Anatomical Tasks at Hand
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Anatomical Tasks at Hand
💡 Concept
The Gross Clinic & The Agnew Clinic
Thomas Eakins (1844-1916), as an American realist artist, from the early 1870s on, had chosen his subject the people of his hometown Philadelphia to paint portraits. Taken en masse, his work offers an overview of the intellectual life of contemporary Philadelphia of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The subjects of Eakins's several hundred portraits include friends, family members, or prominent people in the arts, sciences, medicine, and clergy. As we see here, he painted "Portrait of Dr. Samuel D. Gross (The Gross Clinic)" (1875, 8 ft × 6.5 ft) and "The Agnew Clinic."(1889, , 7 ft × 9.8 ft), two paintings that show the "modern surgery" in a setting of anatomical lecture and public demonstration. Eakins attended anatomy lectures and did dissections himself. He was quoted at length in 1879 about his views on dissection and on the importance of anatomy for the artist.: "To draw the human figure it is necessary to know as much as possible about it, about its structure and its movements, its bones and muscles, how they are made, and how they act."
In "The Gross Clinic," as Eakins made sure to include the image of an unhappy woman (stage left), most likely the patient's mother, and he inserted his own self-portrait (making sketches). The exposed flesh of a live patient was certainly occasion for controversy. Eakins's painting was withheld from exhibition for that reason, but it didn't help that the poor chap's buttocks were also uncovered for all of posterity. No shrinking violet himself, Gross made sure his own hands, and not just those of his assistants, bore the rosy sheen of fresh human blood. Similarly, Dr. Hayes Agnew in the painting of "The Agnew Clinic" exhibited both of his hands (held a scalpel on his left hand, opening his right palm up but somehow with fewer traces of blood than observed in Dr. Gross's hand), so as those of his assistants on the surgery table.
🖥️ Activity
- Presentation by Anthony Friscia, Director of the Anatomy Lab.
- Interaction with the human specimens in the Collection of the Anatomy Lab.
- View the virtual visit of the Anatomy Lab: Immersive experience with 360 view and hot-spot annotations at the UCLA Anatomy Lab: https://dh101s19.humspace.ucla.edu/anatomylab/ (password: AnatomyLab)
- Anatomy Lessons in the XR Classroom of UCLA Biomedical Library Special Collections: https://fowlerstaging.citrusstudios.com/captivate/demo_01/
📍 Location
Anatomy Lab
- Location map to the Lab:
✉️ Share
- Reflect on your experiences at the Anatomy Lab, particularly how you use your senses that eventually construct your experience; for instance, on where you were and what you saw, smell, hear, taste, touch. Describe them and the inferences that you can draw from the sensory methods. It would be helpful by thinking along these lines: I notice...; I wonder...; This reminds me of...
- Compare and contrast the painter/viewers of the surgical scenes of both Gross and Agnew clinics in Brieger 's artcle with the virtual visit of the Anatomy Lab.
- Think about how the experience (in both Eakins' and your cases) shape your understanding on surgery/human anatomy through different sensory experiences.
Post by Friday, April 15.
🤝 Collaborate
- Read one of your peers' posts and give feedback.
Interact by Sunday, April 17.