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kalira's review
dark
informative
tense
slow-paced
3.75
I found the book fascinating on a number of level - the mingling of art, science, religion, culture, human nature. . . Well, we have always been complex creatures, have we not? The many photographs were also quite interesting . . . though to be sure some of them were also disquieting.
I also found myself rather put off by the attitude not of the historical personages spoken of, nor the concept of the Anatomical Venus and her sisters, but by the author herself. Presenting, for example, that there is no way a modern person can truly understand the Anatomical Venus, because she hails from "a time when religion, art, science, and philosophy could exist peacefully together", and we have lost this. Also the presenting of a number of stories about men who preserved their wives (or even more creepily, exes) in effigy form or worse, their actual bodies, kept on display or in their beds or both . . . along the same lines as the models (or real human remains, or mingling of both) used for both science and art displays, for sideshows and similar.
I also found myself rather put off by the attitude not of the historical personages spoken of, nor the concept of the Anatomical Venus and her sisters, but by the author herself. Presenting, for example, that there is no way a modern person can truly understand the Anatomical Venus, because she hails from "a time when religion, art, science, and philosophy could exist peacefully together", and we have lost this. Also the presenting of a number of stories about men who preserved their wives (or even more creepily, exes) in effigy form or worse, their actual bodies, kept on display or in their beds or both . . . along the same lines as the models (or real human remains, or mingling of both) used for both science and art displays, for sideshows and similar.
laurynreads's review
4.0
Bought this as a ✨little treat✨ when I was at the Portland Museum of Art in Maine. Even though this book kind of exists in the “coffee table book” realm (and to be sure, the photographs in here are stunning!), there is SUCH excellent scholarship in here. I was worried towards the middle that her thesis wouldn’t pan out or she wouldn’t fully connect everything but the final chapter was fantastic. Big fan of this, this style of nonfiction, and more than anything makes me even more mad at myself for never making it out to the Morbid Anatomy Museum when I lived in New York and they still existed