Laocoön and Friends (including Darwin)

Great article on the enigma of Laocoön:

(Image from: http://www.edwud.com/2011/03/16/laocoon-sculpture-detail/)

I can't find it at the moment, but I do know Darwin himself had things to say about the Laocoön: one comment about its anatomical inaccuracy in the eyebrows, but I think there was more...

In his 1872 The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals, he thought terror looked more like this:

Darwin wrote:

Horror is generally accompanied by various gestures, which differ in different individuals. Judging from pictures, the whole body is often turned away or shrinks; or the arms are violently protruded as if to push away some dreadful object. The most frequent gesture, as far as can be inferred from the acting of persons who endeavour to express a vividly-imagined scene of horror, is the raising of both shoulders, with the bent arms pressed closely against the sides or chest. These movements are nearly the same with those commonly made when we feel very cold; and they are generally accompanied by a shudder, as well as by a deep expiration or inspiration, according as the chest happens at the time to be expanded or contracted. The sounds thus made are expressed by words like uh or ugh.²⁸ It is not, however, obvious why, when we feel cold or express a sense ofhorror, we press our bent arms against our bodies, raise our shoulders, and shudder. (Darwin, Expression, p. 307)

Unfortunately, that could easily be confused for something else, since what they did to elicit this emotion and the others and record it was to zap some poor guy's brain with electricity.

Welcome to the Wellcome

What's that you say, a cool blog post by yours truly ELSEWHERE?

Something borrowed something blue?

As many know, and many more do not, Catherine of Siena, in her mystic marriage to Christ, was given his circumcised foreskin as a wedding band.

For anyone that has read Leo Steinberg's Sexuality of Christ (where he must have mentioned this, but I don't have my copy here) this fits right in with his argument that eroticized images, particularly of the infant Jesus, bring attention to his genitals as a way of showing that he is flesh like any man.

Like the Eucharist, Christ's body is portrayed as a gift that communicates divine presence to the beholder.

But my question is, how small were her fingers?

Wax on

Great book on wax models and portraits. Not nearly as much anatomical stuff as expected from the cover, but still really interesting. The essays by Joan B. Landes and Lyle Massey are particularly full of the fun stuff.

Byssus, Sea Wool, Mermaid Silk

Never heard of it? Me neither, until now. It is the "beard" of a mussel--fibers that anchor it to a spot--but that were used for luxury textiles in the middle ages. When dried, it apparently looks like Donald Trump's hair:

Anatomy=Obscenity

That's how it went in England, and many other places:

http://jrsm.rsmjournals.com/content/99/12/618.full

Gliederpuppen!

From a German book on Durer and his influence in the arts

Collapsed Mannequin by Anthony Christian

What I Learned from the Slade Lectures, #2

"One man’s, or woman’s cuddly, if gigantic, doll is another’s adipose legless feline."

On the sajjana pictured above in two different Arabic manuscripts.

Fugitive sheets, in your little digital hands

via Morbid Anatomy

A sweet app from the awesome new exhibition Prints and the Pursuit of Knowledge in Early Modern Europe

A real page-turner from the Hardin Library in Iowa

Vivisection of books

Monsters, out from under your bed

The great monsters of Sir John Mandeville, the guy who said there were men with their heads in their chests, and so on.

And a great blog on monsters:

http://medievalmonsters.blogspot.com/2009/09/submissions-for-leeds-2010.html

Géricault taking out body parts "like library books" for artistic research

Great guest posting on Morbid Anatomy of the anatomical studies by Théodore Géricault for his famous painting Raft of the Medusa.

Buried for Love, Exhumed for Fame

The poems of Pre-Raphaelite Dante Gabriel Rossetti were buried with his young wife when she died of an opiate overdose, but six years later he retrieved them from the grave and published them, to much fanfare. From the TLS.

Hic Sunt Dracones

Commentary on Natalie Angier's "Woman: An Intimate Geography"

From:

The Many Colors of Urine

The Basic Info

Modern Day Take on the Urine Wheel

Craphound at it again with a great looking magazine

A great magazine for designers--an image source and a shining example of hilarious juxtapositions

Happy Valentine's Day!

An Electrifyingly Entertaining Story on Scientists and Love:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/blog/2012/feb/14/valentines-day-science-romance

And a sneak quote:

"Would you be impressed – to the point of submitting to a date – by a guy who could name all the phases of the menstrual cycle, in order?"

--

Someone give you a Broken Heart? Well, it can't be as bad as this:

http://thechirurgeonsapprentice.com/

--

Love letter by Henry VIII to Anne Boleyn, hidden in her Book of Hours:

from the British Library, published in The Guardian

As a chaser, more 18th-century anatomical waxworks

Clemente Susini

André Pierre Pinson, late 18th century

"Fetuses Dancing the Jig"

Honoré Fragonard, 18th century

And a giant, nasty head:

Honoré Fragonard, 18th century

Lee Miller, Woman of the Century

Lee Miller doesn't get nearly enough attention. She was a war photographer with no boundaries, a fashion model without shame (the first in a feminine napkin advertisement in teh 1920s), and a photographer who transcended Surrealism. Some photos below.

Head in a Bell Jar, Man Ray v. Lee Miller

Mastectomy Breast on a plate

Nazi Suicide

Lee Miller in Hitler's Bathtub after the Fall of the Third Reich

Anyone interested should read Carolyn Burke's biography of her, which is great except for the last chapter or so documenting her increasing sadness from loss of her youthful looks with age.

Christopher Columbus Visiting His Urologist

On the Conan O' Brien Show:

http://teamcoco.com/video/fan-correction-christopher-columbus

Scholarly Quote of the Day

Joachim Wtewael, Perseus and Andromeda, 1611, oil on canvas, Louvre, Paris

"Andromeda's feet are directed toward the observer, one of them poised beside a skull teething a thigh bone, the other lightly placed on a shell whose vibrant, seductive interior provides a startlingly direct route of entry into the figure, as if her concealed genitalia have been exposed in their displacement." -- from Joanna Woodall's article in Manifestations of Venus: Art and Sexuality

I'm not going to say anything about crazy cat ladies, but this is a really interesting article

Especially for people like me that still think Kuru is one the coolest things they learned about in high school.

Favorite quote:

“Is it possible cat urine may be an aphrodisiac for infected men?,” I ask. “Yes. It’s possible. Why not?”

--

And a classic article on neurological disorders caused by processing pig brains.

AND I QUOTE:

"You could see aerosolization of brain tissue"

What I learned from Blood and Guts:

There is a part in the Hippocratic Oath whereby the caregiver refuses to procure an abortion for a women (page 30-31)

Galen dissected an elephant's heart (page 33)

"Lily the Pink" was America's first millionairess, all due to her famous vegetable compound (page 46)

Gabriele Fallopio coined the term 'vagina' in 1561 (page 57)

Extra: 'vagina' comes from the Latin word for "sheath." Fallopio/Fallopius is also the guy who stuck his name on the Fallopian tubes, without actually identifying their purpose