I know that Da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man isn’t related to modern art in any way, but it is just an excellent introduction to what I’m going to talk about. Anatomy in modern art.
Last Thursday I was in my biology class, where we have been studying the lungs. To illustrate the subject an assistant walked in with a pair of sheep lungs and attached them to a compressor. He turned the small machine on and the lungs inflated.
At that very moment it occurred to me how perfect the architecture of the human body was. Or in this case the sheep body, which is quite like a humans (though it’s lungs are slightly bigger). I mean, it just works. It’s so good that a pair of lungs can suck themselves full of air tens of thousands of times in a single life!
Anatomy can be considered mother nature’s attempt at art. Functionality and aesthetics meet (yes the human body is aesthetically correct, have you ever seen a brain? It’s neuron network has got more detail than one of Rembrandt‘s paintings).
Fortunately I’m not the only one having such a fascination for biological architecture. There’s Tom Giesler with his poster series named My Anatomy, who got featured on SuperForest before. But it’s not just Giesler and me, no! This is the work of Aksel Varichon, a French (product) designer from Paris.
On the left there’s an apron which shows a somewhat abstract interpretation of the organs (I hope that none of our readers has got an intestine that looks like that) and on the right there’s a chair which shows the major arteries of a grown human being. It is totally awesome that an artist ‘redesigns’ one of nature’s classics, and then uses his mash-up to create an original, bright and humorous product. If you take a look at Varichon’s website you will discover that he has got an entire series of household linen, including pillows and place mats.
Apparently human anatomy is so functional and so beautiful that artists use it as their source of devine inspiration. At first sight many people probably associate organs with blood and gore, but when you look a bit further it seems like anatomy is true timeless art.
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