Photographs from the Museum of disfigured body parts
Few sketches from the Exhibition
Taking my initial research and responses, I decided to look into disfigurement further and learn more about the science behind it. I wanted a more abstract aesthetic, so I decided to visit the Hunterian Museum. Located in the London School of Surgery, the museum holds thousands of body parts in jars, skeletons in glass boxes and other similar artifacts. Unfortunately many of them are animals, but I picked out the best human examples I could find, and took pictures and sketched as I went round. Unsurprisingly, the disfigurement of people was just as much a 'show' as it is today, people with certain 'odd' conditions were photographed, written about and documented in any way. Hunter, the founder of the museum physically bought many skeletons and body parts of disfigured humans after they were deceased.
Many of the body parts were missing vital parts meaning their shape was altered, using this as development I think it will be interesting to remove and recreate these shapes in my sketchbook and on the stand to create visual communication as a response.
This exhibition fitted in well with my artist study on Cyril Caine, Egon Schile and Marlene Dumas. All of the artists have an ugly aesthetic, but the beauty is in the eye of the beholder. You see what you want to see, for me I view this sort of art as an abstract idea of what they view people as. Egon especially was interested in hands, Marlene, faces. and Cyril, disfigurement. When walking round, I mentally matched some of their artworks with the jars I was looking at. Creating collages with both these images will be a good depiction of how I connected the two. It may also create new developments and ideas to create from.
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