Intersecting art, science and the scenographic mise-en-scène, this book provides a new approach to anatomical drawing, viewed through the contemporary lens of scenographic theory.
Sue Field traces the evolution of anatomical drawing from its historical background of hand-drawn observational scientific investigations to the contemporary, complex visualization tools that inform visual art practice, performance, film and screen-based installations. Presenting an overview of traditional approaches across centuries, the opening chapters explore the extraordinary work of scientists and artists such as Andreas Vesalius, Gérard de Lairesse, Santiago Ramón y Cajal and Dorothy Foster Chubb who, through the medium of drawing dissect, dismember and anatomize the human form.
Anatomical Drawing examines how forms, fluids and systems are entangled within the labyrinthine two-dimensional drawn space and how the body has been the subject of the spectacle. Corporeal proportions continue to be embodied within the designs of structures, buildings and visual art. Illustrated throughout, the book explores the drawings of 17th-century architect and scenographer Inigo Jones, through to the ghostly, spectral forms illuminated in the present-day X-ray drawings of the artist Angela Palmer, and the visceral and deeply personal works of Kiki Smith. Field analyses the contemporary skeletal manifestations that have been spawned from the medieval Danse Macabre, such as Walt Disney’s drawn animations and the theatrical staging, metaphor and allegorical intent in the contemporary drawn artworks of William Kentridge, Peter Greenaway, Mark Dion and Dann Barber.
This rigorous study illustrates how the anatomical drawing shapes multiple scenographic encounters, both on a two-dimensional plane and within a three-dimensional space, as the site of imaginative agency across the breadth of the visual and performance arts. These drawings are where a corporeal, spectacularized representation of the human body is staged and performed within an expanded drawn space, generating something new and unforeseen - a scenographic worlding.
List of Figures Introduction Chapter One: Drawn Beneath the Flesh Chapter Two: Anatomy of the Theatre Chapter Three: The Danse Macabre Chapter Four: The Vanitas: Fragments of Death Chapter Five: The Dissected Stage Chapter Six: Hidden in the Shadows Introduction Drawn Beneath the Flesh Scenographics Theatricality Worlding Historical Overview Andreas Vesalius (1514–1564) The Anatomist Govard Bidloo (1649-1713) and the Artist Gérard de Lairesse (1640-1711) Frank Netter (1906–1991) Santiago Ramón y Cajal (1852 - 1934) Twentieth Century Female Anatomical Illustrators Epilogue Anatomy of the Theatre Anthropomorphic Representation The Renaissance “Man” as the Center of the Universe Theatrum Mundi, or Theatre of the World Inigo Jones (1573-1652) The Cockpit-in-Court The Royal Court Masques at the Cockpit-in-Court Barber Surgeon's Anatomy Theatre The Anatomical Theatre as a Site of Spectacle The Fleshly Gaze Epilogue The Danse Macabre Osteological Evidence in the Danse Macabre Performance and the Danse Macabre The Danse at the Charner et Cimetière des Innocents, Paris, 1424-1425 Medieval Spectatorship and the Danse Macabre Medieval Spectatorship and Presence Guyot Marchant Hans Holbein the Younger (1497? – 1543) Christiaan Huygens (1629-1695) Walt Disney’s The Skeleton Dance (1929) William Kentridge, More Sweetly Play the Dance, 2015 Peter Greenaway (1942-) Representing the Unrepresentable Epilogue The Vanitas: Fragments of Death Vanitas Maria van Oosterwijck (1630-1693) Sue Field Anatomical Drawing Left on Hold (2023) Kiki Smith (1954-) Possession Is Nine-Tenths of the Law (1985) Drift (2022) The Mind’s Eye Liminal Space World Seen and the World Unseen Kiki Smith - How I Know I’m Here (1985) AI Can Do Many Things, but Can It Replicate These Drawings? Epilogue The Dissected Stage The Anatomical Drawing and Scenographic Worlding Theory Tristan Fou (Mad Tristan), 1944 Paranoiac - Critical Method Artistic Motifs and Symbolism Legacy M Is for Man, Music, Mozart, 1991 Teatro Anatomico Padua, 1595 Animated Anatomical Drawings in Vesalius Song Saint Orlan (1947-) The Staging of “Female Beauty” as a Spectacle of Violence and Trauma Langer’s Lines Anatomy Theatre (2017) Dann Barber The Medieval Morality Play Medieval Theatricality and Spectatorship Anatomical Drawing as a Meta-Theatrical Trope Epilogue Hidden in the Shadows The X-Ray Drawings of Australia’s First Nation Peoples X-Ray Bark Art X-Ray Rock Art Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin (1910 -1994) Oppenheim (1913 - 1985) Elizabeth Diller and Ricardo Scofidio William Kentridge (1955 -) Angela Palmer (1957-) Brain of the Artist (2012) 2020: The Sphere That Changed the World Epilogue All That Remains Visible Human Project (VHP) The Spectacular Anatomical Body Holoman; Digital Cadaver Gunther von Hagens (1945-) The Spectacle of the Screen Epilogue References Notes
Sue Field is a researcher at UNSW Art and Design, Australia, and a lecturer in the School of Architecture at the University of Technology Sydney, Australia. She has written scholarly papers for journals, national and international conferences, published academic book chapters, and is the author of Scenographic Design Drawing (Bloomsbury, 2021).
