Saturday, November 18, 2017

Anatomy by and for Artists

William Hogarth
Study of hipbone (ossia innominata)
related to vignette published in The Analysis of Beauty

1753
drawing
British Museum

William Hamilton
Anatomical study of the foot
ca. 1770-80
drawing
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Anonymous Italian artist
Anatomical sketches, and seated woman in classical dress
ca. 1500-1600
drawing
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

"In an untypical moment Freud accuses Leonardo of being unable to draw.  A drawing done in anatomical section of the sexual act is inaccurate.  What is more it is lacking in pleasure: the man's expression is one of disgust, the position is uncomfortable, the woman's breast is unbeautiful (she does not have a head).  The depiction is inaccurate, uncomfortable, undesirable and without desire.  It is also inverted: the man's head looks like that of a woman, and the feet are the wrong way around according to the plane of the picture  the man's foot pointing outwards where the woman's foot should be, and her foot in his place.  In fact, most of Freud's monograph on Leonardo is addressed to the artist's failure, that is, to the restrictions and limitations which Leonardo himself apparently experienced in relation to his potential achievement.  Freud takes failure very seriously, even when it refers to someone who, to the gaze of the outside world, represents the supreme form of artistic success.  But in this footnote on the sexual drawing, Freud goes beyond the brief of the largely psychobiographical forms of interpretation that he brings to Leonardo's case.  He relates – quite explicitly – a failure to depict the sexual act to bisexuality and to a problem of representational space. The uncertain sexual identity muddles the plane of the image so that the spectator does not know where she or he stands in relationship to the picture.  A confusion at the level of sexuality brings with it a disturbance of the visual field."

 Jacqueline Rose, from Sexuality in the Field of Vision (Verso, 1986) 

Hieronymus Böllmann after Carlo Cesi
Anatomical study of back and arms
1759
engraving
Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Hieronymus Böllmann after Carlo Cesi
Anatomical study of skinned male nude carrying sword and shield
1759
engraving
Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Anonymous artist after Peter Paul Rubens
Anatomical study of striding skinned male nude
ca. 1600-1620
drawing
British Museum

Paulus Pontius after Peter Paul Rubens
Three skinned men (illustration for Drawing Book)
ca. 1630
engraving
British Museum

Paulus Pontius after Peter Paul Rubens
Three skinned men (illustration for Drawing Book)
ca. 1630
engraving
British Museum

Anonymous Italian atist
Anatomical studies of the backs of two male figures
ca. 1600-1700
drawing
Morgan Library, New York

Domenico Beccafumi
Anatomical studies
before 1551
drawing
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Bartolomeo Torre
Anatomical studies of the muscles of the legs
ca. 1529-54
drawing
British Museum

Anonymous Italian artist
Anatomical studies of legs, and a horse's head
ca. 1525-50
drawing
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

follower of Bartolomeo Passarotti
Anatomical study of male lower torso and legs
ca. 1570
drawing
Princeton University Art Museum

Winslow Homer
Nude study with notes on anatomical proportions
ca. 1860
drawing
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum