SECTION 1 - via - School of Visual Arts

REMEMBERING OUR MORTALITY: ARTISTS AND DOCTORS IN THE GROSS
ANATOMY LAB
Deanna Leamon
University of South Carolina
In order to invent heaven and hell a person would need to know nothing
except the human body.
—Jose Saramago, Blindness
1. MAIN POINT
I am here to advocate a closer collaboration between anatomists and artists. Such collaboration
can help both anatomists and artists reconcile the human and emotional dimensions of their
work with the scientific objective dimensions of their work. I’ve found this to be true in my own
work making figurative drawings and paintings, and also in teaching figure drawing to students.
And the medical students and faculty in the gross anatomy classes I’ve been involved with also
have found this to be true.
In 1999, I spent my sabbatical auditing USC School of Medicine’s gross anatomy lectures and
dissection. In addition to sitting with the medical students through the lectures and assisting
with prosections, I spent time making quick studies of the cadavers at every stage of the
dissection. I did this to improve my understanding of the human body and, to see what we are
like when we are dead. While I was doing this I became aware of the parallel struggle that
doctors have in balancing needed objectivity with equally needed humanity or subjectivity.
2. OBJECTIVE AND SUBJECTIVE
“Objective” and “subjective” are not ideal terms, and an examination of the history of their use
shows them to be very slippery. For my purposes I focus on two dimensions to our interactions
either as artists or as physicians with bodies, living and dead. The first dimension is part/whole.
As we interact with bodies do we treat them as wholes—a whole human being—or as a collection
parts—femur, rib cage, etc? The second dimension is individuality. As we interact with bodies
do we treat each one as an individual deserving special respect as an individual, or as an
instance of a type—homo sapiens or what have you? For the purposes of this paper I will call an
“objective” treatment of bodies that which focuses on types, not individuals, and,
simultaneously, that where the focus is on parts, not wholes. I will call a “subjective” treatment
of bodies that which focuses on individual wholes.
Objectively, the body is an intricate biological mechanism. But each “objective biological
Mechanism” also is a human being. Each objective biological mechanism is a fully emotion
bearing person and needs to be seen as such. We can call this the “subjective view” of the
body.
This usage is not perfect, either historically or in its appropriation of contemporary usage. But
it does capture an important dimension along which artists and physicians have struggled
through history in their interactions with bodies. Neither pole, “objective” or “subjective” is
correct, for each captures important elements of what it is to be human. Yet, it has proven very
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