Tag: Art Essays
-
Piero della Francesca and Paul Klee (and cancer)
Scott SikkemaChicago, Illinois, United States “Man’s ability to measure the spiritual, earthbound and cosmic, set against his physical helplessness; this is his fundamental tragedy. The tragedy of spirituality. The consequence of this simultaneous helplessness of the body and mobility of the spirit is the dichotomy of human existence.”– Paul Klee (The Notebooks of Paul Klee)…
-
A trip to the museum
Sam Woodworth Portland, Maine Figure 1. Portrait of Comtesse d’Haussonville. Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, 1845, oil on canvas. Frick Collection, New York City. I recently had the opportunity to visit the Frick Collection in New York City and was delighted to see Portrait of Comtesse d’Haussonville, a beautiful painting by the nineteenth-century French neoclassical…
-
The paradoxical life and art of Robert Colescott
Mildred Wilson Michigan, United States Robert Hutton Colescott, 1967. In: Terri Ginsberg and Duncan MacDonald, “Robert Colescott: The Cairo Years: An Exhibition,” Jacaranda, from American University in Cairo Archives. Fair use. In 1975, satirist Robert Colescott turned the art community on its head with Eat Dem Taters, a parody of van Gogh’s The Potato…
-
Blindness and visual sensory distortion in Thomas Bewick’s woodcuts
Stephen Martin Thailand The artist and naturalist Thomas Bewick (1753–1828) was one of the Enlightenment’s leading polymaths. He wrote groundbreaking books on birds1 and mammals,2 as well as an autobiography, which is absorbing and charming. This Memoir of Thomas Bewick3 is a delightfully detailed window on the eighteenth century and Regency periods, focusing on…
-
Memento mori in medicine
Stephanie Jiang Toronto, Ontario, Canada Dance of Death. Leaf by Michael Wolgemut from The Nuremberg Chronicle, 1493. Metropolitan Museum of Art. It is easy to believe that humankind’s greatest fear is death. From our humble beginnings to now modern-day society, we have learned that Death will always chase us. Few professions explore our mortality…
-
Seasick: Lessons in human anatomy from Hyman Bloom’s The Hull (1952)
Liz Irvin Worcester, Massachusetts, United States The Hull. Oil on canvas by Hyman Bloom, 1952. Image reproduction courtesy of the Hyman Bloom Estate. “I experience a gagging sensation and, still farther down, spasms in the stomach, the belly; and all the organs shrivel up the body, provoke tears and bile, increase heartbeat, cause forehead…
-
Dear brainstem, you remind me of the Mona Lisa
Serena Yue Hong Kong, China Left: The Mona Lisa. Leonardo da Vinci, between 1503 and 1506. Louvre Museum. Via Wikimedia. Public domain. Right: Brainstem, ventral view. Designed by erico and edited by 小野 浩雅(ONO, Hiromasa). © 2016 DBCLS TogoTV. CC-BY-4.0. Dear brainstem, You remind me of the Mona Lisa, seated firmly and comfortably atop…
-
Gently, Doctor, tell me what you see
Florence Gelo Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States Girl with a Hand Mirror. William McGregor Paxton, 1915. Courtesy of the Reading Public Museum, Reading, Pennsylvania. In order to emphasize the role of the arts when teaching the humanities in medicine, I have often taken medical students, residents, and doctors to art museums to develop the art…
-
Using art to educate about breast cancer
Viney Kirpal India Step 1: Raise your arm and examine the breast and underarm region. Step 2: Use the flat of your fingers to examine the breast in different positions: while in the shower with soap on your body, while lying down, and while standing in front of a mirror. Step 3: Check for…
-
Diagnosing Mona Lisa
Howard Fischer Uppsala, Sweden “Mona Lisa looks as if she has just been sick, or is about to be.” – Noel Coward Crowd photographing the Mona Lisa at the Louvre Museum. Photo by Victor Grigas, June 25, 2014, on Wikimedia. CC BY-SA 4.0. Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) was a many-talented genius of the…