Anatomy and Art

a blog by Sara Egner

Skull of a Skeleton with Burning Cigarette

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So, it’s no secret really that I’ve got some love for Vincent Van Gogh.  And even though he wasn’t an anatomical artist or medical artist, he did study to improve his grasp of the human figure at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts in Brussles for a little while.  As far as I know, this is the closest thing to an anatomical art piece that he ever painted.  So today I thought that I’d like to post that here.

It’s kind of fantastic in it’s balance between simplicity and complexity.  I wouldn’t study anatomy from it, but it’s clear that he was looking at bones to do this and not just making something up.  The cigarette is maybe a little silly, though a lot of years have passed between the time he did this and everything else that might make me feel that way about it.  And you really do get the sense of a burning ember at the tip of that thing.  It’s a neat painting.

Written by Sara

November 10th, 2011 at 4:22 pm

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