Portfolio: 'The Band'

acrylic, 16.5" x 24.5"

Portfolio: 'Treatise on the Heart'

mixed media, 16.5" x 24.5"

Art Girl encounters fascist dictator disguised as painting teacher

Every Monday at 5:15 p.m. I lug my bright red portfolio and bulging bag of acrylic paints onto the metro and make my way to the Sorbonne's art building. Forty five minutes later, usually disgruntled and undoubtedly disheveled, I arrive in the painting studio. It's a tall room with unfinished walls, large tables and several sinks. When you enter the room two things will catch your attention right away — the presence of a nude in the corner, posing languidly on one of the painting tables, and the heavy scent of oil paint on oil paint on oil paint. While I am positive the french stance on nudity is more lenient than in America, I am also quite sure their stance on ventilation is equally relaxed.

There are around twelve students in my class, give or take the three breaking for a cigarette in front of the building at any one time. The teacher, Monsieur Dulom, is a man in his fifties, with longish dark brown hair, perfectly round black-framed glasses, and a clinically strong aversion to saying anything positive about any one's art.

In fact, never in my life have I encountered such a critical art teacher. For three hours he holds his hand behinds his back and saunters from one student to the next. The room is silent, but for the quiet swish of brush strokes, and Monsieur Dulom's low voice.

"Degoutant," he says, after looking at my painting for several minutes. "Les coleurs sont degoutant." (Translation: disgusting, your colors are disgusting). He then slips into a five minute description of the problem, gesturing with his arms, weilding grand metaphors. This is where my already lose grasp on understanding french loses complete hold...I watch him with big eyes, follow his hands as he waves them from the ceiling to a particular spot on my painting. His voice rises and falls, he sits, he stands. Then the room falls silent again. "Tu comprends?" he asks."Oui, merci," I say, in fact understanding little except that he is most definitely not pleased. I do however understand what he says to the next student, someone I consider to be cranking out Michelangelo-caliber portraits on a regular basis. "Ah, c'est la merde," Dulom says. This is shit.

The first day of class I was proudly setting out my new french art supplies — a big pad of acrylic paper, large tubes of acrylic paint, my pack of sleek new brushes and a pallet knife — when Monsieur Dulom strutted over.

"Qu'est ce que ce?" he asked as he rubbed a piece of my canvas paper between his two fingers.

"Uhhh...papier?" I replied. He pulled his glasses down to the tip of his noise and peered at me with a look of deep disdain.

"Do you know of any famous artists who painted on canvas paper?" he asked me, in french. I nodded no. "That's because there aren't any," he said. "This may be easy to carry on the subway, but you need to buy better materials, you need canvas." Before he turned he pulled his glasses back up his nose and said "If you don't take yourself seriously, no one else will."

In other words, welcome to painting class.

Portfolio: 'Le Peinture'

acrylic, 16.5" x 24.5"

Portfolio: 'Le Cafe'

acrylic, 16.5" x 24.5"

Art Embodied: anatomical drawing 1

mixed media, 16.5" x 23.4"

This anatomical drawing corresponds to my first two weeks of study focusing on the eras of the Ancient Egyptians and Classical Antiquity.

I decided to focus on the Ancient Egyptians, because I had been surprised by the intricacy of their anatomical understanding, and their singular yet logical way of explaining how the body works. The inspiration for this piece comes from the Ebers Papyrus, one of the main Ancient Egyptian medical papyrus scrolls written around 1500 B.C. The 110 page scroll contains medical remedies, as well as explanations of select aspects of human anatomy, such as the "Treatise on the Heart" section. Feel free to check out the University of Chicago translation of the papyrus here.

To create this piece I focused on the "Treatise on the Heart" (located in Chapter XX of the translated version). On page 129 the translation reads: 

In the Heart are the vessels to the whole of the body...there are four vessels to the nostrils, two of which convey mucus and two blood. There are four vessels in the inside of either Temple...when the breath goes into the Nose and makes its way to the Heart and Intestines, and the last-named vessels give to the body richly thereof... 

Based on this treatise, I created a diagrammatic representation of the human body and its vessels. I used Ancient Egyptian wall drawings as references for the two figures. In the background I recreated some of the heiroglyphs on the actual Ebers Papyrus. The two red hearts are emphasized in the piece, as the Ancient Egyptians believed the heart was not only the "centre of the vessels to all the limbs" but also the source of thoughts and the home of the human soul.

Art Embodied: classical antiquity

During week two of my independent study project 'Art Embodied' I have been studying the era of classical antiquity. This post focuses on what the Greeks and Romans knew about anatomy, and how this knowledge is illustrated in their depictions of the human figure. First some sketches, from my time spent geeking out in the Louvre this week:

During the time of the Greeks anatomy emerged as a scientific field of study. Herophilus, a Greek anatomist born in 335 BC spearheaded anatomy studies during his time, and is known as the 'Father of Anatomy'. A medical professional himself, Herophilus believed a solid understanding of the human body was of prime importance to Greek society, as illustrated by the quote below.

"Wisdom is indemonstrable, art uncertain, strength powerless, wealth useless and speech impotent if health be absent" —Herophilus

Unfortunately, Herophilus' record is not totally clean, as he has been accused of vivisection (live dissection) of condemned criminals passed on to him by the rulers of Alexandria. Despite this semi-sketchy resume, Herophilus is considered the first to systematically dissect the human body, and the first to perform an autopsy with the goal of learning about disease. Human dissection was regarded as desecration of the human body at the time, so Herophilus' work was considered taboo. In fact, after Herophilus, systematic human dissection largely dissapeared until the 1500s, and did not become a requirement for surgeons-in-training until the 17th century.

Based on dissection, Herophilus laid the foundation for much of our modern understanding of anatomy. His findings included the differentation fo arteries and veins based on the thickness of the vessels and the classification of nerves, blood vessels and tendons. Rejecting the Egyptian theory that the heart was the source of thoughts, and Aristotle's notion that the brain was a 'cooling chamber,' Herophilus identified the brain as the 'seat of intellect'. His work led to the recognition of the existence of nerve impulses, classification of two types of nerves and association of nerve damage with paralysis. To top off his huge contributions to the understanding of the nervous system at the time, Herophilus named facial nerves, distinguished the different ventricles of the brain, and identified the cerebellum and cerebrum as separate entities.

Herophilus' work extended to the digestive and reproductive systems. He identified the uterus, uterine tubes and ovaries in women, the prostrate gland in men, and realized that the testes produced sperm. He was the first to accurately describe the liver, he wrote about the salivary glands, and coined the term 'duodenum' to mean the first portion of the small intestine. Herophilus also parsed out the parts of the eye, uniquely identifying the iris, cornea and retina for the first time in history.

Greek anatomical knowledge was more detailed and classified than the Egyptian's understanding. This increased depth of anatomical insight is illustrated in the way the human figure is depicted in the art of the two cultures. Based on my observations of the Louvre's Greek and Roman collections this week, I have identified several major changes in the way the Greeks represented the human figure in contrast to earlier art: increased realism, increased interest in movement, and greater depiction of depth.

In contrast to the art of earlier cultures, Greek depictions of the human form demonstrate increased realism and accuracy. The Art and Architecture of Ancient Egypt describes pre-Greek art as a "diagram of a thing man knew it to be, not as it appears to the eye under transitory circumstances." Artists of earlier cultures, such as the Ancient Egyptians, indeed observed balance and proportion, but artists of antiquity embraced realism to a new degree. Greek and Roman artists aspired to accuracy and ascribed value to the art's proximity to reality.

The shift from highly stylized figures to increasingly realistic depictions of the human figure occurred in Ancient Greece around 400 to 300 BC. The photograph below features The Bull of Crete found in the Temple of Zeus. The metope, or panel, depicts Hercules fighting the bull of Crete. This piece is illustrative of the transition from stylized to more realistic figures, because the figure of Hercules is loyal to both reality and the idealism of the artist. Some elements of the figure, such as the protruding rib cage and exaggerated muscles, are stylized. The artist took liberty in overemphasizing certain parts of the figure, yet other details, such as the navel, were considered unimportant are are over-simplified in the work. While elements of exaggeration are indeed present, the figure as a whole is quite realistic, and rests on the door step of the true classical period.

In contrast to the static forms of the Egyptians, Greek artists sought to depict the human figure as a dynamic form. This commitment to accurately representing movement is evident in Greek sculptures at the Louvre such as the statue shown below, the Gladiator Borghese. Created in 100 BC from a monolithic piece of marble, this statue illustrates the Greeks' increased expressiveness in depicting the human form. The work has elements of exaggeration, such as the emphasized torso muscles, but the artist's underlying goal of representing this male body as it appears to the eye is evident. 

In addition to representing movement of the human body more accurately, classical artists also began to experiment with different types of movement. For example, in the Roman stuate Hermaphrodite Endormi, the soft and realistic figure is shown contorted in sleep, wracked by a troublesome dream.

Similarly, in the Torment of Marsyas, a Greek sculpture from the Hellenistic period recreated by Roman artists around 100 AD, the figure hangs with it's sides protruding and muscles stretched — a bizarre position the likes of which are not observed in pre-antiquity art.

Finally, in contrast to the planar nature of the Ancient Egyptian figures I studied last week, it seems Greek artists took greater pains to suggest depth in their work. During the classical era, muscles emerged as a prominent element in artistic representations of the human figure. Based on the complexity of the surface of sculptures such as the one below, many artists of antiquity sought to faithfully depict the myriad contours of the human body. 

In summary, human dissection led to the emergence of anatomy as a field of study during the classical era. Increased understanding of the structure of the human body is illustrated by the human figures present in Greek and Roman art. In contrast to human bodies in art from previous eras, these figures are increasingly realistic, more dynamic, and present a stronger illusion of depth.

As this post marks the end of week two of my independent study project, it is now time for me to create an anatomical drawing based on the last two weeks of study.