week 4 blog post

 Blog this week about your own knowledge or personal experience with medical technologies in relation to the artist projects you have seen. Check the additional materials posted for more ideas.

When I think of the overlap between science and art, what comes to mind first is biology. Art is very important in creating biological representations on paper which becomes extremely important in the medical field. We discussed Da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man, which is a very famous anatomical model of what a human should look like. This is just a stepping stone for many medical representations that have come later. 

Professor Vesna also talks about the famous Gray’s Anatomy, an in-depth medical textbook that covers a very large range of medical information. The illustrations for this book are extremely important to display the information in a digestible way for the reader, making the content easier to understand.

A use of art through science that has gained extreme traction in recent times is of plastic surgery. Although plastic surgery began as reconstructive, people are using this medical technology to enhance their own beauty for aesthetic purposes. Orlan is an artist that has taken this medium to use herself as her canvas. She has taken inspiration from some of the world’s most famous paintings to enhance her own face. For example she claims to have the chin of Botticelli’s Venus and the forehead of Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa. She claims she did not choose these characters for their beauty, but for the stories associated with them.

Plastic surgery is a very controversial topic in recent times because people argue if it is creating unrealistic and harmful beauty standards for people (mostly women) or if it is an empowering source of self expression. Personally, I think despite the art people can create with their plastic surgery and body transformations, for the majority of people, it creates pressures to strive for perfection and discourages the embrace of flaws and imperfections. 

Citations

Artnet. "Orlan." artnet, n.d., www.artnet.com/artists/orlan/.

Jeffries, Stuart, et al. “Orlan's art of sex and surgery | Art.” The Guardian, 1 July 2009, https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2009/jul/01/orlan-performance-artist-carnal-art. Accessed 25 April 2023.

The Vitruvian Man - by Leonardo Da Vinci, https://www.leonardodavinci.net/the-vitruvian-man.jsp.

Standring, Susan, and Henry Gray. Gray's Anatomy: The Anatomical Basis of Clinical Practice. Elsevier, 2021.

Vesna , Victoria. Lecture Part 1, 2 and 3. https://bruinlearn.ucla.edu/courses/160989/pages/unit-4-view?                            module_item_id=5946331

Image citations

Artnet. "Orlan." artnet, n.d., www.artnet.com/artists/orlan/.

McKenzie, Sheena. “Mona Lisa: The Theft That Created a Legend.” CNN, Cable News Network, 19 Nov. 2013, https://www.cnn.com/2013/11/18/world/europe/mona-lisa-the-theft/index.html.

The Vitruvian Man - by Leonardo Da Vinci, https://www.leonardodavinci.net/the-vitruvian-man.jsp.

Standring, Susan, and Henry Gray. Gray's Anatomy: The Anatomical Basis of Clinical Practice. Elsevier, 2021.