Monday, June 28, 2010

A Few Upcoming Observatory Events Presented by Morbid Anatomy


Pornographic peepshows and Walter Benjamin's Arcades project! Forensic photography by a former forensic photographer! Saints and torture as they related to anatomical representation! Human memorial tattoos! Macabre Victorian i3D, lecture and private collection demonstration!

We've got a great bunch of new events coming up at Observatory in July and August; full details (in date order) follow. To see them in a neater and easier-to-read form, please click here.

Hope to see at one or many of these spectacular events!

Radical Detectives: Forensic Photography and the Aesthetics of Aftermath in Contemporary Art
An illustrated lecture by artist and former forensic photographer Luke Turner
Date: Tuesday, July 13

Time: 8:00 PM

Admission: $5

Presented by Morbid Anatomy


Forensic autopsy, crime, and death scene photographs hold a strong fascination in culture. These specific types of photographs present to the viewer a mediated confrontation with horror. In the context of a courtroom, there is a presupposition that the scientific or analytic use value assigned to the photograph will function to shift the viewer’s position from voyeur to detached collector of facts relevant to the legal system. Yet neither position is stable, and the psyche must contend with a complexity of vision that exceeds either classification.

In this slide show, artist and former forensic photographer Luke Tuner will present images from the history of forensic photography, slides from cases that he has photographed, and documentation of modern and contemporary art works that engage the viewer in the reconstruction process. Some relevant concepts explored by artists are crime scene reconstruction in Pierre Huyghe’s “Third Memory”, entropy in the work of Robert Smithson, accumulation in Barry LeVa’s pieces, the logic of sensation in the painting of Francis Bacon, something about that guy that had himself shot in a gallery, and many more. He will also discuss the curatorial work of Ralph Rugoff, and Luc Sante who have both made important connections between art and the forensic image.

Thoughts by philosophers of the abject/scientific, such as Julia Kristeva, Georges Bataille, Paul Feyerabend, Paul Virilio, and others, will be brought into play with the visual presentation. We will explore strategies of resistance to an “official” culture that attempts to legitimize a fixed methodology for the interpretation of evidence. As we emerge from art and philosophical tangents, the lecture will conclude with an argument for why the characters of Agent Dale Cooper from Twin Peaks and Laurent, the protagonist of Alain Robbe-Grillet’s The Erasers, personify two notions of the radical detective through their unconventional approaches to the interpretation of evidence.

Luke Turner is an artist / writer / gallery preparator, who previously worked for three years as a forensic photographer for various Medical Examiner and Coroner’s Offices. Luke has lectured at Glendale Community College in Los Angeles and at California College of the Arts in San Francisco. He is the recent founder of the art blog Anti-EstablishmentIntellectualLOL!.



Morbid Ink: Field Notes on the Human Memorial Tattoo

An Illustrated lecture with Dr. John Troyer, Deputy Director, Centre for Death and Society, University of Bath

Date: Tuesday July 20th

Time: 8:00

Admission: $5

Presented by Morbid Anatomy


In 1891, Samuel F. O’Reilly of New York, NY patented the first “…electromotor tattooing-machine,” a modern and innovative device that permanently inserted ink into the human skin. O’Reilly’s invention revolutionized tattooing and forever altered the underlying concept behind a human tattoo, i.e., the writing of history on the body. Tattooing of the body most certainly predates the O’Reilly machine (by several centuries) but one kind of human experience remains constant in this history: the memorial tattoo.

Memorial tattooing is, as Marita Sturken discusses the memorialization of the dead, a technology of memory. Yet the tattoo is more than just a representation of the dead. It is a historiographical practice in which the living person seeks to make death intelligible by permanently altering his or her own body. In this way, memorial tattooing not only establishes a new language of intelligibility between the living and the dead, it produces a historical text carried on the historian’s body. A memorial tattoo is an image but it is also (and most importantly) a narrative.

Human tattoos have been described over the centuries as speaking scars and/or the true writing of savages; cut from the body and then collected by Victorian era gentlemen. These intricately inked pieces of skin have been pressed between glass and then hidden away in museum collections, waiting to be re-discovered by the morbidly curious. The history of tattooing is the story of Homo sapiens’ self-invention and unavoidable ends.

Tattoo artists have a popular saying within their profession: Love lasts forever but a tattoo lasts six months longer.

And so too, I will add, does death

Dr. John Troyer is the Death and Dying Practices Associate and RCUK Fellow at the Centre for Death and Society at the University of Bath. He received his doctorate from the University of Minnesota in Comparative Studies in Discourse and Society in May 2006. From 2007-2008 he was a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Comparative Studies at The Ohio State University teaching the cultural studies of science and technology. Within the field of Death Studies, he analyzes the global history of science and technology and its effects on the dead body. He is a co-founder of the Death Reference Desk website and his first book, Technologies of the Human Corpse, will appear in spring 2011.



Echoes of Mutilation: The Saints and their Afterlives

An illustrated lecture by Colin Dickey, author of Cranioklepty: Grave Robbing and the Search for Genius

Date: Saturday, July 24

Time: 8:00 PM

Admission: $5

Presented by Morbid Anatomy


In the wake of the photos of Abu Ghraib, images of torture have been pushed back into the forefront of American consciousness, but Western history has had a long and complicated relationship with images of torture. Colin Dickey discusses images of torture in the cult of Christian saints, particularly Saint Bartholomew (who was flayed alive), Saint Lucy (whose eyes were gouged out) and Saint Agatha (whose breasts were cut off). Inverting the traditional relationship of torturer and powerless victim, Christian imagery turned the act of torture into empowerment, where specific methods of torture became iconically associated with specific saints. As the cult of the saints waned, these images of torture began to filter into European consciousness in bizarre and fascinating ways, appearing in everything from Renaissance anatomy textbooks to the paintings of Paul Gauguin to the feminist art of the 1970’s.

Colin Dickey is the author of Cranioklepty: Grave Robbing and the Search for Genius, and the co-editor (with Nicole Antebi and Robby Herbst) of Failure! Experiments in Aesthetic and Social Practices. His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in Cabinet, TriQuarterly, and The Santa Monica Review. A native of the San Francisco Bay Area, he now lives in Los Angeles. This is a return visit for Colin, who lectured on Cranioklepty earlier this year at Observatory to great acclaim; more on that lecture can be found here.



Diableries, Medical Oddities and Ghosts in Amazing Victorian 3D!
An illustrated lecture and artifact display by filmmaker and collector Ronni Thomas

Date: Friday, July 30th

Time: 8:00 PM

Admission: $5

Presented by Morbid Anatomy


Tonight, join Observatory for a night of unique 3D stereo-views from the 1800s featuring HAUNTING double exposure ghost images, DISTURBING medical anomalies and the ever ELUSIVE french Diableries (or devil tissues)!

3D is very much in the news these days, and while hollywood has finally come close to perfecting this technology for the silver screen, people are largely unaware that the Victorians were also aficionados of 3D technologies, and that this interest often took a turn towards the macabre. Tonight, filmmaker and collector Ronni Thomas will lecture on the history of macabre 3D spectacles of the Victorian age, especially the infamous Diableries series–masterfully designed 3D stereo ’tissues’ created in france in the 19th century, backlit and featuring ornate scenes depicting the daily life of Satan in Hell (see image to left for example).Tongue in cheek and often controversial, these macabre spectacles give us a very interesting look at the 19th century’s lighthearted obsession with death and the macabre, serving as a wonderful demonstration of the Victorian fascination with themes such as the afterlife, heaven, hell and death.

In addtion to the lecture, Thomas will display original Diablaries and other artifacts from his own collection. Guests are encouraged to bring their own pieces and, better yet, a stereo-viewer.



The Pornographic Arcades Project: Adaptation, Automation, and the Evolution of Times Square (1965-1975)

An Illustrated lecture with Amy Herzog, professor of media studies and film studies program coordinator at Queens College, CUNY
Date: Friday, August 6

Time: 8:00

Admission: $5

Presented by Morbid Anatomy


Walter Benjamin, in his fragmentary Das Passagen-Werk, illuminated the resonances between urban architectural structures and the phenomena that define a cultural moment. “The Pornographic Arcades Project” is a work-in-progress, seeking to build on Benjamin’s insight to ask what a study of pornographic peep show arcades might reveal about the cultural imaginary of the late twentieth century.

Motion picture “peeping” machines have existed since the birth of cinema, and were often stocked with salacious titles. Public arcades devoted to pornographic peep booths only began to appear in the late 1960s, however, although once established, they proliferated wildly, becoming ubiquitous features in urban landscapes. Outfitted with recycled technologies, peep arcades were distinctly local enterprises that creatively exploited regional zoning and censorship laws. They became sites for diverse social traffic, and emerged as particularly significant venues for gay men, hustlers, prostitutes, and other marginalized groups. The film loops themselves often engage in a strange inversion of public and private, as “intimate interiors” are offered up to viewers, at the same time that the spectators are called out by the interface of the machines, and by the physical structures of the arcades.

Peep arcades set in motion a complex dynamic, one that sheds light on wider contemporary preoccupations: surveillance videography and social control; commodification, fetishization, and sexual politics; debates regarding vice and access to the public sphere. Less obvious are they ways in which the arcades subvert far older fascinations, such as technologies of anatomical display and the aesthetics of tableaux vivants.

Amy Herzog is associate professor of media studies and coordinator of the film studies program at Queens College, CUNY. She is the author of Dreams of Difference, Songs of the Same: The Musical Moment in Film (Minnesota, 2010). She recently curated an exhibition at The James Gallery, CUNY Graduate Center on the dialogue between pornographic peep loops and contemporary art practices; you can find out more about that exhibition, entitled “Peeps”, by clicking here.
You can find out more about these presentation here, here, here, here, and here, respectively. 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.

Vanitas, 18th Century


Via Wunderkammer.

"Owsten Collection" Auction Report













The following report (and these photos!) just in from my friend Lisa O'Sullivan, who is based in Australia and who kindly offered to spy on the auctioning off of the Owsten collection, an amazing collection of naturalia, decorative arts and curiosities amassed by millionaire Warren Anderson and his now estranged wife. The auction took place last Friday and Saturday in Sydney, Australia and here is what Lisa had to say about the spectacle:
In the end, there were no last-minute invasions from the previous owner of the collection, who had threatened to disrupt the sale. He argued that the auction house Bonhams had seriously undervalued his collection. Looking at some of the final auction prices, he may have had a point. Many pieces went significantly over reserve, especially the taxidermy which had been, often ridiculously*, under valued (*she says, with zero authority, but all the bitterness of a taxidermy enthusiast of limited means - the birds I liked having a reserve of A$400 - $600 but selling at A$6,600 (US$5,768), over 10 times that).

For the pre-auction viewing, the collection was displayed in the overseas ferry terminal at Circular Quay, opposite the Sydney Opera house. This was a good thing, because every so often, my retinas needed a rest, and I could step out for some air and gaze at the harbour for a while (calm, washed out blues, very soothing to the eyes). When we say ferry terminal, this is a cavernous space, designed to deal with the massive cruise ships that descend on Sydney. Despite the scale, it felt absolutely jam-packed with over 1,300 objects, many of them made up into room dioramas, like a version of IKEA, designed for, as my friend Felix said, someone looking to furnish an entire Carpathian Castle all at once.

The room was edged with Japanese suits of armour, standing to attention between cabinets and chests of drawers, all with their obligatory taxidermy on top. Looking around, every available surface seemed to be covered with cases. The taxidermy was very varied, some amazing pieces, next to some very dodgy dioramas, and examples in a bad state of repair. Among the saddest were the little birds with stuffing coming out of their eye sockets where fake eyeballs had fallen out.

Add to this, job lots of boomerangs (I heard one staff member complaining to another that his life had shrunk to a point where it was purely dedicated to counting boomerangs in and out of boxes), art nouveau sculptures jostling with ethnographic masks, castle-scaled wooden furniture and a seemingly endless array of trophy heads.

Rumour had it the interest in the rhinoceros horns and heads was fuelled by their medicinal potential (rhino horn is a traditional Chinese remedy against fever). As trade in these horns is now banned, antique examples are the only legal means of procuring them. In any case, a single horn sold for A$90,000 (US$78,655).

For me the most bizarre heads were the wombat trophies. I always understood the ‘heads on a wall’ to gesture towards the prowess of the hunter (all aspects of unfair advantage aside). Despite my best efforts, it’s hard to picture a ‘man v beast’ hunting scenario that involves wombats (also known as the animals most likely to cause a danger to humans as trip hazards in the dark) and a fight to the death any hunter could be proud of...

And the monkey and cat barbershop? A$24,000 (US$20,975) - A$9,000 over reserve. Time to set up a Morbid Anatomy acquisition fund so we can be ready next time?

Addendum: At the end of the day, the entire Owsten Collection sold for A$12 million - double the auction houses estimate, but still under the A$20 million the owner claimed.

Thanks so much, Lisa, for this awesome report and images! So wish I could have been there myself! It looks (and sounds) even more epic than I had expected! To find out more about the collection and to see more images, you can visit this recent pre-auction post.

All images are from Lisa's visit to the auction pre-sale. You can see the entire set of images (well worth your while!) by clicking here.

Saturday, June 26, 2010

Skull Mosaic from Pompeii, 30 B.C. — 14 A.D.


Skull Mosaic from Pompeii

Skull Mosaic from Pompeii[1] (House cum workshop I, 5, 2, triclinium).30 B.C. — 14 A.D. Inv. 109982. Mosaic Collection Naples of the Naples, National Archaeological Museum (inv. nr. 109982).

The mosaic represents the Wheel of Fortune and reversal of fortune. When turned it can make the rich (symbolized by the purple cloth on the left) poor and the poor (symbolized by the goat right) rich. It also marks precariousness, death lurks in every age, and life is hanging by a thread: if it breaks, it flies from the soul (symbolized by the butterfly), making all equal.

via upload.wikimedia.org
Found on Jahsonic.

This Tuesday at Observatory! Torino:Margolis Performance


This Tuesday! Morbid Anatomy presents at Observatory! Hope to see you there!
Torino:Margolis Performance
A performative exploration of electricity, biomedicine, and spectacle
Date: June 29, 2010
Time: 8:00 P.M.
Admission: $5
Please note: This lecture is paired with an event which took place on Tuesday, June 15; More here.

Tonight, join Observatory as it hosts Torino:Margolis in a three-part performance investigating the rich history of biomedicine, electricity, and spectacle. First, the audience will have the opportunity to control the movement of the performer using neuromuscular stimulation, which sends outside electricity into the performer’s muscle, forcing their muscle to contract and the performer to move involuntarily.

In the second part of the performance, they will use electromyography (EMG) in a sound-based performance. EMG is a way of sensing the electricity produced naturally during muscle contraction when an individual moves voluntarily. However, when the performer is physically manipulated by another person there is no action potential generated, no signal sensed by the EMG, and no change in the sound is produced. In this way you can hear someone’s free will.

In the third portion they will add a vocal component to the EMG “rig” by manipulating sound coming from the vocal cords using neuromuscular stimulation.

Torino:Margolis will then explain the workings of the biomedical tools used in the performance and the audience will have the opportunity to ask questions.

Torino:Margolis is a performance art team that smashes through physical and psychological barriers separating one body from another using invasive electronics and biomedical tools. They explore the idea that the self is transient, elusive and modular by playing with the notion of control and free will. Their extraction of physiological processes concretizes these concepts and presents them as questions to the viewer — not to illustrate the mechanism, but to explore the experience. The team has performed nationally and internationally at New York venues such as Issue Project Room, POSTMASTERS Gallery and Exit Art, the HIVE Gallery in California, and the Bergen Kunsthall Museum in Norway. They have lectured for institutions such as SUNY Stony Brook and the School of Visual Arts. For more information please see www.torinomargolis.com.
You can find out more about this 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.

Wednesday, June 23, 2010

Amazing Auction Alert #2: "The Owsten Collection," June 25th and 26th, Sydney, Australia












2010 truly seems to be the year of Amazing Collections Broken Up and Auctioned Off. The most recent example of this bittersweet trend is the upcoming dispersal of "The Owsten Collection," a truly phenomenal collection of antiques, naturalia, and fine and decorative arts (see tiny sample above) amassed by Australian millionare Warren Anderson and his estranged wife Cheryl in the grand style of the19th Century gentleman collector. Over 1,00o objects drawn from this collection--which was amassed by the couple over a 30 year period--will be going to the auction block this Friday, June 25th at Bonham's Auction House in Sydney in what is being called "almost certainly the largest sale of fine art and antiquities in Australia."

From a glance, it seems that Anderson and his wife were voracious collectors of many things indeed, but especially 19th Century natural history and taxidermy, paintings, grand furniture, early 20th Century polychromatic sculpture, Aboriginal art and artifacts, and Japanese antiquities, with an eye towards the quirky and the curious, and with a strong William Randolf Heart-esque "more is more" ethos. Indeed, scrolling through page after page of lots, the mind reels as it tries to imagine a single home into which even a fraction of these objects could comfortably fit, and one finds oneself wishing one could have seen this magnificent and idiosyncratic collection in context, before it had been sent to the auction warehouse for dispersal.

The auction will feature 1,321 lots which include--among hundreds of other astounding objects!--a truly incredible Gothic revival bookcase, dozens of pieces of excellent or curious 19th Century taxidermy, a set of articulated skeletons, an early 20th Century singing taxidermied bird automata, three albums of Aboriginal portraits by Kerry and Co. circa 1895, "a curious Victorian monkey skeleton," half a dozen suits of Japanese black-lacquer armor from the 19th Century, "a good large early Victorian carved mahogany sarcophagus shaped cellarette," dozens of exotic fine carpets, scores of natural history illustrations, enough furniture to fill 8 mansions, and a set of 12 specimen cabinets used by Sir Joseph Banks. Many of these objects are pictured above; see end of this post for a full list of captions.

The auction will take place--if Anderson is unable to stop the sale (it has been reported that he is accusing Bonham's of undervaluing his collection and of being "unprofessional and incompetent" and is thus trying to halt the sale... more on that here) this Friday, June 25th, and Saturday, June 26th. Online bidding is available and the sale will begin at 10:30 AM. You can visit the Bonham's auction website to check out all the lots available in the auction--well worth your time, I promise!--or sign up to bid by clicking here. You can find out more about the auction--and the sordid back story, which includes alleged spousal abuse, corporate intrigue, and folly of all sorts--by clicking here. For more on amazing collections dispersed at auction in 2010, click here.

Thanks so much to my wonderful friend Lisa O'Sullivan for sending this along!

Images, top to bottom:
  1. Photo of antiquities specialist Tim Squires, from Bonhams, flown in from London for the auction, with lots that will be dispersed at auction, from Sydney Morning Herald; more here.
  2. Skeletal Display. A group of six old skeletal displays including coiled python, kangaroo , flamingo, hornbill, barn owl with mouse in it's beak under a dome , and rabbit in a mahogany case; From the Herald Sun slideshow.
  3. Five birds of paradise displays, Bonham's Auction House Website.
  4. Stuffed Penguins. Four penguin displays comprising two adult king penguins on plain wood bases, with old labels and provenance to 1901, a fairy penguin on icework base in a fine glass case, and aHumboldt penguin on snowy base under glass dome; From the Herald Sun slideshow.
  5. "The Barber's Shop;" an amusing Edwardian or late Victorian display depicting macaques barbering two domestic cats, whilst a third baboon reads the paper in the corner, within a fitted shop interior, in a gilt-lined architectural oak cabinet on stand; From the Herald Sun slideshow.
  6. Black Rhino Heads . 923 - An adult black rhinoceros trophy head by Rowland Ward . 924 - A black rhinoceros trophy head by Rowland Ward From the Herald Sun slideshow.
  7. A French mahogany and gilt metal mounted singing bird automata, 20th century, Bonham's Auction House Website.
  8. A mid Victorian walnut firescreen display of exotic birds by Ashmead & Co., Bonham's Auction House Website.
  9. A fine and imposing George IV double breakfront mahogany library bookcase in the Gothic style attributed to Gillows, Bonham's Auction House Website.
  10. A curious Victorian monkey skeleton, Bonham's Auction House Website.
  11. Aboriginal photographs by Kerry and Co. circa 1895, Bonham's Auction House Website.

Saturday, June 19, 2010

"Woman Advertising J.M. Dolph, Furniture Maker and Undertaker," Cabinet card, circa 1877


Woman Advertising J.M. Dolph, Furniture Maker and Undertaker
W. Peppets Art Gallery, Homer, Michigan
Cabinet card, circa 1877

A peculiar advertising photographic pictorial was devised during the 1870s. Women were posed holding signs heralding businesses, their dresses and bodies decorated with life-size objects related to the business. This woman’s hat is adorned with rings from coffin robes. On her chest, she sports a coffin plate, and above and beneath that plate are handles from a coffin. Around her neck is another coffin plate, and coffin chains and paraphernalia hang from her dress. Furniture makers became coffin makers as a natural extension of woodworking skills. The large frame [on the skirt of her dress] indicates this establishment also made frames.
From the wonderful Sleeping Beauty II - Grief, Bereavement and the Family in Memorial Photography by Stanley B. Burns, M.D.

As posted on Liquid Night and picked up by Turn of the Century.

Wednesday, June 16, 2010

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


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.

Monday, June 14, 2010

The Fall and Rise of Humpty Dumpty, Late 19th C?


Found on the Atomic Antiques website. Click on image to see much larger and more spectacular image (worth it! I promise!)

Friday, June 11, 2010

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


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

Two Upcoming Events at Observatory by Torino:Margolis


Morbid Anatomy is very pleased to present an electricity-and-the-body-on-display themed lecture and performance pairing by Torino:Margolis. Event number one, a lecture entitled "Electricity and the Body in Public Performance," will investigate over 250 years of electricity and the body in spectacular scientific performance via an illustrated historical lecture. Event number two will explore the same rich territory via a historically informed interactive performance. Hope you can make it to one or both of these amazing sounding events!
Electricity and the Body in Public Performance
An illustrated lecture by Torino:Margolis
Date: June 15, 2010
Time: 8:00 P.M.
Admission: $5
Presented by Morbid Anatomy

Beginning with the first known public performance by Stephen Gray in 1729 and continuing through the present, scientists and artists have been exploring electricity and the human body for hundreds of years. The innate electrical potential of the human body, electricity as a medium of destruction and using outside electricity to manipulate the body have been served as conceptual fodder throughout this rich history. Although the collaboration between the arts and sciences may seem recent, due to its popularization in the media and 20th century art movements such as Bioart, the connection between these two groups have existed for centuries. Benjamin Margolis, MD and Jenny Torino, MS, RD current tinkerers in both worlds, will take you through the history of public performances in this arena and discuss how it relates to their own work using invasive electronics and the body.

________________________________________

Torino:Margolis Performance

A performative exploration of electricity, biomedicine, and spectacle
Date: June 29, 2010
Time: 8:00 P.M.
Admission: $5
Presented by Morbid Anatomy

Tonight, join Observatory as it hosts Torino:Margolis in a three-part performance investigating the rich history of biomedicine, electricity, and spectacle. First, the audience will have the opportunity to control the movement of the performer using neuromuscular stimulation, which sends outside electricity into the performer’s muscle, forcing their muscle to contract and the performer to move involuntarily.

In the second part of the performance, they will use electromyography (EMG) in a sound-based performance. EMG is a way of sensing the electricity produced naturally during muscle contraction when an individual moves voluntarily. However, when the performer is physically manipulated by another person there is no action potential generated, no signal sensed by the EMG, and no change in the sound is produced. In this way you can hear someone’s free will.

In the third portion they will add a vocal component to the EMG “rig” by manipulating sound coming from the vocal cords using neuromuscular stimulation.

Torino:Margolis will then explain the workings of the biomedical tools used in the performance and the audience will have the opportunity to ask questions.

Torino:Margolis is a performance art team that smashes through physical and psychological barriers separating one body from another using invasive electronics and biomedical tools. They explore the idea that the self is transient, elusive and modular by playing with the notion of control and free will. Their extraction of physiological processes concretizes these concepts and presents them as questions to the viewer — not to illustrate the mechanism, but to explore the experience. The team has performed nationally and internationally at New York venues such as Issue Project Room, POSTMASTERS Gallery and Exit Art, the HIVE Gallery in California, and the Bergen Kunsthall Museum in Norway. They have lectured for institutions such as SUNY Stony Brook and the School of Visual Arts. For more information please see www.torinomargolis.com.
You can find out more about these presentation here and 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.

Thursday, June 10, 2010

Zoe Beloff London Engagements, Tonight and Tomorrow Night, June 10th and 11


For those of you in or near London, friend, artist, and favorite Observatory presenter Zoe Beloff has a few upcoming engagements in your fair city. I have seen both of these presentations here in New York City and could not recommend them more enthusiastically!

Full details follow; hope you can make it out to see her! You won't be sorry.
The Coney Island Amateur Psychoanalytic Society Dream Films 1926-1972: an illustrated lecture and screening
Date: June 10, 2010
Time: 7pm
Place: Viktor Wynd Fine Art, 11 Mare Street , London E8 4RP


The members of the Coney Island Amateur Psychoanalytic Society were filled with the desire to participate in one of the great intellectual movements of the 20th century: psycho-analysis. Additionally, like the Amateur Cine League (founded the same year), many members wished to tap into the power for self expression afforded by technologies like home movie cameras that were newly accessible to ordinary people. This screening presents a range of their amateur films, which reveal an incredibly brave, unapologetic exploration of their inner lives.

Find out more and book tickets here:
http://www.thelasttuesdaysociety.org/coneyisland.html

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Discipline & the Moving Image - lecture/screening
Date: Friday, June 11, 2010

Time:6:30pm - 9:00pm

Admission Free
Location: Birkbeck Cinema (http://www.birkbeckcinema.com)
43 Gordon Square, London
Obedience, Stanley Milgram, 16mm, 1962, 45 mins
Folie à Deux, National Film Board of Canada, 16mm, 1952, 15 mins

Motion Studies Application, 16mm, ca. 1950, 15 mins

Obedience documents the infamous “Milgram experiment” conducted at Yale University in 1962, created to evaluate an everyday person’s deference to authority within institutional structures. Psychologist Stanley Milgram designed a scenario in which individuals were made to think they were administering electric shocks to an unseen subject, with a researcher asking them to increase the voltage levels despite the loud cries of pain that seemed to come from the other room. Milgram saw his test, conducted mere months after Adolf Eichmann’s trial in Jerusalem, as a way to understand the environments that made genocide possible.

Tonight, artist Zoe Beloff pairs Obedience with two earlier works dealing with psychosocial control: Folie à Deux and Motion Studies Application. The former, one of a series of films on various psychological maladies produced by the National Film Board of Canada in the 1950s, presents an interview with a young woman and her immigrant mother afflicted by shared delusions that manifest when the two are together. The latter is an industrial film purporting to present ways to increase efficiency in the workplace: explaining, for instance, a means to fold cardboard boxes more quickly. In stark contrast to the nostalgic whimsy typically associated with old educational films, Folie à Deux and Motion Studies Application play as infernal dreams of systemic power and sources of surprising, unintended pathos.

The concept of ‘motion studies’ is central to cinema itself. Without the desire to analyze human motion, there would be no cinematic apparatus. But the history of motion studies is freighted with ideology. Its inventor Étienne-Jules Marey was paid by the French Government to figure out the most efficient method for soldiers to march, while his protégé Albert Londe analyzed the gait of hysterical patients. From the beginning, the productive body promoted by Taylorism was always shadowed by its double, the body riven by psychic breakdown. We see this in Motion Studies Application and especially Folie à Deux, where unproductive patients, confined to the asylum, understand with paranoid lucidity that the institution is everywhere, monitoring them always. Obedience stands as a conscious critique of these earlier industrial films, co-opting their form only to subvert them and reveal their fascist underpinnings.
You can find out more about Zoe and her work by clicking here. You can find out more about event number one by clicking here and event number two by clicking here.

Harvard University Psychology Department's Display, World's Columbian Exhibition, 1893


Harvard University psychology department's display, which was housed in the anthropological building of the 1893 World's Columbian Exhibition. As seen in Julie Brown's wonderful book Contesting Images: Photography and the World's Columbian Exposition.

Click on image to see much larger more wonderful version.

Via Wunderkammer.

"Borrowed from the Charnel House," Saul Chernick, Opening Tonight, NYC!






Tonight! Hope to see you there.
Saul Chernick
Borrowed from the Charnel House
June 10–July 30, 2010
Opening reception: Thursday, June 10, 6:00–8:00pm

Max Protetch Gallery is pleased to announce Borrowed From the Charnel House, an exhibition of new work by Saul Chernick. The exhibition runs from June 10 through July 30, 2010. An opening reception will be held on Thursday, June 10 from 6:00 to 8:00pm.

Saul Chernick makes highly detailed ink drawings that combine masterful control of the individual mark with an incisive grasp of the history of image-making and various visual media. The exhibition brings together works that display Chernick's penchant for borrowing from the relics of art history to transform them into the constituent elements of his own visual language.

On view are some of Chernick's largest drawings to date, including a piece in extreme horizontal format, almost thirty-five feet long and comprised of roughly thirty drawings done en plein air at Greenwood Cemetery in Brooklyn. A meditation on mortality created from a position in the living world, it also proves to be a forum in which Chernick displays his mastery of the use of line and shifts in perspective. The cemetery is seen not only as a landscape but as a museum of funerary sculpture.

In fact, the exhibition's title, Borrowed from the Charnel House, refers to the vaults where skeletons are stored, often after they have been dug up from crowded burial grounds; one of the most famous of these, and noted because it is still in use, can be found at St. Catherine's Monastery in Sinai, where the monks gather relics from the difficult, rocky soil for both practical and spiritual reasons.

Reflections on contemporary sexuality and technology are embedded into Chernick's intensely detailed riffs on anatomical drawings, heralds, and etchings. The most evident reference is perhaps to the prints, manuscripts, and illuminations of the Northern Renaissance. But like the monks of St. Catherine's relying upon their brothers' relics as reminders of their own mortality, Chernick tweaks specific images and compositional methods from the past to shed light upon current cultural conditions. In this sense, he works like a musician improvising on an existing theme or a writer adapting an older idea for a new context.

Another of the large-scale drawings on view, 'Ars Gratia Artis,' depicts a lion's head floating in a vast alpine landscape. Uncannily reminiscent of the roaring lion that serves as the logo for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios, the piece seems to hint at both the history and future of cinema, drawing a connection to the logo's roots in centuries-old coats of arms. Almost eight feet wide, the piece seems to exist at a hybrid scale, between the intimacy of the drawing and the expansive presence of the movie screen. The emotional power of the drawing, however, lies not only in the scope of its cultural references, but in the mysterious way that the lion himself is rendered.

This sensitivity to individual moments, and the subtleties of human and animal forms, lends Chernick's work an immediacy that places it squarely in the present, and that engages the viewer outside of any specific art historical context. It is a question of both craft and poetry. On the surface it is clear that the artist's technique is indebted to the achievements of the Old Masters, but the critical and psychological revelations on view in his drawings are wholly his own, and shed light on the future of our physical condition––in the short term with respect to technology, and in the long with respect to death.

Saul Chernick was recently the subject of a solo exhibition at Franklin Art Works in Minneapolis. His work has been included in numerous group exhibitions across the United States, and reproduced in a variety of print and online publications.
For more information, click here. Click to see larger images.

Wednesday, June 9, 2010

Amazing Auction Alert! "The Gallery of Creation, a Museum of Natural History, Created by Joseph Hurt Studio, Inc.", Friday and Saturday, June 25 & 26






"The Gallery of Creation: A Museum of Natural History"--a creationist Natural History museum (wait! There's more than one???) in Social Circle, GA--is going out of business with a spectacular bang: their entire collection is being sold at auction!

The now-defunct museum's website describes the collection thusly: "Our displays include a vast array of God’s creations such as minerals, rocks, fossils, seashells, fish, reptiles, animals, insects, butterflies, skeletons, flowers, meteorites, birds, and much more;" Museum highlights are listed as:
~One of the largest mounted butterfly exhibits in the U.S.~
~A monstrous T-Rex skull~
~A 102 pound "touch feel" iron meteorite~
~Our robotic giant pandas, "Chang and May-lee"~
Full details follow for this truly unbelievable auction follow. This one (see above) looks almost too good to be true!
Contents of THE GALLERY OF CREATION, A Museum of Natural History INTERNET BIDDING AVAILABLE

Auction Date:
Friday and Saturday, June 25 & 26

Auction will be held on site:
The Gallery of Creation, 200 Village Circle, Suite A,
Social Circle, Georgia

Auction Schedule:
10AM, Friday, June 25
Lot #'s 5,000 - 5,402
10AM, Saturday, June 26
Lot #'s 5,403 - to end

Preview
10AM-4PM Thursday, June 24 and 1 hour before the auction

Checkout Times:
Friday, June 25 - Two hours immediately following the auction
Saturday, June 26 - Two hours immediately following the auction
Sunday, June 27 - 9:00 AM - 5:00 PM
Monday, June 28 - 9:00 AM - 1:00 PM


ALL ITEMS SOLD FOR IMMEDIATE REMOVAL

Property Description:

Higgenbotham Auctioneers is pleased to announce the sale of The Gallery of Creation, a museum of natural history, created by Joseph Hurt Studio, Inc.

The Gallery of Creation is designed to present examples of God's creations in such a beautiful manner as to inspire visitors with a greater appreciation for God's handiwork and a greater love for their Creator.

Joseph Hurt Studio, Inc., procured an impressive list of clientele, including: Disney World, Epcot Center, Kennedy Space Center, the Smithsonian Institution and more

Auction inventory will include the entire contents of the Gallery of Creation
Friday's Inventory will Include:

CONTENTS OF THE OLD CURATOR'S OFFICE, INCLUDING:
• gingerbread kitchen clock
• carved and decorated hippo teeth
• onyx
• sabre tooth cast replica
• framed prints
• telegraph equipment
• authentic skulls
• mahogany hand-carved Chinese display case
• MUCH MORE!

FOSSILS FROM AROUND THE WORLD, INCLUDING:
• authentic mammoth teeth
• leaves fossils
• 3-pc dinosaur fossil
• wooly mammoth hair
• MUCH MORE

PLUS>>>
• animated elephant display
• urns
• rodochrosite of Argentina
• display cases
• staurlite crystal stone collection
• heart shaped gems
• dinosaur replicas
• crystal quartz
• obsidian collection
• amber
• malachite collection
• mummified cat from Egypt
• variety of minerals and stones
• pyrite collection
• micah
• animated pandas and display case
• mammals and sea life display cases
• oils on canvas
MUCH MUCH MORE!
To find out more about the particulars of this auction, including full list of inventory, visit the Higgenbotham Auctionhouse website by clicking here. And yes, online bidding will be available! You can find out more about "The Gallery of Creation: A Museum of Natural History" by clicking here. To find out more about the still thriving Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky click here. All images from the museum website and the auction house website.

Monday, June 7, 2010

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


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)"