Reading Response 1

Lilly Stene

Cindy Rehm

Advanced Life Drawing 311-01

22 September 2019

Reading Response 1

            The main purpose of this article was to address how contemporary artists use their knowledge of the inner body in their artwork. Artists such as Laura Ferguson, Annie Cattrell, and Frida Kahlo were mentioned. Laura Ferguson works in New York City, and has created art that represents the inner body by using pictures of her own skeleton. Her first creation was known as the Visible Skeleton Series, which was from mixed media drawings on hand-made paper. Her work represents an autobiography that shows the body in pain. Laura Ferguson has scoliosis, which she depicts in her artwork. Her work expresses how scoliosis can find beauty and balance in a human. Frida Kahlo used medical imagery to display her private experience of pain caused by miscarriages and her injured column, leg, and pelvis. She regained power over her human experiences and doctors, through her artwork. Annie Cattrell is a Scottish artist who works in London. She views her artwork as a medium to provoke questions about scientific research, and not as a way to depict knowledge. As a sculptor she works to find the relationship between the inner and outer body. She used the idea of corrosion casting to create some of her pieces. Some examples of this are two versions of glass lungs, a gilded bronze cast of a heart and brain, and a silver bronze cast of a cranial interior. Annie Cattrell’s art resonated with me the most because as a dancer, I developed back fractures, tendonitis, and shin splints. Even though I no longer dance, I experience day to day pain due to the toll it had on my body when it was still developing. Because of this, I appreciated how Annie depicted the differences in her interior body due to scoliosis, in a way that did not romanticize nor criticize her condition. I think the artwork shown in the article was important to see, because it will inspire us on the importance of not only focusing on the exterior of figures, but also looking within and considering bone structure and placement as well.