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Gaetano Zumbo, 1701. Dissection of the Head
Wax, 38 x 32 x 25cm |
Martin Kemp currently Professor
of Art History at Oxford University is perhaps uniquely placed to
form such connections. Sir Ernst Gombrich has referred to Kemp as
his chosen successor in the field of art history. It is Kemp’s
brilliant analytical focus which, following his outstanding Leonardo
da Vinci exhibition at the Hayward in 1987, is now turned upon humanity’s
historical attitude to the physical body, and the extent to which
science and art have interacted in this obsession since the middle
ages.
Kemp and Wallace have confronted
the readily purveyable current curatorial fixation with the achievement
of visual trauma in the mind of the viewer. They have presented
a formidable, yet readily assailable challenge to set against the
prevalent agenda for shocking the artgoer sensibility. Instead of
the agenda to shock they have had an agenda to inform - without
neutralising the effect of physical revelation. So we observe, in
"Dissection of the Head" a 1701 wax model made by Geantano
Zumbo, of the skull laid half-bare; what at first glimpse appears
to be some winged skull cap a la mode; in fact the "wings"
are layers of skin trained symmetrically back.
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Franz Xavier Messerscmidt, 1775
Physiognomic Head (Head of Character no 18)
Lead, 39.5 x 23 x 23 |
The institutionalised investigative
viewpoint in medicine and in art is here reconciled in this exhibition.
The successfully publicised anatomy, which as "ready-made"
so interests Damien Hirst, equally now admits the assumed superiority
of the medical practitioner over their patients on the slab (or
cadavers of former patients) as it does the artist and his human
subject material.
"Spectacular Bodies" seeks
today to reconcile as rationally as possible, with a proper scholarship,
these separate yet similar agendas, an their supporting institutional
and social protocols. The exhibition here confirms that such "Atrocity
Exhibitions" (to borrow J. G. Ballard’s phrase) as Apocalypse
(at the Royal Academy) are no more alarming in effect than anatomical
investigations and their visual documentation since Leonardo da
Vinci, Durer, or Michaelangelo, or even Goya and Grunewald.
The presence, in this great
display of reconciliation at the Hayward, of Bill Viola’s beating
heart, and the notable works by other contemporaries such as Katharine
Dawson, Gerhard Lang, Tony Oursler seems to amplify the resonance
for artists and viewers alike of the imagery of the human body.
This exhibition also poses again, as good art will, the recurrent
enigma of life, death and the physical, recyclable residue. This
is a superbly researched, truly unrepeatable and memorable show,
to which Studio International will address further review and analysis
through attention and comment by artists, critics, and medical professionals
as it continues through into 2001.
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