My newest research adventure came to being when I noticed that my favorite flap anatomies contained imagery found in Rosicrucian texts.

Temple of the Rosy Cross

So, this leads to all sorts of craziness. Check out Robert Fludd, Athanasius Kircher, and Michael Maier.

Thin Nimbus

Cool stuff HERE

The Etymology of the Genitals

from io9

Archaeologists v. Prop Skulls

via io9

`

pre-Columbian skull at the British Museum

And the Mitchell-Hedges skull in question:

Mummified Vampire Heart

From Propnomicon

Glassman

From MS-N

© Jaume Plensa
Glassman, 2004

Spaghetti on the Brain

And more HERE

From Jean-Luc Godard's Une Femme Mariée, 1964

from HERE

The Inspiration for Garbage Pail Kids

from HERE

from HERE

Men are always trying to steal that shit...

Can't get my head around these elongated skulls

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/05/elongated-peruvian-skulls_n_1322658.html

The Wishes of Ladies

(French ones at least):

Thanks to BM!

The Weird History of Albert Einstein's Pieces

USA Today quote: "The locations of some of Einstein's brain chunks are unknown, unfortunately."

ABC News quote: "[Dr. Thomas Harvey] removed Einstein’s eyeballs and gave them to Einstein’s eye doctor, Henry Adams. To this day, they remain in a safe deposit box in New York City."

And the Wikpedia article entitled "Albert Einstein's Brain" also mentions the fate of other so-called genius's brains.

Squids practicing phrenology/craniometry

Johann Kulmus's Japanified Anatomische Tabellen

(From Brainsinlove via The Study of Man) 

So Much More to Enjoy

I'm talking about THIS.


With things like this:

And this: 

Sylvie Guillem on the Art of the Body

Thank you to SS for sharing!

Don't Deracinate Me, Bro!

Super creepy mandrake root from the movie Pan's Labyrinth that TALKS.


"Since the Mandrake root looked human, it was said that it was alive and to take it from the earth was to tear it from its home. It would, therefore, give a terrible scream when pulled up. That scream was so terrible that it would drive insane the person who had tried to take it, or even kill with its shriek. There was, then, a special way in which one obtained a Mandrake. Needed were a hunting horn, a length of rope, a hungry dog, and a piece of meat. The Mandrake was said to grow beneath a gibber, feeding on the fat dripping from the hanged corpse. On the night of a full moon, the magician had to drop a noose of the rope over the Mandrake and then tie the other end to the dog's collar. He would then retire to a safe distance and throw down the piece of meat. The dog, being hungry, would lunge forward to get the meat, pulling on the rope and dragging the mandrake out of the soil. At that point the magician should blow loudly on the horn to drown out the sound of the plant's scream. The dog would hear the scream and drop dead, but the magician would have his mandrake!" 

-from The Mysterious Human-Shaped Mandrake Root 

19th- and 20th-Century Post-Mortem Photography

From The Thanatos Archive

Things Swallowed

From Ambrose Paré, On Monsters and Marvels

From the Mutter Museum

I Want Your Skulls

Skinned Supermodel

Balut, aka bird embryos for good eatin'

More Here.

Rembrandt's Polemical Erotica

While the first image seems to play on the previous era's Protestant propaganda--featuring a monk and a woman hiding perhaps not so discreetly in a cornfield with her sandals shaken off--the second is a scene widely interpreted as a depiction of Rembrandt with his mistress, Hendrickje Soeffels, who he lived with after the death of his wife and loved dearly.

Rembrandt, Monk in a Cornfield, c. 1646

Rembrandt, The Bed, c. 1646

The second print was also probably not meant for public view given not only the subject matter but also the fact that the woman has three hands. Look closely!

Lady Vanitas

Thanks, AS!

Flap Anatomy Conference Videos

For short summaries of each talk with links to the videos, click here.


Here is the intro:

How to Donate Your Body to Science

from The Guardian

Dry Bones

via Morbid Anatomy

Happy Halloween 2012

More Halloween Music Videos

For indie, here's Matt Pond PA:

For alt country, here's Ryan Adams:

For punk, here's some Misfits:

For classical, here's Mussorgsky's Night on Bald Mountain as visualized by Disney:

And for a romantic piece by Camille Saint-Saens redone by Bela Fleck:

Baron Samedi and the Story Behind Zombies

Baron Samedi

Artist Vero Navarro's website HERE

Great New York Times Story:

A Zombie Is a Slave Forever

By AMY WILENTZ

Happy Halloween from Emily Dickinson

'Tis so appalling -- it exhilarates by Emily Dickinson

'Tis so appalling -- it exhilarates --
So over Horror, it half Captivates --
The Soul stares after it, secure --
A Sepulchre, fears frost, no more --

To scan a Ghost, is faint --
But grappling, conquers it --
How easy, Torment, now --
Suspense kept sawing so --

The Truth, is Bald, and Cold --
But that will hold --
If any are not sure --
We show them -- prayer --
But we, who know,
Stop hoping, now --

Looking at Death, is Dying --
Just let go the Breath --
And not the pillow at your Cheek
So Slumbereth --

Others, Can wrestle --
Yours, is done --
And so of Woe, bleak dreaded -- come,
It sets the Fright at liberty --
And Terror's free --
Gay, Ghastly, Holiday!

Art History talk ending in "You know it's an orgy"

The World's Most Terrifying Penises

Episode 1: The Leopard Slug

Episode 2: The Echidna

Books Bound in Human Skin

Read about a few at Brown University.

And one at the Mutter Museum:

Morsels of History

From "From Cave Paintings to the Internet":


Foundation of the First Scientific Society in the Renaissance (1560 – 1578)

The Fallopian Tubes and Numerous Other Anatomical Discoveries


A Working Sixteenth Century Automaton of a Monk (Circa 1565)


The Aesthetic Anatomy of Human Proportion, 1528 (Dürer)

Erotic Images Made Acceptable by their Adaptation for Medical Purposes, 1545


AND SO MUCH MORE!

The History of Playing with the Self

From a 19th Century Persian manuscript. See at Wellcome's photostream here

Something similar can be seen in a Renaissance print by Marcantonio Raimondi of a woman with a similar penchant for carrots. (This can be seen in the book The Renaissance Print)

Phallus Impudicus

Yes, that is the actual Linnaean term for it. If you don't believe me, check the interwebs.

Thanks to RS.

Egyptian Body Parts Exhibition

At the Brooklyn Museum

Gross Bio-Cakes

Thanks for the heads up, D C-K!

And HK!

PA Treasures

Triceratops in downtown. 

Yes, that is an actual human skeleton.

Birthing Fake Monsters in Early Modern Germany

The following are excerpts from Alison Rowlands, "Monstrous Deception: Midwifery, Fraud, and Gender in Early Modern Rothenburg ob der Tauber" in Gender in Early Modern History, ed. Ulinka Rublack. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002: 71-101:

"Examples of the creatures it was thought possible a woman could give birth to in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries included a frog, a calf, a lobster and a monkey."

"[The midwife] referred to an unmarried woman from the city of Esslingen who had managed to convince people that her stomach was full of snakes, with the implication that she too had received gifts from onlookers as a result of her mysterious condition"
--
"The plan worked like this: Seitterin's dog had recently given birth to puppies, one of which had died and partially decomposed. Mullerin took its body home with her, fashioned it into something Seitterin later described as 'in the likelness of a little pig', then smuggled it back into Seitterin's room hidden in her basket. She instructed Seitterin to hold the manufactured monstrosity between her legs in front of the opening to her vagina and pretend to be in the throes of childbirth. She was them to summon her female neighbours and, on their arrival, to let the monstrosity fall from between her legs so that they would assume she had just given birth to it"
...
"Mullerin seems to have just pulled the head off the already half-decomposed puppy for the first birth, and skinned, disembowelled and chopped the heads off the next two puppies for births two and three."


Gross! And so wrong!

Put a Fig on That

Art history goodness HERE

Take Your Thinking Cap Off

Dickinson and Chemotherapy

In an article on the side effects of chemotherapy, Susan Gubar uses Emily Dickinson to explain one of the worst--anhedonia, 'the inability to experience pleasure from activities usually found enjoyable.'


I felt a Funeral, in my Brain (280)

I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,
And Mourners to and fro
Kept treading – treading – till it seemed
That Sense was breaking through –

And when they all were seated,
A Service, like a Drum –
Kept beating – beating – till I thought
My Mind was going numb –

And then I heard them lift a Box
And creak across my Soul
With those same Boots of Lead, again,
Then Space – began to toll,

As all the Heavens were a Bell,
And Being, but an Ear,
And I, and Silence, some strange Race
Wrecked, solitary, here –

And then a Plank in Reason, broke,
And I dropped down, and down –
And hit a World, at every plunge,
And Finished knowing – then –


© 2012, Academy of American Poets. All Rights Reserved

Alternate dissertation ideas:

"The Gravity of Color: Suspenders and the American Man in the Early 20th Century"

"Hair: How Madame de Pompadour Inspired American Taste, 1940-1970"

"Turdplay: Poop and German Art, 1400-1600"

"Bad Colour: The Urine Wheel and the Medieval Imagination"

"Sexy Saints: Theresa and Sebastian in Contemporary Art and Queer Theory"

More on Pee!

See a translation of an early early modern urine wheel here.