I’ve always, perhaps incorrectly, thought of art as art and science and science. Sometimes art may encompass such elements from science – many famous artworks often encompass the human form (I think of the statue of David, specifically). But in my mind I had classified the focus on the human form as the subheading under the giant umbrella of art, rather than the other way around.
What I find most interesting about using drawing art from science is how it’s such an ethical art. Art, in my mind, is meant to make you think and invoke some sort of emotional response, but never before have I thought about the moral and ethical repercussions. Often the emotional response is a call to action. Images like “race has no gene”
plays on people’s guilt and prejudices. But images like those of true human dissections seem a bit more real. Images from the Visual Human Project seem a bit more graphic and real, even inescapable.
The beginning of the look at the body and science as art had a large boom during the period of renaissance art. One of the most famous was Da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man, which described the proportions of man based on geometic shapes and figures. This print is actually so famous and well known, that other artists have done mock prints with similar and pop culture symbols.
Recently though, the display of the body has become more of an ethical debate. The famous Body Worlds exhibition displays real bodies that have been preserved in plastic.
The Body Worlds exhibit as well as the Visual Human Project has the effect of employing the abject in people – making it possible for people to see themselves in the art and thus invoking a sense of disgust and uncomfort. Though science has the ability to use art in order to teach future generations, it has also been met with great adversity and disgust.
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