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Sto caricando le informazioni... The Anatomical Venus: Wax, God, Death & the Ecstaticdi Joanna Ebenstein
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Iscriviti per consentire a LibraryThing di scoprire se ti piacerà questo libro. Attualmente non vi sono conversazioni su questo libro. In the 18th century, Florence, Italy, had a strong Catholic faith and a long tradition of making realistic wax anatomical models for sacred votive offerings commissioned by pilgrims. The Medici Venus, a seductive wax model of a real woman, was born. Not only does this book look at the temporal context of the anatomical Venus and examine the beliefs and medical practices that led to her creation, but it also sheds light on the popular perception of it, allowing one to reflect on how the original mystical experience has been enhanced (and why the modern eye sees it as a mystery to be captivated, rather than just a dead object of educational value). It was a wonderful experience to think about the experience of looking at the specimen in the laboratory two months ago. This is a beautifully illustrated book that gives a history of female anatomical sculptures. The text raises numerous philosophical issues related to the works, and one only wishes that the author had pursued her meditations in greater depth. As it stands, with its lavish and provocative illustrations, the book becomes a springboard for thought on these objects which exist at an uncanny nexus of art, science, and the erotic. nessuna recensione | aggiungi una recensione
Of all the artifacts from the history of medicine, the Anatomical Venus--with its heady mixture of beauty, eroticism and death--is the most seductive. These life-sized dissectible wax women reclining on moth-eaten velvet cushions--with glass eyes, strings of pearls, and golden tiaras crowning their real human hair--were created in eighteenth-century Florence as the centerpiece of the first truly public science museum. Conceived as a means to teach human anatomy, the Venus also tacitly communicated the relationship between the human body and a divinely created cosmos; between art and science, nature and mankind. Today, she both intrigues and confounds, troubling our neat categorical divides between life and death, body and soul, effigy and pedagogy, entertainment and education, kitsch and art. The first book of its kind, The Anatomical Venus, by Morbid Anatomy Museum cofounder Joanna Ebenstein, features over 250 images--many never before published--gathered by its author from around the world. Its extensively researched text explores the Anatomical Venus within her historical and cultural context in order to reveal the shifting attitudes toward death and the body that today render such spectacles strange. It reflects on connections between death and wax, the tradition of life-sized simulacra and preserved beautiful women, the phenomenon of women in glass boxes in fairground displays, and ideas of the ecstatic, the sublime and the uncanny. Joanna Ebenstein is a multidisciplinary artist, curator, writer, lecturer and graphic designer. She originated the Morbid Anatomy blog and website, and is cofounder (with Tracy Hurley Martin) and creative director of the Morbid Anatomy Museum in Brooklyn, New York. She is coauthor of Walter Potter's Curious World of Taxidermy, with Dr. Pat Morris; coeditor of The Morbid Anatomy Anthology, with Colin Dickey; and acted as curatorial consultant to Wellcome Collection's Exquisite Bodies exhibition in 2009. She has also worked with such institutions as the New York Academy of Medicine, the Dittrick Museum and the Vrolik Museum. Non sono state trovate descrizioni di biblioteche |
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Google Books — Sto caricando le informazioni... GeneriSistema Decimale Melvil (DDC)704.942The arts Modified subdivisions of the arts Special topics in fine and decorative arts Iconography Specific subjects Human figures and their partsClassificazione LCVotoMedia:
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I also found myself rather put off by the attitude not of the historical personages spoken of, nor the concept of the Anatomical Venus and her sisters, but by the author herself. Presenting, for example, that there is no way a modern person can truly understand the Anatomical Venus, because she hails from "a time when religion, art, science, and philosophy could exist peacefully together", and we have lost this. Also the presenting of a number of stories about men who preserved their wives (or even more creepily, exes) in effigy form or worse, their actual bodies, kept on display or in their beds or both . . . along the same lines as the models (or real human remains, or mingling of both) used for both science and art displays, for sideshows and similar. ( )