Sunday, January 26, 2025

Medicine in Art

Since every one of my Missives must start somewhere this one occurred to me as I signed up for a “Concierge” doctor. On account of all the paperwork and little money a doctor can make on Medicare or in a small or poor town the overhead is crushing so to make up for it a doctor has to see too many patients to practice the art of medicine and not just the science. From the National Library of Medicine: “… The art and science of medicine are complementary. For successful practice, a doctor must be an artist armed with basic scientific knowledge in medicine.”

The “art of medicine” is usually defined in terms of the interpersonal skills and empathy that doctors use to treat patients. However, having been involved in the “fine” arts all my life I began to think about the depiction of medicine in art and how far back it has gone. In this Fresco depicting Lapyx removing an arrowhead from Aeneas’ thigh is from the first century (between 45 & 79 CE).


There is a long history of art used as illustration for medical instruction. I learned from an article by Alexandra Cook,“Medicine in Art History” from the University of Arizona College of Medicine that “Medical illustration was a method of disseminating knowledge in the early days. Hellenic Alexandria in the early 3rd century BC was a hub for medical research where many began drawing on various topics, including anatomy, surgery, and obstetrics, and documenting plants that had medicinal properties ... During the Middle Ages while Europe was falling into the Dark Ages, much of medical knowledge and study was preserved in the Muslim world.” A print dating from 1493 illustrates the Alexandria School of Medicine.

An article for the International Business Times illustrates a document from the University of North Carolina Libraries, MacKinney Collection of Medieval Medical illustrations and states, “Forget the Sitz bath, Medieval manuscripts reveal that 12th-century surgeons would treat severe hemorrhoids by burning them away with a cautery iron”. You may be surprised to learn that cauterizing hemorrhoids only fell away in the mid-20th century!


It is interesting to compare two images of the operating theater, one from Holland in the 17thCentury and the other from the 19th century in France. The first is, of course, a detail from Rembrandt’s famous Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp, 1632 in the Mauritshuis. The other from the Musée d’Orsay by Henri Gervex, Before the Operation, 1887. In both cases all the students are standing around to learn more about the human body and skill of the doctor. Today, I presume they would all be wearing white coats and masks.



If you are old enough, you remember the days when the doctor came dressed in his business suit with his black medical bag to your home to see how you were doing and prescribe any necessary medicines. You can see such an example in this Jan Steen of 1660, one of several of his depictions of the subject. Though Steen’s scenes are usually interpreted as the diagnosis of pregnancy, I still remember such visits in the 20th century for other complaints!


Dr. Paul Kolker, M.D., J.D., an accomplished cardiovascular surgeon, attorney, and visual artist, makes the case for the appreciation of fine art in helping doctors connect with patients, creating the empathy that aids diagnosis and improves convalescence. I want to end with his four-minute video from the Foundation on the Art of Healing and “The Physician as Artist, the Artist as Physician”. 

Sunday, January 19, 2025

Gone Too Far?

I know some of you thought that the banana taped to a wall where neither tape nor banana was permanent was absurd https://www.geraldstiebel.com/2024/12/hard-to-believe.html

But wait ... you ain’t seen nothing yet ... and I mean that literally ...

Taylor Defoe writes in Artnet News that “An Italian Artist auctioned off an “Invisible Sculpture” for 15,000 Euros ($18,300). The sale took place in May at the Italian auction house Art-Rite. The 67-year-old artist Salvatore Garau sold an “Immaterial Sculpture”. Yes, no it doesn’t exist! Garau titled it “lo sono” (I am). In his defense, the artist quotes the Heisenberg uncertainty principle that nothing has a weight. It goes on but I will let you read that for yourself. Sorry, there is no illustration!

https://news.artnet.com/art-world/italian-artist-auctioned-off-invisible-sculpture-18300-literally-made-nothing-1976181

The buyer did get a certificate of authenticity and a set of instructions: the work, according to Garau, must be exhibited in a private house in a roughly five-by-five-foot space free of obstruction. The estimate was 6,-9,000 Euros and I wonder if there was a reserve, (a price below which a work of art at auction will be bought-in). Who is crazier, the artist, the buyer or me for writing about it?

It did, however, get me thinking about the absurd in art. I found an article by the editors of Artland Magazine titled “10 Controversial Artworks That Changed Art History”. Believe it or not Édouard Manet’s, “Le Dejeuner sur l’Herbe” of 1863, now in the Musée d’Orsay, scandalized the public by showing a nude woman in a public park with well dressed men, then scandalous, but hardly absurd.


Let us continue, what about Andy Warhol’s arguably most famous work of Campbell Soup cans showing every flavor on the cans. The original was painted in 1962 and can be found at the Museum of Modern Art. Later Warhol began to experiment with silkscreen prints and thus a number of these silkscreens exist.

Today this too is considered an iconic work.


Then there is an artist I continue to struggle with, Jackson Pollock. In his painting “Convergence” (1952), now in the Buffalo AKG Museum. For me it is at least colorful but his “Autumn Rhythm (Number 30)” from 1950 in the Metropolitan Museum is pretty much black and white and tan. Pollock is lauded today for these drip paintings but frankly if I had to live with one, I think I would go nuts. Where do they start and end? How can you step back from them or be enveloped by them such as Mark Rothko in the Rothko Chapel at the Menil in Houston.




Another work which we consider today to be art is a urinal which the artist, Marcel Duchamp titled “Fountain” (1917). Duchamp described it as "everyday objects raised to the dignity of a work of art by the artist's act of choice."

The original has been lost. However, a photograph by Alfred Stieglitz at 291 art gallery following the 1917 Society of Independent Artists exhibit kept the concept alive. In the 1950’s and 60’s Duchamp made 16 or 17 replicas, one of which can be found in the Philadelphia Museum of Art. 


Returning to Garau’s “Invisible Sculpture” the concept is not new. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy states, “around the fifth century BCE in China, India, and Greece, philosophers turned from what is, to what is not (Sorensen 2022). Ever since, there has been commentary on omissions, holes, vacuums, and the possibility of an empty world.” Today’s astrophysicists tell us that there is dark matter which is invisible as it does not absorb, reflect or emit light. Far be it for me to say that Garau has not created a work of art!!!

Sunday, January 12, 2025

The City Different

I was for most of my life a devoted and champion of New York. But I was back a while ago and could not understand living there. Manhattan streets are now so congested that one trip I took with an Uber cost me $45 to go less than 20 blocks. I used to ride my bike all over town, so I did not think about this when I lived there. A Congestion Pricing toll has just been imposed for cars entering Manhattan from 60th Street south. Whether it solves the problem remains to be seen.


A recent article in The New Mexican, our 175-year-old local newspaper, focused on the architectural ordinance that governs the style of buildings in what is called the historic district of Santa Fe. We do not live in the center of town but on the Old Santa Fe Trail, the original trade route that ran from Franklin, Missouri to Santa Fe, New Mexico. We have been told there are original ruts from the wagon trains on our property (haven’t found them yet) and therefore we are subject to some provisions of the historic ordinance.


From the aforementioned article: “Looking down from the foothills of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, the rooftops of the stuccoed buildings below are noticeably flat. But the largely earth-tone structures in the city’s downtown area depict an array of architectural influences: Pueblo Revival, Territorial Revival, Mexican, Spanish and American”.


Santa Fe is a true melting pot of Native American (they were here first) Spanish (they took over in the 16th century) and Anglo American (annexed as a U.S. territory in 1848). It is home to Hispanics who trace their families back centuries as well as a major retirement and tourist spot. Last week within less than 24 hours I spotted License plates from 10 different states. Often there are cars with Mexican and several provinces from Canada as well. Not to mention ...


From the time New Mexico became a state (1912) there have been efforts to give Santa Fe its own character so it would not look like every city in the midwest.

According to an article in El Palacio, Spring of 2013, by Penelope Hunter-Stiebel, Edgar Lee Hewitt founder of what today is the School for Advanced Research became head of a group convened by the Mayor Arthur Seligman to, among other things, restore the identity of the capitol city of the new state. They decided this could be done by developing a signature style of architecture which they dubbed the “New-Old Santa Fe Style”. It combined modern building materials, plumbing and electricity with the local traditions of low adobe structures and flat roofs. Promoted by the region’s leading architect, John Gaw Meem (1894-1983), the Santa Fe style was codified by a city ordinance in 1957.


To first-time visitors the universal brown adobe color of its buildings defines the city. Affordable housing is necessary but even outside the designated historic area most apartment blocks have been at least painted in adobe tones. However, the most recently built multi-story blocks are gray, green or black and white making them even less consistent the character of Santa Fe. But last week The New Mexican published something even more jarring, someone is trying to get permission to build a red house!


The question raised in the recent newspaper article is whether the mandated Historic District Ordinance has unduly stifled architectural innovation. Well, of course, it has, but it achieved its goal, giving the city a character all its own.

Is innovation in architecture necessary to the vitality of cities? I would say that in the case of many it is, but not always and not everywhere. To have some elements of yesteryear that define the character of a location is, in my opinion, always a good thing. Respecting the amalgam of local traditions defined by artists and architects in 1912 in the Santa Fe style is in the city’s interest. It continues to attract tourists who often become residents, as we did. With the bustling city called Albuquerque just an hour down the road where innovation can thrive, hopefully Santa Fe can retain its claim to being “The City Different”.

Sunday, January 5, 2025

Christmas/Chanukah

A bit late, but there was such excitement that Christmas Day was also the first night of Chanukah that I wanted to look at it more closely. The holidays are really not so different.

Chrismukah is the term that has been used to identify this occurrence, taken from the TV show “The O.C.” where the character Seth Cohen created the holiday to represent his upbringing in an interfaith household. The event is so rare because, in the simplest terms, the Jewish calendar is based on lunar-solar while the Christian calendar is based on just solar.

My two sons live in interfaith homes, as do I, and along with their Christmas trees they like to light the Menorah. As Jewish holidays start in the evening the lighting of a single candle marks the first day of Chanukah. There is an extra candle in the center of the Menorah called the Shamash. It is used to light another candle each evening for the 8 days of Chanukah. In this image there is also a dreidel, a top spun in a gambling game where children play for “Chanukah gelt” coins, whether real or chocolate wrapped in gold foil.


We understand that Jesus of Nazareth was born Jewish and eventually Christianity drew away from Judaism. In a study published in the Biblical Archeological Review, Theodore H. Feder writes about a singular painting that dramatically illustrates the split of early Christianity and Judaism, Robert Campin’s “Marriage of the Virgin” (circa 1420-1430) in the Prado in Madrid.: “…the painting in question purports to show how the physical edifice of the Church literally encompassed the physical edifice of the Synagogue while sharing its foundations. The work is a marvel of architectural iconography, with many spiritual and religious connotations. Throughout, there is an unusual recognition of the debt Christianity owes to Judaism, even if its posture is one of supersession.”


Religion is, of course, a fascinating subject and I even took a course in it in college.

Too often we think about the differences when there are so many similarities. When the holidays of Chanukah and Christmas fall on the same day it just accentuates the fact that they are both celebrations of light at a time of the shortest, and hence darkest, days of the year. In Europe the practice dates to pre-Christian days and many other cultures have similar observances at this time of year. Priests and Rabbis have used this rare concurrence of dates to emphasize how both of their faiths celebrate the presence of God's light during darkness.

On a more secular note, I have a personal problem with presents. It seems very forced at holiday time. As an older person I feel I am lucky enough to have just about all the things I need or want and I really do not need another one. For the little folks toys will be opened excitedly and forgotten by the next day. The only difference is that for the Jews the presents are spread over eight days, one each night, while at Christmas they come all at once. As a child I was jealous of all those Christmas presents but looking back as an adult I think maybe spread out was better a single gift each night of the holiday, so that each gift could be appreciated. On the other hand, if there is one present you don’t like in a large group you quickly forget it, but if there is one unfortunate present among eight the disappointment can be profound and memorable!