In the words of American historian Michael Sappol, over the course of the 19th century the ‘anatomical body became our body’, as the language of anatomical science came to define a shared understanding of human corporality. As these images and forms of knowledge disseminated a new understanding of the body, the formal medical curriculum still in use today was in the process of being standardised across Britain and the United States, paralleling efforts to systematise the teaching of art and design. However, the teaching of art and anatomy were more than simply contemporaneous: they were interdependent. As Anthea Callen writes, ‘Anatomists depended upon the power of art to give legible visual form to their knowledge; artists recognised that anatomical science conferred authority on their own practices [and] both sought legitimacy in antiquity: the civilising guise for their shared carnivorous appetites was the classical body.’
This talk explores how 19th-century artists and anatomists forged a common language of the body premised upon close observation and scientific study and yet informed by classical aesthetics. Through an analysis of the teaching of art and anatomy in 19th-century Dundee, Scotland, and Minneapolis, I will examine the ways in which these disciplines drew upon classical modes of representation in order to reinforce their own cultural authority and negotiate the contradictions that rendered ‘Artistic Anatomy’ an inherently unstable endeavour.