Posts Tagged ‘Anatomical’

This Friday at Observatory! “The Anatomical Unconscious: X-Ray Specs, Visible Women, and the Eros of the Unseen,” With Cult Author Mark Dery

Posted on June 17th, 2010 • Filed under mediarosa • No Comments

Friend of Morbid Anatomy, frequent Boing Boing contributer, innovative cultural theorist and all around bon vivant Mark Dery will be giving an illustrated lecture this Friday night, June 18th, at Observatory. Come witness the linguistic pyrotechnics as Dery traces the connections betweeb wax anatomical models, pornographic x-ray fantasies of the 1950s, and x-ray fears of the post-terrorist society in his inimitable fashion. People: I have seen this man speak and it is, I promise, not to be missed!

Full info follows; hope very much to see you there!

The Anatomical Unconscious: X-Ray Specs, Visible Women, and the Eros of the Unseen
An illustrated lecture with cult author and cultural critic Mark Dery
Date: Friday, June 18th
Time: 8:00 PM
Admission: $7
Presented by Morbid Anatomy

What do 18th-century wax “anatomical Venuses” doing a striptease in which they expose their internal organs; cutaway views of the imaginary anatomy of Loony Tunes characters; the X-Ray Specs and Visible Woman toys familiar to boomers; and artist Wim Delvoye’s X-rated X-rays of people performing sex acts have in common?

Mark Dery makes these and other provocative connections in his lecture “The Anatomical Unconscious: X-Ray Specs, Visible Women, and the Eros of the Unseen,” a cultural critique of the eroticizing of the scientific gaze. In his hour-long lecture/slideshow, Dery will touch on the pornographic fantasies that swirled around the X-ray from its inception; adolescent dreams, fueled by comic-book ads for X-Ray Specs, of the potential uses for Superman’s X-ray vision; current fears of the potential for abusive use of airport scanners that penetrate clothing; and the artist Wim Delvoye’s series of pornographic X-rays. He’ll theorize the eros of the X-ray, with digressions into the weird cartoon subgenre of imaginary anatomies (of everything from Star Wars At-Ats to Loony Tunes characters) and premonitions of X-rated X-rays inherent in the baroque medical mannequins on display at the Museum La Specola in Florence, Italy.

Mark Dery (www.markdery.com) is a cultural critic. He is best known for his writings on the politics of popular culture in books such as The Pyrotechnic Insanitarium: American Culture on the Brink and Escape Velocity: Cyberculture at the End of the Century. Dery is widely associated with the concept of “culture jamming,” the guerrilla media criticism movement he popularized through his 1993 essay “Culture Jamming: Hacking, Slashing, and Sniping in the Empire of the Signs,” and “Afrofuturism,” a term he coined and theorized in his 1994 essay “Black to the Future” (included in the anthology Flame Wars: The Discourse of Cyberculture, which he edited). He has been a professor in the Department of Journalism at New York University, a Chancellor’s Distinguished Fellow at UC Irvine, a Visiting Scholar at the American Academy in Rome, and, most proudly, a guest blogger at Boing Boing. He writes the Doom Patrol column of cultural commentary at True/Slant (http://trueslant.com/markdery)

You can find out more about these presentation here. You can get directions to Observatory–which is next door to the Morbid Anatomy Library (more on that here)–by clicking here. You can find out more about Observatory here, join our mailing list by clicking here, and join us on Facebook by clicking here.

Image: Tweety Bird skull: Copyright Hyungkoo Lee, all rights reserved.

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This Sunday! “Anatomical Venuses, The Slashed Beauty, and Fetuses Dancing a Jig” Lecture, Coney Island Museum, Sunday June 13th, 4:30 PM

Posted on June 13th, 2010 • Filed under mediarosa • No Comments

Just a brief reminder that I will be waxing [sic] poetic on the wonders of medical museum this Sunday at the Coney Island Museum as part of their “Ask the Experts” series.

Full details follow; hope to see you there!

Anatomical Venuses, The Slashed Beauty, and Fetuses Dancing a Jig: A Journey into the Curious World of the Medical Museum
Date: THIS SUNDAY, June 13th
Time: 4:30 PM
Admission: $5
Location: Coney Island Museum (208 Surf Ave. Brooklyn)

This afternoon’s highly-illustrated lecture will introduce you to the the Medical Museum and its curious denizens, from the Anatomical Venus to the Slashed Beauty, the allegorical fetal skeleton tableau to the taxidermied bearded lady, the flayed horseman of the apocalypse to the three fetuses dancing a jig. The lecture will contextualize these artifacts by situating them within their historical context via a discussion of the history of medical modeling, a survey of the great artists of the genre, and an examination of the other death-related diversions which made up the cultural landscape at the time that these objects were originally created, collected, and exhibited.

You can find out more by clicking here and can get directions by clicking here.

Image: From the Anatomical Theatre exhibition: “Museum of Anatomical Waxes “Luigi Cattezneo” (Museo Delle Cere Anatomiche “Luigi Cattaneo”): Bologna, Italy “Iniope–conjoined twins” Wax anatomical model; Cesare Bettini, Early 19th Century

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“Anatomical Venuses, The Slashed Beauty, and Fetuses Dancing a Jig” Lecture, Coney Island Museum, Sunday June 13th, 4:30 PM

Posted on June 9th, 2010 • Filed under mediarosa • No Comments

Looking for an excuse to get out to Coney Island this weekend? Curious about the art and history of medical museums? If you answered yes to one or both of these questions, why not come down to the Coney Island Museum this Sunday to see me pontificate on the wonders of medical museums as part of their “Ask the Experts” series?

Full details follow; hope to see you there!

Anatomical Venuses, The Slashed Beauty, and Fetuses Dancing a Jig: A Journey into the Curious World of the Medical Museum
Location: Coney Island Museum (208 Surf Ave. Brooklyn)
Time: 4:30 PM
Admission: $5

This afternoon’s highly-illustrated lecture will introduce you to the the Medical Museum and its curious denizens, from the Anatomical Venus to the Slashed Beauty, the allegorical fetal skeleton tableau to the taxidermied bearded lady, the flayed horseman of the apocalypse to the three fetuses dancing a jig. The lecture will contextualize these artifacts by situating them within their historical context via a discussion of the history of medical modeling, a survey of the great artists of the genre, and an examination of the other death-related diversions which made up the cultural landscape at the time that these objects were originally created, collected, and exhibited.

You can find out more by clicking here and can get directions by clicking here.

Image: From the Anatomical Theatre exhibition; “‘La Specola’ (Museo di Storia Naturale) : Florence, Italy “Anatomical Venus” Wax wodel with human hair and pearls in rosewood and Venetian glass case; Probably modeled by Clemente Susini (around 1790)”

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Anatomy Class featuring Auzoux Female Anatomical Model, George Grantham Bain Collection, Shorpy

Posted on May 8th, 2010 • Filed under mediarosa • No Comments

Anatomy Class circa 1905, George Grantham Bain Collection, as found on Shorpy. Click on the image to see much larger, more detailed image; note especially the demure Auzoux female anatomical model to the left; you can see a color version of it here.

More on Auzoux and his work here; Via Turn of the Century blog.

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