Last week we had (probably one of my favorite) an extremely interesting talk with Dr. Carin Berkowitz who spoke on the anatomy and how it relates to art. Dr. Berkowitz referenced and used works of art that incorporated anatomy, all works of Charles Bell. Through his art, Bell was able to incorporate the meticulous details of the human anatomy while using emotion to bring life to the organs. These pieces of art were all apart of a theme of the human body and its innate expressions through human emotion. A rare mixture of art and science that captures artistic beauty within anatomically accurate human organs.
After showcasing and explaining many of Bells’s works, Dr. Berkowitz switched focus to the comparison between the work of Bell’s and the work of Henry Gray. These two artists both depicted their essence of the human body through starkly different styles. Gray’s work lacked any semblance of emotion and chose to create his pieces as scientifically accurate as possible. Completely void of emotion or bias, what you see is what you get. Nonetheless each artist chose to focus on the human anatomy but diverged through their expression of art. Gray’s work focusing on accuracies and dehumanization, Bell adding more humanity through his inclusion of life and emotion. Medical school textbook that deal with accurate anatomies of the human body are more aligned with the works of Gray. The interesting use of anatomically correct pictures in textbooks work on two different levels. The academic level being the first, you need accurate images so future doctors and medical professionals are able to understand exactly what they are working with and what it looks like. However, this more prevalent style seems to focus only on the meticulous nature of the human body and treats it more like a piece of meat, no different from animals or plants seen in other scientific textbooks. In reality, the rational for the use of these accurate pictures is obvious. Only when compared to other works of art that gear their modes more towards emotion and life that is depicted in humans.
This lecture was different from most other lectures in that it represented a theme that we as Colby students are fortunate to realize. Colby, a liberal arts school, allows us to and even encourages us to take a plethora of courses that are in all different fields of study. These courses include science heavy courses as well as artistic courses that allow students to explore other forms of education. The importance of offering a curriculum that offers a multidisciplinary approach to education can make all the difference between a student following a hard discipline and exploring all different types of courses that allows the student to figure out what they actually have interest in.
I enjoyed hearing some of the questions from the audience, especially the question that was asked surrounding the ethics of using human bodies for science. Obviously this is for scientific purposes to improve our overall understanding of the human body and how it works. The response that was given was that medical professionals are taught to try to keep emotion out of their work because it complicates things further than they need to be. I think it is rather hard to keep human emotion out of your mind when you’re directly working with human bodies. Nonetheless i enjoyed this talk a lot and thought that it had some very important themes that would be useful for Colby students to hear.