Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Art Essays

  • Mental illness in art

    JMS PearceHull, England It is often said that creative art is linked to eccentricity, sometimes bordering on madness. Examples abound of great musicians, writers, and artists who at some time in their lives were deranged and often committed to institutions for mental illness. Some ended their lives in suicide. To what extent is art inspired…

  • Tooth extraction in art: from the dental key to the forceps

    Vicent RodillaAlicia López-CastellanoChristina Ribes-VallésValencia, Spain Tooth extraction has been practiced for centuries, being carried out first by often itinerant barber-surgeons, and, once the profession became regulated in the late 1800s, by licenced dentists. Hippocrates gives one of the oldest written accounts of tooth extraction, which he considered along with cauterization to be a remedial measure…

  • Falls and art: An evolving story

    Glenn ArendtsMurdoch, Australia Coming to rest inadvertently on the ground:1 the World Health Organization (WHO) definition of a fall sounds vaguely patronizing, bordering on disinterested. The human act of staying upright is a complex triumph of the integration of neurosensory, musculoskeletal, and cardiovascular systems, and its failure is associated with injury, fear, and embarrassment. Ancient…

  • Edgar Degas’ light sensitivity and its effects on his art

    Zeynel KarciogluVirginia, United States The celebrated nineteenth century French painter Hilaire-Germain Edgar Degas was born in Paris in 1834 to a Creole mother from New Orleans and an Italian father from Naples. In 1855 he was admitted to the École des Beaux-Arts, but the following year he went to Italy before finishing his studies. He…

  • The special art of Vienna

    Irving RosenToronto, Ontario, Canada Vienna, capital of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire, has always promised intellectual fervor, Strauss waltzes, Schnitzlerian flirtations, Sachertorte, and the beautiful golden women painted by Gustav Klimt (fig. 1).1 Others such as Eduard Pernkopf, head of anatomy at Vienna’s renowned medical school, achieved artistic brilliance by creating a beautiful, internationally acclaimed atlas…

  • Michelangelo’s The Creation of Adam

    Jessica LoboLondon, Ontario, Canada Michelangelo painted some of his most famous work on the Sistine Chapel ceiling, covering it with the world’s most beautiful frescoes, of which The Creation of Adam is the most iconic.1 He worked during the Italian Renaissance, and this was a time when “the personality of the Western artist became a…

  • Art therapy: a historical perspective

    Mirjana Stojkovic-IvkovicBelgrade, Serbia Art therapy is a form of psychotherapy that uses the creation of art to help resolve psychopathological conflicts. It helps people to identify psychological weaknesses and see problems from a different perspective, enabling them to escape from repetitive self-destructive behavior. Art therapy improves personality, self-image, and self-acceptance, resulting in an improved quality…

  • Partners in healing: An early renaissance painting depicting the partnership of the divine with the physicians Cosmas and Damian

    Susan Brunn PuettJ. David PuettChapel Hill, North Carolina, United States In many cultures the practice of healing was perceived as a combined effort by physicians and the divine. Florentine Renaissance hospitals had churches and cloisters in their complexes where displayed works of art reminded patients and their families of God’s curing powers. Meant to invoke…

  • Anatomy and pathology in Zurbarán’s Jewish and Christian figures

    Stephen MartinDurham, England, United Kingdom Francisco de Zurbarán (1598–1664) was painter to King Phillip IV of Spain and Portugal and a contemporary of Velázquez. He was the leading religious artist of the Spanish counter-reformation.1 A highly-skilled pioneer of the light-dark chiaroscuro technique, his prominent works include The flight into Egypt, several canvases of Saint Francis…

  • The painter and the potter: voices in color and texture

    Florence GeloPhiladelphia, Pennsylvania, United States Drawn to this painting of a vase at the edge of a table, I pause and think, “Don’t we all live on the edges of life, on stratums of the precarious and uncertain?” Jimmy Lueders’ Armand’s Pot II projects from the wall on which it hangs at the Woodmere Art…