These anatomical teeshirts are just a few of the many from Wataru Yoshida‘s collection. He is an illustration and graphic design major at Tama Art University and has a great eye for detail.  Check out this link that describes these teeshirts in more detail.

The motive for the series of illustrations, “Body”, is to show the complex and interesting structure of the human body. When incorporating the concept of humans as a theme, we come to see the body’s physical features as more intriguing than the psychological. The drawings were made with very fine lines, matching the minute tissues of our bodies. Each illustration required a lot of time as it evolved. As every drawing began, Wataru followed his inspiration and instinct, allowing the design to emerge during his creative process.

And if you like these, there’s also a cool series of illustrations on his site called  Composition of Mammals!

For your Monday morning, I bring you, children, x-rays, and clubbing skeletons. Yet another crazy style added to the repertoire of Chemical Brothers music videos.  Who remembers the genius of the Star Guitar video?

[spotted by Roberto]

Kevin Tong’s 18×24 print, “My Tetris Heart Longs For Your Push” will be on display as part of Gallery 1988‘s video game themed show, “Multiplayer”. Gallery 1988 is located in Venice, CA and the show opens January 15. Prints will be sold exclusively there and this particular piece is limited to 100 prints.

Tong says about the piece: Finally, I have combined girls AND Tetris.

I have to say, this may be one of the most beautiful renditions of a human heart I have seen.

[via Super Punch]

Cool-looking ad for Pepsi Max by Victor Sokolov!  This was 1 of 3 posters created and placed in high schools all over Russia.  The campaign picked up the Silver Epica award (2010) as well.  The copy reads, Don’t let anatomy put you to sleep.

See the full campaign here on Behance!

Louis Mantin was an aesthete and gentleman of leisure who bequeathed his opulent home to the town of Moulins on condition that a century later it be a museum.

After he died in 1905, the mansion was closed up and fell into dilapidation. Now...it has been returned to its original pristine state.

The result is a remarkable time-capsule, combining rich fin-de-siecle furnishings, archaeological curios, skulls and other Masonic paraphernalia, a collection of stuffed birds, as well as the latest domestic gadgets such as electricity and a flushing loo.

19th Century aesthete and gentleman of leisure Louis Mantin willed his mansion--complete with a private museum of art, archaeological and natural historical specimens--to the people of Moulins, to be opened as a museum 100 years after his death. Now, 106 years after his death in 1905--and after a 3.5m euro refit funded by local authorities--the home of this real life Des Esseintes been returned to its original pristine state and is, per Monsieur Mantin's wishes, open to the public.

"In the will," explains Maud Leyoudec, assistant curator of the collection, Mantin "says that he wants the people of Moulins in 100 years time to be able to see what was the life of a cultured gentleman of his day. A bachelor with no children, he was obsessed with death and the passage of time. It was his way of becoming eternal."

Text, video and story from yesterday's BBC. Click here to read the full story and take a video tour. You can find out more (if you read French!) here.

Via Eleanor Crook and Chantal Pollier.

Now up in Florence, Italy through February 12, 2011: a number of waxes and preparations from the amazing and elusive museum of the Institute of Pathological Anatomy; See images and video tour above to get a sense of what this collection has to offer.

More, from the Tuscan Traveler website:

For those visiting or living in Florence, only a short time is left to experience one of the most unique and wonderful exhibits for those interested in either the art of wax modeling or the science of medical-surgical pathology practiced in the 1800s.

The free exhibit, called Oltre il Corpo, L’uomo (Besides the Body, the Man), will end February 12, 2011.

...Whereas the anatomical wax models at [such museums as] Museo La Specola show the body in its perfect and healthy state, the creations at the Pathology Museum, from which curator Elisabetta Susani selected prime examples for Oltre il Corpo, L’uomo, are sometimes shocking representations of diseases that were treated in the 1800s. One of the most interesting is a the wax model side by side with the skeleton of a child with an incurable case of hydrocephalus...

The Pathology Museum was created in 1824 at the hospital of Santa Maria Nuova, built in 1288 by the father of Dante’s muse Beatrice. It wasn’t until 1742 when there was a move to create a medical academy to formalize the sharing of information among doctors and scientists.

It took another eighty years to establish the Florentine Medical-Physical Society. One of the first acts of the Society was to set up a Pathological Museum. It was not a museum for the public, but rather a repository for information about the pathology and medical-surgical treatment of diseases...

Due to the difficulty of ensuring correct conservation of the pathological materials, it was decided to have some duplicates fabricated in wax. The Museum’s model-makers studied the techniques practiced in the other wax-modeling laboratory in Florence, La Specola.

Surprisingly realistic models were fabricated, providing a fascinating glimpse of the major pathologies in the 19th century. The collection of anatomical wax figures includes numerous wax reproductions, mainly the work of Giuseppe Ricci, Luigi Calamai and Egisto Tortori.

A remarkable example of symbiosis between science and art, the wax models were important, above all, for their value in teaching, allowing professors to illustrate the most important diseases to future physicians without having to depend the dissection of cadavers or the preservation of diseased organs....

Osservatorio dei Saperi e delle Arti (OSA)
Open: Monday – Friday 10am – 5pm, Saturday 10am – 1pm (Free)
Ends: February 12, 2011
Address: Largo Brambilla 3, New Entrance of Careggi Hospital

Click here to read the full story and see more images. Images and video above drawn from the Tuscan Traveler website.

If you are free tomorrow night, why not come down to Observatory to take in a talk with James Walsh, artist behind the current exhibition The Arctic Plants of New York City, for a discussion about collecting, botanicals, and the artistic process?

Full details follow; very much hope to see you there.

An artist’s talk with writer and artist James Walsh
Date: Tuesday, January 18
Time: 8:00
Admission: $5

Artist and writer James Walsh will talk about the making of his current installation, The Arctic Plants of New York City, and its place in his larger project of discovering the surprising number of plants that are common to both New York City and the arctic. As an introduction to the project and a demonstration of how it evolved, Walsh will read selections from a series of letters he wrote to friend while his plans for the project were just beginning to form. After that, he will speak a little about how the plants, texts, and images he collected were distilled down into the present installation.

You can find out more about this event on the Observatory website by clicking here and can can access the event on Facebook 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: Pressed Trifolium repens, or White Clover, by James Walsh

Some of you might remember Morbid Anatomy's coverage of last year's wonderful and amazing Congress for Curious People. I am now in the process of co-organizing this year's Congress, which will also serve as the launch event for my new exhibition at the Coney Island Museum entitled The Great Coney Island Spectacularium.

For this year's 10-day Congress--which begins on April 8 and ends on April 17th, 2011--Coney Island USA is keen to add a kind of arts, crafts, and curiosities fair featuring all things uncanny, unusual, or sideshow related.

Below is the official call for vendors. Please feel free to pass this along to interested parties:

The Congress of Curious Peoples is seeking unusual vendors for it’s Colonnade of Curiosities. April 8-17. High end, low brow and things in between. But your products must be interesting. Art, Jewelery, sideshow related items, the strange, the bizarre and the macabre...

Please email: congressvendors@gmail.com with a full description of your work and a link to a website and or photos. Due to the many submissions and limited space, we will contact only those we are considering.

To find out more, or if you would like to submit work, please email: congressvendors@gmail.com. To find out more about last year's Congress, click here; to find out about The Great Coney Island Spectacularium, click here.

Image: From Obscura Antiques and Oddities

You’d better believe that my child will have this Animal Magic wallpaper in their room.

Animal Magic explores children’s fascination with the macabre in a light-hearted way by presenting a slightly sinister side of the traditional, benign family pet. We’ve printed the pet’s skeleton on top of its silhouette in a varnish of the same color. This means it shouldn’t show at night – so it’s not too scary when the lights are out. But it catches the light during the day when all the spooks are gone. So the children’s interest in the dark and scary can be indulged in an intriguing and still be beautiful way.

Designed by Paperboy and available at Wallpaper Collective for $185 per roll.

[via YoungandBrilliant]

Looking for other anatomically themed products?  Check out the recently opened Street Anatomy gallery store!

"Electoral College"

Nicholas Allanach is a New York City based artist and writer, originally hailing from Maine. He has lived in New York for eight years. Much of Allanach’s work showcases distorted bodies or bodies manipulated by their environments and situations. He is also a friend of mine and so I took advantage and asked him some questions about his work and specific pieces. I asked him if he was conscious of his use of the human body in so much of his work.

Allanach:

I have always been intrigued by the way the body (specifically the face) is represented in art. Oftentimes, I think the body or face in art can be positioned or expressed in a certain way to express a deeper feeling or idea about the human condition as it adjusts and behaves in the changing world and environment. For me, much of my work expressed my feelings about technology or our humanity as it confronts forces of commodification, simulation, and surveillance. I try to exaggerate parts of the body.

Allanach saw the above image, “Electoral College”, in a dream after the 2000 election. About it, he says:

I [aslo] felt as though the expressions of pain and frustration on the faces illustrate how many felt about the dismantling of our democracy.

"Plush"

About “Plush”:

My first thought was to show humans as insectile. I then thought of how we consume the world around us through the senses that make up our face. I wanted this piece to celebrate the human senses. I also wanted it to make the viewer feel slightly uncomfortable in that it expresses the secondary nature of sex, which is not much for procreation, but stimulation.

"Subtractor Negative 2.0"

“Subtractor Negative 2.0″:

I wanted to express my feelings on how I believe our thoughts and lives are often erased or totally spent in service to larger codes and ideas. The emphasis on the eye communicates how we receive and process this world of codes. The image of the fetus as a skeleton in the top half of the circle is meant to illustrate how our lives are in service to these codes our entire life, from birth to death.

You can see more of Allanach’s work on his blog, New World Image.

Body voyaging through anatomical history this Monday at Observatory! Full details follow; hope to see you there.

An illustrated lecture with Kristen Ann Ehrenberger
Date: Monday, January 17th
Time: 8:00 PM
Admission: $5

We human beings have a seemingly insatiable desire to experience the bodies underneath our skins. While many scholars have treated the subject of looking into or through bodies via medical imaging, one perhaps understudied trope is that of “body voyaging.” A few writers and artists have imagined what it would be like to travel inside a body, to be a searching body in a body as landscape. This presentation will use images and text from a few more and less well-known 20th and 21st-century “fantastic voyages” to ask questions like, Is the purpose of such “biotourism” to make these spaces foreign or familiar? What kinds of relationships between our bodies and ourselves are being promoted? And perhaps most pressing of all, could you really do that?

Kristen Ann Ehrenberger is a Doctoral Candidate in History and a Third-Year Medical Student at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her primary research interests lie in the creation and circulation of scientific and medical knowledge in professional and lay communities, but she has also used her interdisciplinary proclivities to develop a theory of memory consolidation with some neuroscientists and an anthropologist (MIT Press, forthcoming). She is currently living in Dresden and researching her Dissertation, “The Politics of the Table: Nutrition and the Volkskörper in Saxon Germany, 1900-1933? with the support of a Travel Grant from the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD). She is thrilled Observatory has given her the opportunity to try out this project on an audience of the enthusiastic and curious.

You can find out more about this event on the Observatory website by clicking here and can can access the event on Facebook 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: From Heumann Heilmittel, “Eine Reise durch den menschlichen Körper” (1941)

Every good street anatomist has their fair share of science related fashion. I myself have a nice collection of Threadless tees, but now I’m thinking it’s time to upgrade to some even cooler duds.

1. This may be a sweater for boys, but how many people are hoping this Fair Isle inspired sweater will fit them? Gap never looked so cool. $44.50.
2. This “Guts” tshirt shows off an appreciation for what’s really inside you. Available in a variety of colors in cuts for both men and women. $21.90-24.90.
3. The skirt just sold out, but I had to include it because I want it so badly. Made from crocheted skulls, it’s subtle and feminine with a bit of an edge.
4. Alexander McQueen certainly loved anatomy in fashion (I can guarantee they continue the trend in the fashion house). These 5” peep-toes are no exception; and with snakeskin no less! $647.
5. This “Black Ribs” bodysuit would make workouts or lounging more awesome than ever. Available in black or white. $85.

Here’s a nicely executed campaign for Splash Drinking Water by Azizuddin Khusro.  The tagline reads: Replenish your body.

[via Behance]

These crafty images were made by Jung von Matt for an advertising campaign for Gesellschaft für bedrohte Völker. The message is a strong one— every 43 seconds someone dies from gun violence. The grenade may be the only slightly out of place image among the other guns, but violence is violence, and these images are a skillful representation of it’s consequences.

[via bldgwlf]

Correction: These images were originally created by artist, Francois Robert for his Stop the Violence series.  The independent advertising agency, Jung von Matt (Jvm), created the advertising campaign.  Thanks to Jamie for giving the correct credit.

Next Tuesday at Observatory! Hope to see you there.

A Brief Introduction to Haitian Voodoo
An illustrated lecture by photographers Stephanie Keith and Shannon Taggart
Date: Tuesday, January 11
Time: 8:00
Admission: $5
**Copies of Stephanie Keith’s new book Vodou Brooklyn: Five Ceremonies with Mambo Marie Carmel will also be available for sale and signing

Voodoo is a religion that merges West African traditions and Roman Catholic Christianity. Created by African slaves brought to the Americas in the 16th century, today its various forms are practiced by over 60 million people worldwide. The purpose of Voodoo ceremony for its practitioners is to make direct contact with the metaphysical realm of the universe by allowing human beings to interact with a pantheon of gods and spirits via spiritual possession.

Photographers Stephanie Keith and Shannon Taggart have long been documenting Voodoo ceremonies within the Haitian community of Brooklyn, New York. Tonight, the two photographers will present a general introduction to Voodoo. Over the course of the this illustrated lecture, they will show historical imagery and discuss the myths of Voodoo generated by sensationalist tales, Hollywood movies and popular culture; they will also introduce us to the major Spirits in the pantheon, describing their historical qualities and elucidating their individual personalities and preferences. In addition, they will share samples of their own haunting work documenting this fascinating and largely misunderstood religion.

Stephanie Keith received an Anthropology degree from Stanford University in 1988, and began her photography career after earning a Master’s in photography from New York University in 2003. She has worked for newspapers such as the New York Times, USA Today, the Wall Street Journal, the Christian Science Monitor, and the NY Daily News. Her interest in religion and pop culture has resulted in two previous projects: “Jesus Rocks” about Christian teen rockers and “Prime Time Ramadan” about the importance of Egyptian Soap Operas for the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. For the past four years, she has been documenting immigrant life in New York City focusing on Haitian Vodou ceremonies performed in Brooklyn. Her latest series about Vodou in Brooklyn has been exhibited in at the Brooklyn Historical Society, the Brooklyn Public Library, the Safe-T Gallery in Brooklyn, the Caribbean Cultural Center in Manhattan, published in the Village Voice and developed into an audio slide show for American Public Media’s “Speaking of Faith” program. The Caribbean Studies Press has just published her photos about Vodou as a book, entitled: Vodou Brooklyn: Five Ceremonies with Mambo Marie. For more about Stephanie Keith, visit http://www.stephaniekeith.com.

Shannon Taggart is a freelance photographer based in Brooklyn, New York. She received her BFA in Applied Photography from the Rochester Institute of Technology. Her images have appeared in numerous publications including Blind Spot, Tokion, TIME and Newsweek. Her work has been recognized by the Inge Morath Foundation, American Photography, the International Photography Awards, Photo District News and the Alexia Foundation for World Peace, among others. Her photographs have been shown at Photoworks in Brighton, England, The Photographic Resource Center in Boston, Redux Pictures in New York, the Stephen Cohen Gallery in Los Angeles and at FotoFest 2010 in Houston. Her essay Basement Voodoo was recently published as a feature in Yvi Magazine. For more about Shannon Taggart, visit http://www.shannontaggart.com.

You can find out more about this event on the Observatory website by clicking here and can can access the event on Facebook 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.

Top Image: Stephanie Keith; Bottom Image: Shannon Taggart

Please join Morbid Anatomy for a night of burlesque at Observatory this Thursday, January 13th!

Full details follow; hope to see you there.

Burlesque: Exotic Dancers of the 1950s and 60s
An illustrated lecture and book signing by director, collector and author Judson Rosebush
Date: Thursday, January 13 Time: 8:00 Admission: $5
*Books will be available for sale and signing

Burlesque dominated the landscape of sexual performance throughout the 1950s and 1960s. Tonight, join collector, author, and director Judson Rosebush as he shares with us a brief illustrated history of the art form as explored in his new book Burlesque Exotic Dancers of the 50s & 60s. The book–which will be available for sale and signing–traces the history of Burlesque from its traditional forms through its transformation into go-go dancing in the 1960s. Included within are nearly 200 “booking photos”–publicity shots commissioned by the dancers and distributed to booking agents, managers, theaters, press, and fans–of 125 burlesque queens and belly dancing stars from the 1950s and 1960s including Crystal Blue, Bella Dona, Sunny Day, Dixie Evans, Lala Jazir and Dusty Summers among others.

Judson Rosebush is a director and producer of multimedia and computer animation projects in New York City and is well-known as a pioneer in computer graphics and animation. His screen credits include the original TRON, the feature documentary The Story of Computer Graphics, and hundreds of television commercials and documentaries. Rosebush is also the co-author of at least two seminal books in the field of computer graphics, Computer Graphics for Designers and Artists and The Computer Animator’s Technical Handbook. Throughout the 1990s he directed CD-ROM and multimedia products including Gahan Wilson’s Haunted House, The War in Vietnam (with the New York Times and CBS), and Issac Asimov’s Ultimate Robot, and multimedia products for places a diverse as the Whitney and the Internet. Rosebush’s interest in all things sexual is coupled with a developing classification scheme for sexual images and literature, and he has published widely on sexual media under the name The Mad Professor.

You can find out more about this event on the Observatory website by clicking here and can can access the event on Facebook 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.

Sorry folks. The snow won, and tonight's event--described below--is being postponed. Our sincere apologies, and new date to be posted very soon.

A: Head on B: Body: The Real Life Dr. Frankenstein
A screening and lecture with film-maker Jim Fields and Mike Lewi
Date: Friday, January 7th
Time: 8:00 PM
Admission: $5
Presented by Morbid Anatomy

In an eventful and successful career spanning 40 years, Dr. Robert White–pioneering neurosurgeon and Professor at Cleveland’s Case Western Reserve University–did many things. He participated in Nobel Prize-nominated work, published more than 700 scholarly articles, examined Vladimir Lenin’s preserved brain in Cold War Russia, founded Pope John Paul II’s Committee on Bioethics, went to mass daily, and raised 10 children. He also engaged in a series of horrifying and highly controversial experiments reminiscent of a B-Movie mad scientist, experiments which pushed the limits of medical ethics, infuriated the animal rights community, and questioned notions of identity, consciousness, and corporeality as well as mankind’s biblically-condoned dominion over the animal kingdom.

Tonight, join film-maker Jim Fields–best known for his 2003 documentary “End of the Century” about the legendary punk band The Ramones–and Mike Lewi for a screening of Fields’ short documentary about the life and work of this real-life Dr. Frankenstein whose chilling “full body transplants” truly seem the stuff of a B-Movie terror. Fields will introduce the film–which features a series of interviews with Dr. White discussing his controversial experiments–with an illustrated lecture contextualizing the doctor’s work within the history of “mad scientists” past and present, fictional and actual; scientists whose hubris drove them to go rogue by tampering with things perhaps best left alone.

Jim Fields made a few documentaries, one of which, “End of the Century: the Story of the Ramones” is particularly long. He’s currently a video journalist at Time Magazine and Time.com.

Mike Lewi is a filmmaker, event producer, and disc jockey.

You can find out more about this event on the Observatory website by clicking here and can can access the event on Facebook 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: Drawing by Dr. Harvey Cushing, early 20th Century, found on the Yale Medical Library website.

holiday, observatory, science, spectacle

Tonight at Observatory, snowstorm be damned . Hope to see you there!

A: Head on B: Body: The Real Life Dr. Frankenstein
A screening and lecture with film-maker Jim Fields and Mike Lewi
Date: Friday, January 7th
Time: 8:00 PM
Admission: $5
Presented by Morbid Anatomy

In an eventful and successful career spanning 40 years, Dr. Robert White–pioneering neurosurgeon and Professor at Cleveland’s Case Western Reserve University–did many things. He participated in Nobel Prize-nominated work, published more than 700 scholarly articles, examined Vladimir Lenin’s preserved brain in Cold War Russia, founded Pope John Paul II’s Committee on Bioethics, went to mass daily, and raised 10 children. He also engaged in a series of horrifying and highly controversial experiments reminiscent of a B-Movie mad scientist, experiments which pushed the limits of medical ethics, infuriated the animal rights community, and questioned notions of identity, consciousness, and corporeality as well as mankind’s biblically-condoned dominion over the animal kingdom.

Tonight, join film-maker Jim Fields–best known for his 2003 documentary “End of the Century” about the legendary punk band The Ramones–and Mike Lewi for a screening of Fields’ short documentary about the life and work of this real-life Dr. Frankenstein whose chilling “full body transplants” truly seem the stuff of a B-Movie terror. Fields will introduce the film–which features a series of interviews with Dr. White discussing his controversial experiments–with an illustrated lecture contextualizing the doctor’s work within the history of “mad scientists” past and present, fictional and actual; scientists whose hubris drove them to go rogue by tampering with things perhaps best left alone.

Jim Fields made a few documentaries, one of which, “End of the Century: the Story of the Ramones” is particularly long. He’s currently a video journalist at Time Magazine and Time.com.

Mike Lewi is a filmmaker, event producer, and disc jockey.

You can find out more about this event on the Observatory website by clicking here and can can access the event on Facebook 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: Drawing by Dr. Harvey Cushing, early 20th Century, found on the Yale Medical Library website.

As Street Anatomy nears the wise age of 4 years at the beginning of 2011, it is time to add yet another eccentric individual to the team.  I’d like to introduce New Jersey originated and Chicago-based, medical illustrator, designer, trendspotter, Jennifer von Glahn.

Jen is a fellow classmate of mine from UIC’s Biomedical Visualization Master’s program and a graduate from Case Western Reserve University.  She has the ability to spot some of the coolest anatomy related fashion, gadgets, products, and more.  Keep an eye out for her must have anatomy gift lists.  I guarantee you’ll be spending some cash because of this girl.

Beauty, brains, and talent—we couldn’t ask for much more here on Street Anatomy.

Welcome Jen!

On this, the 4th anniversary of Street Anatomy, we’re officially opening the Street Anatomy online gallery store! Most of the items for sale are from the Street Anatomy Group Gallery show, so for those of you who weren’t able to make it to the show, here’s your chance to own a piece of unique anatomical art.

The goal of the store is to help support artists who use anatomy in their work and showcase them to a community that is passionate about anatomy in art, medicine, and design.

Street Anatomy started 4 years ago as a small blog whose purpose was to teach the public about the field of medical illustration.  It quickly evolved into an exploration of the uses of anatomy in all types of art and today it showcases the use of anatomy in pop culture from all over the world.  The anatomy in pop culture trend has exploded over the last 4 years, so much so that even our team of 6 can barely keep up!

We look forward to 2011 and beyond with plans to do more Street Anatomy gallery shows across the U.S. and hopefully abroad.

Of course, we wouldn’t be anything without our dedicated audience and community and we extend a big thank you to everyone that’s supported us and what we do!

- The Street Anatomy team

For artists who are interested in selling their work through the Street Anatomy gallery store, please contact Vanessa Ruiz at vanessa@streetanatomy.com and Jennifer von Glahn at j.vonglahn@gmail.com.