Title: “mySkull”
artist: David Foox
medium: acrylic, krylon, on X-Ray (sealed with a kiss) mounted on custom hosital viewing light box
size: 14″ x 22″

Title: “myHeart II”
artist: David Foox
medium: acrylic, krylon, on X-Ray (sealed with a kiss) mounted on custom dentist viewing light box
size: 12″ x 12″

Two new works by artist and toy maker FOOX and titled “myHeart II” and “mySkull“.

FOOX has taken more X-Rays of himself including an MRI of his skull and all in the name of art. With a solo show “As Within So Without” at Lyons Weir (NY) June 25th through July 17th, FOOX needs all the X-Rays he can get. That’s why he has enlisted the help of yet to be disclosed notable persons.  Can’t wait to find out the identity of these “notable persons!”

Lyons Weir Gallery, New York
“As Within So Without” a Solo Show by David Foox
Curated by Rebecca Marshall
Opening Party: June 25th, 2010 (show through July 17th, 2010)

FOOX continues the awareness campaign promoting organ donation as a cause to help save lives. His ORGAN DONOR vinyl dolls were featured in Kidrobot, Munky King, Zeus Comics, Poptopia, Ultrapop, Super7, and a host of modern art museums. In this exhibition of recent works by David Foox, FOOX shows us his insides – and those of society’s notable and interesting characters. Without disclosing which famous characters’ insides will be painted, FOOX does give us these two sneak peak works recently completed in advance of the opening. Look for more of X-Ray vision by FOOX in the coming months. For more information on FOOX NYC events email Bea bnfoox@gmail.com

Home is Where the Heart Is, mixed media, by Ryan Hoge. Love the drips.

“The outdoor for your kids. The museum for their video games.”

Starting in 1939, Nazi henchmen and art dealers bought and stole thousands of paintings, sculptures, tapestries and other objects from private collections across Europe, then stockpiled them. Hitler helped draw up architectural plans, which megomaniacally grew to include a theater and an opera house, a hotel, a library and parade grounds. Photographs show him, pencil in hand, pondering plans and gazing raptly on the model for the site...

Just in time for International Museum Day (which was yesterday, actually!), a fascinating story in the New York Times which details the ill-fated story of Adolf Hitler's never-realized Führermuseum, an art gallery he planned to establish in his hometown of Linz, Austria.

The article details the surprising importance that collecting artworks and planning the architecture and minutia of a museum held for Hitler even up until the eve of his demise; it also traces the history of a series of intruiguing artifacts related to his pursuit: meticulous scrapbooks containing black and white photos of the projected Führermuseum's collection, scrapbooks which now function as a sort of "museum without walls" for this ill-fated museum that never was. The article also provocatively examines in what ways Hitler's projects of collecting and empire might have been linked.

The article explains:

It’s hard to overstate how seriously [Hitler] took the whole project. Art collecting obsessed him for years; his staff endured nightly soliloquies, Hitler droning on about art while Germany collapsed around him. He fussed even about how the rooms in the museum should be decorated.

And goes on to comment:

The jury is out over whether the 'disproportionate amount of time and energy,' as the head of the Allied art-looting investigation unit put it after the war, that Hitler demanded go to amassing art, diverted German resources from the war effort, hastening its end, or the reverse — whether Hitler’s obsession with Linz, and with collecting generally, in some measure motivated him to press on.

Full story follows; really fascinating stuff, and well worth a read!

Strange Trip for a Piece of Nazi Past
By MICHAEL KIMMELMAN

BERLIN — Robert Edsel, author of “The Monuments Men,” came to town the other day with a heavy album bound in green Moroccan leather. “Gemäldegalerie Linz XIII” was embossed on the spine. Inside were black-and-white photographs of mostly obscure 19th-century German paintings.

The album was one of the long-missing volumes cataloging the never-built Führermuseum in Linz, Austria, which Hitler envisioned someday rivaling Dresden and Munich. Starting in 1939, Nazi henchmen and art dealers bought and stole thousands of paintings, sculptures, tapestries and other objects from private collections across Europe, then stockpiled them. Hitler helped draw up architectural plans, which megomaniacally grew to include a theater and an opera house, a hotel, a library and parade grounds. Photographs show him, pencil in hand, pondering plans and gazing raptly on the model for the site.

“And so they are ever returning to us, the dead,” the German novelist W. G. Sebald wrote in “The Emigrants.” “At times they come back from the ice more than seven decades later and are found at the edge of the moraine, a few polished bones and a pair of hobnailed boots.” He was recalling a long-forgotten Alpine climber, whose remains a glacier in Switzerland suddenly released, 72 years after the man had gone missing.

But really Sebald was describing the past, which everywhere turns up unexpectedly, jolting us from our historical amnesia. A German publisher, Berliner Verlag, just released a book of photographs of postwar Berlin that had somehow languished in its archives. I know a man in Spain who has been accumulating long-forgotten photographs and other private relics from the war: a mesmerizing and mysterious stash of soldiers’ snapshots and letters, and documents scrawled with Hitler’s notes. The missing Linz album surfaced not long ago outside Cleveland, of all places. An 88-year-old veteran, John Pistone, who fought with Patton’s army, picked it up in 1945 while rummaging through the Berghof, Hitler’s retreat in the Bavarian Alps. Like other soldiers, he wanted a souvenir to prove he’d been there. He didn’t know, or particularly care, what the album was, and only learned its significance when a contractor installing a washer-dryer in his house noticed the volume on a shelf, hunted for information via the Internet, then called Mr. Edsel.

Mr. Edsel heads the Monuments Men Foundation for the Preservation of Art, an organization dedicated to preserving the legacy of the 350 or so Allied soldiers tasked with looking after cultural treasures in Europe. A 53-year-old, white-haired former oilman, Mr. Edsel isn’t the sort of person who takes no for an answer, and he persuaded Mr. Pistone to relinquish the volume to the German Historical Museum in Berlin , which has the other extant Linz albums. (This makes 20; 11 are still missing.)

Hitler was presented with the albums every Christmas and on his birthday. They featured reproductions of the latest art to go into the museum. The books were a virtual museum-in-waiting, a museum without walls. You imagine him cradling the bulky volumes, ogling bucolic scenes of a bygone German countryside now in ruins, imagining himself the next Medici.

It’s hard to overstate how seriously he took the whole project. Art collecting obsessed him for years; his staff endured nightly soliloquies, Hitler droning on about art while Germany collapsed around him. He fussed even about how the rooms in the museum should be decorated.

“I never bought the paintings that are in the collections that I built up over the years for my own benefit,” he took pains to write in his brief will, just before putting a pistol to his head, “but only for the establishment of a gallery in my hometown of Linz.”

A model of Linz had already been moved to the bunker in Berlin so it would be among the last things he saw.

Volume XIII, Mr. Pistone’s album, contains reproductions of 19th-century German and Austrian pictures, the art Hitler admired most. He may have bought some of these works with royalties from “Mein Kampf.” They’re mawkish idylls by painters largely obscure even to Germans and Austrians today. The best pictures are by Adolph von Menzel and Hans Makart, with whose early underappreciation Hitler perversely identified.

Time whitewashes evil, or not. Mr. Edsel expressed his opinion this week that more and more curios like Mr. Pistone’s album would surface now that the last surviving veterans are dying.

“Emotional value doesn’t transfer across generations,” is how he put it. “People don’t inherit passions.” One man’s private memento becomes another’s opportunity to sell something on eBay, notwithstanding that German and American authorities insist that artifacts like the Linz album are cultural property that shouldn’t be sold. Regardless, he meant that in the process of passing between generations, the object gains new life.

In a ceremony on Tuesday, Volume XIII was delivered to the German Historical Museum here, joining other Linz albums on display behind glass, like contaminated evidence. The jury is out over whether the “disproportionate amount of time and energy,” as the head of the Allied art-looting investigation unit put it after the war, that Hitler demanded go to amassing art, diverted German resources from the war effort, hastening its end, or the reverse — whether Hitler’s
obsession with Linz, and with collecting generally, in some measure motivated him to press on.

Historians can thrash that out. Meanwhile, there are the 11 unaccounted-for albums. Presumably they’re still out there, like Sebald’s polished bones.

You can view the full article by clicking here, and see the related slide-show--from which the above image, captioned "Hitler at work on plans for his museum in Linz, Austria," was drawn-- by clicking here.

This Monday, Morbid Anatomy presents at Observatory "Morbid Magicians, Demented Doctors, and Sinister Swamis: The Golden Age of the American Spook Show," an illustrated lecture by Shane Morton of the Atlanta Silver Scream Spook Show. As an added bonus, DJ Davin Kuntze has promised to play his beloved Victrola until the night ends or until he runs out of needles, whichever comes first. So as you can see, this is a night not-to-be-missed. Full details follow; hope to see you there!

Morbid Magicians, Demented Doctors, and Sinister Swamis: The Golden Age of the American Spook Show
An Illustrated lecture by Shane Morton of Atlanta’s Silver Scream Spook Show
Date: Monday, May 17
Time: 8:00 PM
Admission: $5

There was a time when morbid magicians, demented doctors, and sinister swamis ran wild over this country! Audiences packed in to witness live midnight performances of ghosts being conjured above their heads, raging gorillas grabbing women from their seats, and Frankenstein’s Monster stomping loose through darkened movie palaces! The 1930’s-50’s was the golden era of a now virtually lost performance art form. But what resonated with people then, remains powerful to us today. Find out all about the fascinating world of the great American spook show at tonight’s lecture, which will give your goose pimples goose pimples, and scare the yell out of you!

Shane Morton is an artist, performer and musician from Atlanta, Georgia. He runs the Silver Scream Spook Show, the only spook show to exist in over a generation. You can find out more about Morton and his work at http://wwww.silverscreamspookshow.com and http://www.myspace.com/silverscreamspookshow.

You can find out more about this 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. Click on image to see larger version.

Here’s a fun typographic poster for Go Font Ur Self showcase of typographic art in Australia. This reads “Ain’t the way it’s supposed to be”.  Check out more of the artist, Michele Angelo’s work right here!

[via Behance]

A mesmerizing stop-motion video of fine artist, illustrator, and pattern designer, Paul Alexander Thornton, drawing a skull over 2 days using only black and red pen.  Turn your speakers on for this one since the music adds to the mysterious and mesmerizing quality of the work.

[spotted by Tim]

On Sunday, July 18th, The Morbid Anatomy Library--along with our esteemed neighbors Proteus Gowanus, the Reanimation Library and Cabinet Magazine--will be having a book sale featuring books and overstock from our respective collections! The event is free and open to the public; Full details follow:

Morbid Anatomy Library, Proteus Gowanus, Reanimation Library and Cabinet Booksale
Date: Sunday, July 18, 2010
Time: 12–3 pm
Location: corner of Union and Nevins streets, Brooklyn (directions here)

A book sale featuring books and overstock from the collections of the Morbid Anatomy Library, Proteus Gowanus, the Reanimation Library, and Cabinet Magazine. Perhaps there will also be lemonade...

Hope very much to see you there!

Image: "The human body and the library as sources of knowledge", frontispiece of Tabulae Anatomicae, Early 18th cent., Johann Adam Kulmus; found via the National Library of Medicine's "Images from the History of Medicine;" Larger version found on Bibliodyssey's Flickr set. Featured on this recent post.

These body and product sculptures come from the unique mind of Joseph Barbaccia.  The cheese grater sort of made me vomit, but it’s still pretty striking to look at.  But you havvvve to check out some of the others which weren’t posted here…

Friend of Morbid Anatomy Todd Vladyka has just let me know about a rather exciting looking consortium taking place next week at the College of Surgeons (home of the Mütter Museum); highlights include an entire panel devoted to "The 'Art' of Anatomy and Other Collections," which will consist of a presentation devoted to the art of Joseph Maclise (as seen above), and two other presentations entitled "The Exquisite Cadaver and the Evolution of the Anatomic Theater"and "Constituting the Syphilitic Collector."

The opening lecture--"What Mark Twain Might Tell Us (And Ask Us) If He Could Join Us Tonight"--is free and open to the public; $25 for students or $50 for non-students will gain you admission to all the other events.

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

The Pennsylvania Medical Humanities Consortium
Through the Lens of Time: Perspectives on Medicine and Health Care
May 19 – 20, 2010

Events on Wednesday, May 19, 2010

2 – 4 p.m. Visit the Ars Medica Collection at the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s new Perelman Building (across from the Museum’s main building, corner of Pennsylvania and Fairmount Avenues); Hosted by Peter Barberie, PhD, The Brodsky Curator of Photographs

6:30 – 8:30 p.m. What Mark Twain Might Tell Us (And Ask Us) If He Could Join Us Tonight, K. Patrick Ober, MD, Professor of Internal Medicine and Associate Dean for Education, Wake Forest University School of Medicine, Winston-Salem, NC; author of Mark Twain and Medicine: Any Mummery Will Cure.

At the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, 19 South Twenty-Second Street (between Chestnut and Market Streets).

Wine-and-cheese reception to follow. This program is open to the public.

Events on Thursday, May 20, 2010

At The College of Physicians of Philadelphia, 19 South Twenty-Second Street

8 a.m. Breakfast – Mitchell Hall

8:30 a.m. Welcome
Rhonda L. Soricelli, MD – Chair, Program Committee
Paul C. Brucker, MD – President, College of Physicians of Philadelphia
Mary Ellen Glasgow, PhD, RN – Associate Dean, Drexel University College of Nursing & Health Professions

8:45–9:45 a.m. Opening Session – Mitchell Hall
The Medical/Healthcare Humanities: Where We Are; Where We’ve Been; Where We’re Going
Moderator: David H. Flood, PhD

• Humanism Versus Humanities in Medicine: An Historical Perspective, Jack Coulehan, MD, MPH
• Medical Humanism/Professionalism Teaching in a Community Hospital Since WWII, Victor Bressler, MD
• Disability, Medicine, and Representation: Integrating Disability Studies into Medical, Education and Practice, Rebecca Garden, PhD
• American Missionary Health Care Projects in the late Ottoman Empire: Civilization, Hygiene, and Salvation, Sylvia Önder, PhD

9:45–10:15 a.m. Discussion: Flood, Coulehan, Bressler, Garden and Önder

10:15 – 10:30 a.m. Morning break – Mitchell Hall

10:30 – 11:30 a.m. Concurrent sessions

1. Cholera and Its Representations – Mitchell Hall
Moderator: Steven J. Peitzman, MD

• Cholera, Commerce, and Contagion: Rediscovering Dr. Beck’s Report, Ashleigh R.Tuite, MHSc(c) and David N. Fisman, MD
• The Epidemic Behind the Veil: Cholera in Fiction, Film and History, Agnes A. Cardoni, PhD; Molly Bridger; Angel Fuller; and Casey Kelly

2. Impact of Illness and Disabilty – Gross Library
Moderator: Jennifer Patterson, DO(c)

• Home Sweet Home: The Impact of Poliomyelitis on the American Family, Richard J. Altenbaugh, PhD
• Casualties of the Spirit: The Transatlantic Origins of Post Traumatic Neuroses, Susan Epting, PhD(c)
• Turning a Blind Eye to the Rehabilitation Act: Meaningful Access and the Dollar Bill, Kenji Saito, MD/JD 2010(c)

3. The Medical Environment – Koop Room
Moderator: Todd Vladyka, DO

• The Anemic Narrative: Will the electronic health record reduce the patient narrative to a footnote?, Valerie Satkoske, MSW, PhD
• Gender Roles and the Changing Face of Medicine, Nina Singh, MD and Gabrielle Jones, PhD
• The Changing Public Image of the American Catholic Hospital, 1925 – Present, Barbra Mann Wall, PhD

11:45 a.m. – Concurrent sessions

12:45 p.m.

4. Exploring the Text – Koop Room
Moderator: Jack Truten, PhD

• Was Sherlock Holmes a Quack? Or, Why Arthur Conan Doyle’s Medical Stories Matter, Sylvia A. Pamboukian, PhD
• Reaching Back Through Time: Constructing Genealogies of the Not-Neurotypical in Illness, Narratives, Elizabeth A. Dolan, PhD
• Pathographies: Teaching Illness, Creating Theory, Karol Weaver, PhD and
• A Recovery Narrative, Jenny Traig’s Devils in the Details: Scenes from an Obsessive Girlhood, Sara Kern

5. Alternative Dimensions in Health Care – Gross Library
Moderator: Steven Rosenzweig, MD

• Cacao: From Ethnobotany to Translational Medicine, William J. Hurst, PhD
• Just Language: The Key to Bridging the Gap Between Physicians and Patients, Kathryn M. Ross, MBE, DMH(c)
• Historical Perspectives on Compensation in Human Subjects Research, Ilene Albala, JD/MBE(c)

6. On Stage and Screen – Mitchell Hall
Moderator: Joe Vander Veer, Jr., MD

• Dramatizing the Local History of Medicine: An Early 21st Century Perspective on the Yellow Fever Epidemic of the Late 19th Century, Robert J. Bonk, PhD
• Television’s Images of Health Practitioners and/or Health Care Institutions Through the Ages, Rosemary Mazanet, MD, PhD and Joseph Turow, PhD

12:45 – 1:45 p.m. Lunch with Performance – Mitchell Hall
My doc’s better than your doc: Medical advertising’s rinse and spin and the lost voice of Arthur Godfrey, Richard Donze, DO, MPH

2:00 - 3:00 p.m. Concurrent sessions

7. Narratives of Illness, Aging and Grief – Koop Room
Moderator: Kimberly Myers, PhD

• Listening to the Stories of Patients, David Biro, MD, PhD
• MY FATHER’S HEART: A Son’s Reckoning With the Legacy of Heart Disease, Steve McKee
• Imagining Death: Contemporary Grief Narratives, Kate Dean-Haidet, RN, MSN, MA, PhD(c)

8. The “Art” of Anatomy and Other Collections – Mitchell Hall
Moderator: Jan Goplerud, MD

• Joseph Maclise and the Anatomical Arts Tradition, Rebecca E. May, PhD
• The Exquisite Cadaver and the Evolution of the Anatomic Theater, Sherrilyn M. Sethi, MMH(c), DMH(c)
• Constituting the Syphilitic Collector, Elizabeth Lee, PhD

3:15 – 4:15 p.m. Closing Panel – Mitchell Hall
Moderator: Rhonda L. Soricelli, MD
The Virtual and the Real: Medical History at the 21st Century Mutter Museum, Robert Hicks, PhD; Anna Dhody, MA and Karie Youngdahl, BA

4:20 – 5:00 p.m. Wrap-up; future plans for consortium

Program Committee: Andrew Berns, PhD(c), David H. Flood, PhD, Jan Goplerud, MD, Steven J. Peitzman, MD, Rhonda L. Soricelli, MD (Chair), Joseph Vander Veer, Jr., MD and Todd Vladyka, DO.

This meeting is made possible through the generous support of T
he College of Physicians of Philadelphia’s Francis C. Wood Institute for the History of Medicine and Sections on Medicine and the Arts and Medical History and Drexel University’s College of Nursing & Health Professions and College of Medicine with additional support from the Department of History and Sociology of Science, University of Pennsylvania

Click here to find out more about this event; To register, please send an email to RLSoricelli@comcast.net no later than MAY14th midnight. Registration is mandatory for the symposium.

Image above, "Head and skull of malformed infants; conjoined twins, bilateral cleft lip and holoprosencephaly" from Joseph Maclise's book Surgical Anatomy, published in London in 1856. Click on image to see much larger version; Found on the N-66 Blog.

Thank a mother’s ovaries today with the new Ovary Plush, “Ova Acheiver” by the wonderfully creative forces at iHeartGuts!

There’s something so beautiful and intriguing about these paintings by Ivan Ebel.  They remind me of those clinical anatomy textbook diagrams, but so much more warm and human.  I can just envision the middle painting above covering a giant empty wall in the foyer of a hospital or modern doctor’s office.  Love it.

[via Sang Bleu]

Show your love to someone by giving them this hand-printed letterpress poster by Etsy artist rollandtumblepress. $25.00!  So sweeeeet.

Tonight! Evan Michelson on "The Saddest Object in the World," as experienced at this years Congress for Curious People.

Full details follow; hope to see you there!

The Saddest Object in the World
An Illustrated Meditation by Evan Michelson, Obscura Antiques and Oddities, Morbid Anatomy Library Scholar in residence
Date: TONIGHT! Friday, May 7th
Time: 8:00 PM
Admission: $5
Location: Observatory

“The Saddest Object in the World” is a meditation on one particular artifact; an exercise in Proustian involuntary memory, aesthetic critique, and philosophical bargaining.

Sometimes objects have consequences.

Evan Michelson is an antiques dealer, lecturer, accumulator and aesthete; she tirelessly indulges a lifelong pursuit of all things obscure and melancholy. She currently lives in another place and time.

You can find out more about this 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.

Wildfox Couture’s oversized skeleton sweatshirt can be yours for $108!  I like the irony of baggy bones!

Tonight! Michael Johns on all things Terror Management Theory! 8:00! Observatory!

Full details follow. Hope to see you there!

Experimenting with Death: An Introduction to Terror Management Theory
An Illustrated Lecture by Michael Johns, Former Assistant Professor of Psychology at the University of Wyoming
Date: Thursday, May 6
Time: 8:00 PM
Admission: $5
Presented by Morbid Anatomy

In his Pulitzer Prize-winning book, Denial of Death, cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker attempted to develop a unified theory of human behavior. He argued that it was the human capacity to grasp and contemplate our own mortality–and our need to suppress this knowledge–that was at the root of human culture and behavior, from genocide to altruism, religion to philosophy. Terror Management Theory (TMT) is a psychological theory directly based on Becker’s work, developed by a group of social psychologists interested in testing Becker’s assertions about death as a core motivator of human behavior. Over the last 25 years, psychologists in the North America, Europe and the Middle East have conducted hundreds of studies to test hypothesis derived from Becker’s work and the Terror Management Theory it inspired. This body of research compellingly supports Becker’s thesis and reveals the ways in which mortality salience influences behaviors ranging from aggression and stereotyping to creativity and sexuality. Using segments from the documentary “Flight from Death: The Quest for Immortality,” this lecture will introduce Terror Management Theory and discuss the often clever experiments that have been conducted to test its tenets.

Michael Johns is a social psychologist and works as a research scientist in the NYC Department of Health. He has published numerous research articles and book chapters on a variety of topics, including Terror Management Theory. Before moving to Brooklyn, Mike was an Assistant Professor of Psychology at the University of Wyoming.

You can find out more about this presentation here. For more on Ernest Becker's wonderful book Denial of Death, click here; for more on the film "Flight From Death - The Quest for Immortality," click here. You can get directions to Observatory--which is next door to the Morbid Anatomy Library--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.

Morbid Anatomy reader Gotthold is a long time collector of Fritz Kahn books and posters. He is currently selling two of his original posters (as pictured above) along with a "key booklet" as part of Sotheby's May 13 Vintage Posters Auction.

I asked Gotthold to tell me and the Morbid Anatomy readership a bit about this special collection he is actioning off in the hopes of helping it find a proper and loving home; here is his response:

Dear Morbid Anatomy readers:

I have been a keen reader of this blog since I discovered it about a year ago when searching for information on anatomical posters I bought for use in an art project.

My personal artistic fascination with death, pornography, science and religion has taken me on a strange and fascinating journey over the past year through the cavernous bookshop cellars of Vienna, the seedy sex shops of London’s Soho, and the wonderful Morbid Anatomy blog in search of new materials and ideas. In my search for materials to use for my work, I spend a seemingly senseless amount of time and money looking for rare, obscure, and interesting materials to use and take inspiration from. It was on one of these escapades when visiting Vienna that I first stumbled upon the wonderful works of Fritz Kahn whose unique mechanical anatomy illustrations have earned much attention on this very blog (recent posts here, here, and here).

Since this initial discovery, I have managed to amass an extensive collection of Fritz Kahn's books, all featuring his wonderful illustrations, and have also had the luck to acquire a few original posters, including the famed ‘Der Mensch als Industriepalast’ or 'Man as Industrial Palace' of 1926 as seen above, top; you can found out more about that piece here.

Conducting more commercially oriented research around these works, I stumbled upon Morbid Anatomy for the first time to read a post on a Christies ‘Anatomy as Art’ auction in New York where this poster sold for some $3,500. The financially conscious side of myself forced me to reluctantly get in touch with Christies in London regarding a sale. I was informed by their experts there was no specialist auction coming up anytime soon but that I could still consign the poster to a ‘Vintage Posters’ auction in May. I chose to sell the two posters and a ‘key’ booklet together as a lot; I still believe this is extremely unique, given that the key booklet acts as an index to the numerical and alphabetical indicators on the poster without which it is difficult to fully comprehend the intended meaning of the illustrations.

The marketing around this auction has been weak, and there isn’t much explanation of the uniqueness of the key booklet or even an image of the second poster in the lot (as seen above, bottom). When I looked at the other posters for sale at this the auction I realized that my item is out of place and I doubt that it will strike the right chord with the bidders.

I have still however decided to proceed with the auction, not in the least because I need the proceeds of this sale to help further my artistic pursuits. I therefore implore anyone who knows relevant collectors to spread the word about the auction, and encourage anyone who’s interested to bid on these items as they are impeccable (the nice thing about Christies auctions is that anyone can place bids from anywhere in the world online). You can see the lot on the auction website by clicking here.

So please, any and all of you medical art aficionados out there, check out (and bid on!) Gotthold's Sotheby's lot on May 13th; you can find out more about the lot by clicking here and more about the auction by clicking here. And yes, online/remote bidding is very much a possibility! Also, please feel free to forward this post to any interested parties!

If you are interested in learning more about Fritz Kahn and seeing more of his incredible work, I highly recommend the beautiful, lavishly illustrated book Fritz Kahn: Man Machine / Maschine Mensch, which comes complete with a frame-worthy poster-sized reproduction of ‘Der Mensch als Industriepalast’ ('Man as Industrial Palace'). Good stuff!

Christian Wilhelm Braune (July 17, 1831 Leipzig – April 29, 1892) was a German anatomist and professor of topographical anatomy at the University of Leipzig. He is known for his excellent lithographs regarding cross-sections of the human body, and his pioneer work in biomechanics. Braune was son-in-law to German physician Ernst Heinrich Weber (1795–1878).

Braune was inspired by the photographic work of French scientist Étienne-Jules Marey (1830–1904) regarding anatomical movement. Marey believed that movement was the most important of all human functions, which he described graphically for biological research in Du Mouvement Dans Les Functiorls Da La Vie (1892) and Le Mouvement (1894). This led the way for Braune's experimental, anatomical studies of the human gait, being published in the book Der Gang des Menschen. This study of the biomechanics of gait covered two transits of free walking and one transit of walking with a load. The methodology of gait analysis used by Braune is essentially the same used today.

Braune and his student, Otto Fischer (1861–1917) did research involving the position of the center of gravity in the human body and its various segments. By first determining the planes of the centers of gravity of the longitudinal, sagittal and frontal axes of a frozen human cadaver in a given position, and then dissecting the cadaver with a saw, they were able to establish the center of gravity of the body and its component parts. Braune and Fischer also did extensive work regarding the fundamentals of resistive forces that the muscles need to overcome during movement.

In unrelated investigative work, Braune had a decisive role in the publication of the musical pieces composed by Frederick the Great of Prussia.

Text via Wikipedia; image via Ars Anatomica.

Melissa Milgrom--author of Still Life: Adventures in Taxidermy and panelist at the recent Congress for Curious People--has just published a nice article about that undisputed king of Victorian anthropomorhic taxidermy, animal artist and museologoist Walter Potter; following is a brief excerpt:

Athletic toads? Rats gambling in a dollhouse of decadence? How about bespectacled gentlemen lobsters?

No, this isn’t Wes Anderson’s sequel to Fantastic Mr. Fox, but the work of English Victorian taxidermist Mr. Walter Potter. Potter was famous for his over-the-top anthropomorphic scenes—kittens at the tea table; guinea pigs playing cricket—which were displayed in his Museum of Curiosities from 1861 until 2003 when his wondrous collection was sold in a contentious auction, which I attended in Cornwall.

One of England’s oldest private museums, Potter’s belonged to the era of the amateur nature lover when museums were spirited jumbles, not the sober typologies they would become post-Darwin. Potter’s verged on the freakish: random, cluttered, crammed to the rafters with curios and oddities, weird accumulations and creatures that were stuffed, pickled, dissected, and deformed. And I was lucky, though it filled me with sadness, to wander through Potter’s crooked corridors on its very last day...

Had Potter attended the Great Expo (very likely) he would have seen among the taxidermy displays a comic depiction of Goethe’s fable Reinecke the Fox reenacted with semi-human foxes. Sounds childlike—and it was in the best, most passionate way—but in the days before irony anthropomorphism was a form of endearment (imagine Beatrix Potter, no relation). More so, the facial expressions were expertly manipulated, raising the taxidermic bar and inspiring followers.

Known as the Grotesque School, “mirth-provoking” characters were the equivalent of a blockbuster movie. Queen Victoria herself stopped to linger and laugh at a frog shaving another frog. And taxidermists began transforming all sorts of animals into tiny humans: crows playing violin, frogs doing the cancan, squirrels as Romeo. None were as ambitious as Mr. Walker Potter...

You can read the full article on the Wonders and Marvels blog by clicking here. You can find out more about Milgrom's Still Life--which contains a nice discussion of Potter and his work--by clicking here. If the life and work of Walter Potter is of interest, I also highly highly recommend that you check out the wonderful, lavishly-illustrated Walter Potter and his Museum of Curious Taxidermy, written by Congress for Curious People lecturer Pat Morris; you can do so by clicking here or by visiting Observatory (more on that here).

All images are of Walter Potter's work and are drawn from the wonderful Ravishing Beasts blog; you can see them in context by clicking here.