Melbourne School of Population and Global Health - Theses
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ItemThe anatomy lesson: an examination of the medical body as represented in contemporary anatomical art( 2005)In this thesis I examine issues raised by works of contemporary art that depict the anatomically dissected body. In recent centuries representations of the anatomical body have become synonymous with the medical body. This analysis of contemporary artworks reclaiming the trope of the anatomical body thus allows room for critical reflection on the culturally constructed nature of the modern medical body. Discussion centers around three pieces in particular: Body Worlds, an exhibition of plastinated corpses by Gunther von Hagens; Hymn, an enlarged dissected torso sculpture by Damien Hirst; and Science of the Heart, a video installation by Bill Viola incorporating a projection of a surgically dissected heart. In each chapter I explore how the artwork reveals, reflects, reproduces and contests current conceptualisations of the medical body, often in problematic ways. Issues of commodification, gender and technology are examined through detailed textual analysis of each artwork, the discussion drawing upon a range of critical theories including postmodern, feminist and phenomenological theory. The thesis acknowledges the dialectic between medicine and art surfacing from the artworks and aims to extend this into the medical humanities by recognising the pieces as engaged and potentially powerful critical discourses on the state of the body in medical culture today.