This most recent lecture given by Dr. Carin Berkowitz was extremely interesting in the context of this course and might have been my favorite lecture in this series to date. I think it was the uniqueness of the topic that made it so interesting for me but it is undeniable that the pure beauty of some of these works of art also swayed me to favor this lecture more. It was particularly interesting because it is an area of study that I would never have correlated with artwork necessarily on my own, but I quickly realized this is just my own lack of knowledge making me think that way. Our bodies really are works of art in themselves and it is the slight differences between each and every one of us that makes us all so beautiful.
It is clear from this lecture that Sir Charles Bell would’ve agreed with me wholeheartedly that each and every body is unique and beautiful. That is why he took such care to show unnecessary details in locations not even related to the bodily system he was portraying. It is also clear by the many various types of artistic work he did for anatomy including wax models, sketches, paintings and much more. I honestly couldn’t help but be taken aback by how gorgeous some of the artwork was, and because of this I couldn’t help but think about how I might be able to obtain some of these works of art. I definitely don’t have a lot of money to spend on some relic or artifact but I would absolutely love to be able to obtain a digital copy of some of these images if at all possible.
Aside from my own personal interest in the beautiful work Charles Bell put out into the world, this topic was extremely interesting in the context of this course for a multitude of reasons. The first being the clear connection his work has to modern medicine. Dr. Berkowitz mentioned how the visual arts are becoming increasingly relevant for major medical schools including large elite schools such as Yale. Another connection is through the representation of humans as one whole species. To clarify, I am referencing the question and answer discussion at the end of the lecture when a discussion about race was brought up. I thought this was a particularly interesting topic because one or two of the anatomical pieces by Bell that Dr. Berkowitz showed us depicted African American’s. During a time where slavery was an institution still in place and many saw African American’s as lesser, this seemed groundbreaking to consider. However, as we learned in the discussion from Dr. Berkowitz, it is hard to tell the significance of this because of how scarce the supplies for anatomical drawings were. During a time where religion was also much more commonplace than in our contemporary age, many people did not want them or their family members being cut open and used for science. This means often the bodies being depicted in Bell’s artwork were simply those who weren’t able to prevent it from happening. Despite this fact, there is no denying that Bell gave each and every person the depiction they rightfully deserved in the afterlife by taking so much time and care to make each drawing and depiction stunning. It is also clear that his work was way ahead of his time and he understood the mechanics of the body extremely well. This clearly implies that these visual conceptions of the body are of paramount importance for the field of medicine and makes it clear why medicine and visual arts should be intertwined as we move forward as humans.