Queer Anatomies: The Odd Case of Mr. Joseph Maclise and his Figures

Description

Join Michael Sappol, historian of the visual culture of medicine and science, for an evening talk on his new book 'Queer Anatomies', at the Royal College of Surgeons of England.

Attendees are invited to visit the Hunterian Museum from 5-6:30pm before the talk starts

Sexual body-parts and same-sex desire were unmentionables, debarred from representation in 18th- and 19th-century print culture. Yet one scientific discipline — anatomy — had license to picture intimate details of the human body — rec­tum and genitalia included. Anatomical illustrations were often soberly technical. But could also be monstrous, flirtatious, theatrical, transgressive. And erotic. Anatomical publications gave off heat, pleasured the men who gazed upon and collected them in homosocial circles of comradely connoisseurship.

In art academies, schools of medicine, and the encyclopedic curriculum of Enlightenment discourse, anatomy was a foundational subject. Aesthetic discernment and medical and artistic competence all depended on a secure knowledge of anatomy and its texts — which offered unique opportunities for perverse erotic representation. In the 18th century that occurred mostly in the idiom of classicism or harsh Netherlandish realism, but in the 1840s and 50s, surgeon-illustrator Joseph Maclise, FRCS, remade the anatomical image into an intimate space of sensual experience and private pleasure. Maclise's lost archive of closeted queer expression — mostly overlooked in the scholarship — gets appreciative consideration in this illustrated talk and (along with works by many other anatomists) in the pages of Mike Sappol's latest book, Queer Anatomies.

Recommended for ages 16+

Date

Location

Hunterian Museum
38-43 Lincoln's Inn Fields
London
WC2A 3PE

Prices

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The information and prices in this listing are presumed to be correct at the time of publishing, but please always check with the venue before making a special trip.

All images are supplied by the exhibition organiser.