Tag: Art Essays
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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) In…
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A trip to the museum
Sam WoodworthPortland, Maine 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 artist, Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres. The subject of the painting, Louise de Broglie, appears to have just returned from a show…
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The paradoxical life and art of Robert Colescott
Mildred WilsonMichigan, United States In 1975, satirist Robert Colescott turned the art community on its head with Eat Dem Taters, a parody of van Gogh’s The Potato Eaters.1,2 He and other postmodernist painters of the period would appropriate images from other artists’ paintings, questioning the concept of originality,2 and his George Washington Carver Crossing the…
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Blindness and visual sensory distortion in Thomas Bewick’s woodcuts
Stephen MartinThailand 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 his ordinary…
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Memento mori in medicine
Stephanie JiangToronto, Ontario, Canada 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 so candidly; in most Western occupations, death is seldom mentioned. Dying is spoken of in hushed tones, and…
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Seasick: Lessons in human anatomy from Hyman Bloom’s The Hull (1952)
Liz IrvinWorcester, Massachusetts, United States “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 and hands to perspire.”– Julia Kristeva, Powers of Horror A cold dread crept up the back of my neck…
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Dear brainstem, you remind me of the Mona Lisa
Serena YueHong Kong, China Dear brainstem, You remind me of the Mona Lisa, seated firmly and comfortably atop the spinal cord. The Mona Lisa exudes royalty and class, from her posture and garments to the plump smoothness of her hands. Your elegance also enthralls me, from the sleek medulla oblongata, ascending to the pons with…
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Gently, Doctor, tell me what you see
Florence GeloPhiladelphia, Pennsylvania, United States 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 of looking. During one such program for medicine residents at the Reading Public Museum, we looked at a work…
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Using art to educate about breast cancer
Viney KirpalIndia The World Health Organization Global Cancer Observatory states that in India in 2020, more than 178,361 new cases of breast cancer were diagnosed in women.1 Some of these cases, of which 90,408 were fatal, could have been diagnosed and treated earlier, but a lack of awareness persists throughout the country. Comparatively, in the…
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Diagnosing Mona Lisa
Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden “Mona Lisa looks as if she has just been sick, or is about to be.”– Noel Coward Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) was a many-talented genius of the Italian Renaissance. He was a painter, anatomist, engineer, and inventor. One of his best known paintings, a portrait of a noblewoman, is called the Mona…