lecturers, will be giving a new presentation this Sunday as part of the amazing looking Embodied Fantasies Conference. Full details, drawn for his Shovelware blog, below; hope to see you there!

Live, from the Cancer Ward!
I’ll be lecturing on “Metaphor as Illness” at the School of Visual Arts this Sunday, at 1:30 P.M., in a double-header with media theorist McKenzie Wark.

Executive Summary: A personal essay—live, from the cancer ward!—that is simultaneously a philosophical investigation into the ways in which disease widens the Cartesian chasm, untethering our thought balloons from the Body in Pain.

Directions, program, list of speakers, HERE.

Teaser: During my recent hospitalization for a medical emergency—an unexpected vacation in hell, during which I had boundless hours to muse about Illness as Metaphor and The Body in Pain—I conceived the essay in question, an essay that simply had to be written, as a meditation on language, embodiment, language as embodiment, and the ontologically dislocating experience of being a patient. Drawing on my five-year tour of duty through ER’s, OR’s, and hospital wards as a cancer patient, the lecture in question combines a cultural criticism reminiscent of Sontag’s Illness as Metaphor with the mordant humor of Christopher Hitchens’s recent reports on his battle with the Big C. It’s a philosophical inquiry into the existential black comedy of being a patient—Burton’s Melancholy of Anatomy , reimagined as an episode of the cynical medical drama House.

It’s also one of the best things I’ve ever written—a closely observed, unsparingly honest, emotionally raw self-anatomization that manages, even so, to be philosophically probing, I think.

You can find out more about the conference and its schedule by clicking here.

Image: The Anatomy lesson of Dr Frederik Ruysch, Jan van Neck (lifted from Wikimedia Commons).

Source:
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A few weeks ago, Fox News (yes, THAT Fox News) sent over Red Eye host Bill Schulz and former medical examiner of New York Dr. Michael M. Baden for a little filmed visit to the Morbid Anatomy Library. In the course of our time together, we talked about phrenology, body snatching, and mummification. In addition, the very knowledgeable Dr. Baden conducted a thorough and pretty fascinating forensic examination of the newest addition to the library: an early 20th century human skeleton medical preparation, seen in the screen shot above.

You learn all about the skeleton--and watch the segment in its entirety--by clicking here.

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This exhibit looks truly amazing! Many of the objects, I am told, come only very rarely to The United States, so make sure to take advantage of this opportunity while you can! I will absolutely be making a personal pilgrimage.

"Mechanical Wonders: The Sandoz Collection"
Presented by A La Vieille Russie and Parmigiani
October 26 – November 26, 2011

Visit ALVR this Fall to see a very special loan exhibition of intricate marvels that jump, sing and act as you never believed jeweled creations could.

Featuring early 19th century Swiss gold and enamel automaton snuff boxes, watches, magicians, and animals, the Imperial Swan Egg of 1906 and the Imperial Peacock Egg of 1908 by Fabergé, as well as contemporary interpretations by Parmigiani Fleurier of watches in the Sandoz Collection. In addition, the catalogue raisonné of the collection will be presented for the first time.

EXHIBITION HOURS (beginning October 26):
Monday through Friday 11am-6pm
Thursday 11am-7pm
Saturday 12pm-5pm
Closed for Thanksgiving Day.

Address: 781 Fifth Avenue at 59th Street
New York, NY 10022
212-752-1727
http://www.alvr.com

You can find out more and purchase tickets by clicking here. Thanks so much to the inspiring Jere Ryder for alerting me to this exhibition!

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Wow. Via Artdaily.org:

LONDON.- On Wednesday 2 November, to coincide with Halloween, Bonhams will hold its first sale dedicated to the Wunderkammer, also known as the ’Kunstkammer’ or ‘cabinet of curiosities’, a collection of fine objects created from the rarest and most exquisite materials and designed to induce excitement and wonder in the viewer.

Comprising works of art ranging from ivory figures and reliefs, early and rare bronzes, fine enamels, chalices and caskets, the Wunderkammer brought together objects produced from the most expensive and highly prized materials of the day, including ivory, tortoiseshell, rhino horn, enamel and gilt bronze.

This unique, one-off sale features one hundred and thirty ivory carvings, including a very spooky South German skull (estimate £10,000 – 15,000); an eerie 17th century anatomical model of an eye (estimate £4,000 – 6,000); and a gruesome relief depicting the martyrdom of Saint Erasmus (estimate £10,000 – 15,000). The top lot is a rare collection of forty four mid 18th century ivory intaglios of Roman Emperors, which has attracted a pre-sale estimate of £20,000 – 30,000. ...

You can read the full article on Artdaily.org by clicking here. You can find out more about the auction by clicking here.

Images of lots, top to bottom:
1) Lot No: 225
An 18th / 19th century North European carved and painted wood skull
possibly from a large crucifixion group, 14cm high

Estimate: £500 - 700, € 580 - 810

2) A rare South German anatomical model of an eye
probably late 17th century
composed of ten individual sections including an iris, pupil, and a section painted with veins, with a turned handle to the reverse and on a turned ivory spiralling stem and foot, together with a small 17th century circular carved wood and painted box which the eye fits into when disassembled, glass lense repaired, the ivory 8.5cm high, the box 8cm diameter (2)

Estimate: £6,000 - 8,000, € 6,900 - 9,200

Footnote:
The exquisite workmanship combined with the use of a rare and prized material in this miniature model of a human eye are typical of the objects that were collected and displayed in the Wunderkammer. Detailed models of eyes, as well as skulls and skeletons that are now associated with the Wunderkammer, were produced from the 17th century onwards and originally conceived as anatomical teaching tools. Ivory carvers such as Stephan Zick (1639-1715) and Johann Martin Teuber were influenced by the anatomical drawings of Andrea Vesalius in the mid 16th century and later George Bartisch who produced a manuscript relating to the eye in 1583. For a similar anatomical model of an eye, see Christies, London, December 4 2008, lot 75.

3) Lot No: 174Y
An 18th century South German ivory skull
carved with an entwined crown of thorns, with a snake above, later mounted on a perspex rectangular plinth, the ivory 10.5cm high

Estimate: £10,000 - 15,000, € 11,000 - 17,000

Footnote:
For a comparable ivory skull see the Robert and Angelique Noortman Collection: Paintings and Works of Art from Chateau De Groote Mot, sold at Sotheby's, Amsterdam, December 17, 2007, lot 557.
A similar skull monogrammed by Josef Konrad Wiser (1693-1760) but lacking the snake was sold at Sotheby's, London, July 9, 2008, lot 92, £37,250.

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