Art, Humanity, and the Body

Humanity and art go hand in hand - some of the oldest records ever of humans are found in Palaeolithic caves. It is art that covers the walls deep in the middle of France, and it is undeniable the effect it has on one upon seeing them - these people were here, they were trying to communicate something, and they did so through art; almost as if art predated language. 

(Depictions of horses, deers, and aurochs pictured here in the Grotte de Lascaux)

But what is this effect due to? I would argue that it is the explosion of realisation that there is a baseline, solely human thing which is art. It connects us through age, race, gender, and time. It is the most human thing we have got, or is it? 

This is a belief, seemingly, as old as time

The connection between humanity and the ability to make art seems almost impossible to refute, and with it comes the base-line assumption that there needs to exist - within a person - a certain special sensitivity and humanity that is exclusive to artists in order to produce a piece such as a Rembrandt or a Bacon. 

But, where does this belief come from? Is it possible to trace it back through time? Through history? Surely, it could not have come out of thin air? 

Well, it didn’t, and the answer to these questions lies way closer to home than one could imagine - the answer lies in our bodies. 

Let us travel in time all the way back to 19th-century France, where Realism was on the rise. This was an intellectual, artistic, and literary movement that took hold completely of France and, eventually, of other neighbouring European countries (since other nations at the time looked to France for inspiration). Realism was characterised by the interest in everyday life, painting subjects in a naturalistic, ‘real’ manner. The term, coined by Champlefury, was exemplified by the oeuvre of painter Gustav Courbet, whose subjects varied from working-class people to everyday life in the city, and in cafes - all of this displaying the frankness of everyday life. Realism also implied a certain grittiness in the choice of subject and scene, which caused a shock among upper-middle-class audiences. Questions such as how are we capable of all the great things we as humans are capable of? Or, equally, how are we capable of all the horrible things we can do? This made people - including realists - start thinking about how we work biologically. 

Realism was a movement that was incredibly influenced by science and the growing field at the time: the study of human anatomy through dissection. Due to the strong need for realism to portray the “real”, artists became really interested in the study of anatomy - they were really keen on having the capability to portray human anatomy realistically and accurately. They would look back at mediaeval paintings and come to the realisation that they were more concerned with a portrayal of divinity rather than anatomical accuracy. These artists strongly believed that if you could understand the “mystery” which was the internal body (the mind, the spirit, the soul, and the internal mechanisms of the body) and portray it accurately, then you would successfully transmit meaning and emotion better and with more precision than an inaccurate representation. Realism’s emphasis on capturing the truth of experience became an overarching goal, and how could one possibly ever achieve this without a deep comprehension of what is most real to us: our own flesh and blood - our bodies? 

Take, for example, the écorché - a figure drawn, painted or sculpted whose main function is to show the muscles of the body without skin, more commonly used as a figure of study for another, larger work. Thomas Banks' 1801 piece, Anatomical Crucifixion, is an interesting example of an écorché since it is a ‘true to life’ model - the reason for this being that this model was a plaster cast of a real, flayed body. The story behind it reveals a lot about the time it was made, along with the culture of sensibility aesthetics that arose during the realist movement. 

The year was 1800 when artist and member of the Royal Academy, Thomas Banks, met with some fellow colleagues. The reason for this meeting was that they were looking for a body - a body they could use to represent an accurate portrayal of its anatomical proportions in order to make a convincing representation of the human body. All this with the sole purpose of attempting to make viewers understand the structure of the human, to see the body up-front, in its bare and unembellished glory. They contacted surgeon Joseph Carpue and requested he contact them when he had a body in his possession - a body the students could use for their life-sized écorché. A full year later, in 1801, an elderly pensioner and retired soldier, James Legg, challenges his neighbour to a duel - resulting in the death of said neighbour. Legg undergoes a trial where the final verdict decides to sentence him to death. Legg was sent to the gallows and his remains to Joseph Carpue. Upon receiving Legg’s body, Carpue immediately transported it to the Royal Academy - where it was flayed and hung on a cross - all this so they could see how the body settled, formed, and “relaxed” at the moment of crucifixion. The reason behind this, you ask? Well, it is undeniable that in the history of art, there are hundreds if not millions of depictions of Jesus on the cross; what Banks was trying to prove was that these past depictions (all of those Italian frescoes) were lacking because these artists had never witnessed - and hence understood - what a body would look like when crucified. Of course, the emphasis on realism comes from the time period and the artistic movement itself, but why the emphasis on realistic, anatomical accuracy? One obvious reason is that, at least artistically, it is a masterful technique to have an accurate portrayal of anything - be it the body or something entirely different. But another reason, and one which motivated both Banks and other artists of the time, is that this kind of portrayal would be able to cause the audience to really see, feel, experience and imagine what it would be like to be an innocent, divine figure that has been crucified. 

(Anatomical Crucifixion (James Legg), 1801

Thomas Banks RA (1735 - 1805)

Banks’ écorché is a piece of art that perfectly depicts the connection between art and anatomy and how their entanglement in the late 18th to early 19th centuries began a long tradition of art - that ended up having long-lasting effects on the way audiences look at art, and think of the artist. 

It is important to note, however, that this relationship between art and anatomy goes way back. Rembrandt’s world-famous “The Anatomy Lesson of Dr Nicolaes Tulp” (1632) depicts a group of men dissecting a body, and even an engraving of the University of Padua (where the first ever anatomical theatre was built) displays the deep links that exist between art and science - they are way more narrow that we are initially led to believe.

The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp, Rembrandt (1632)

Two female figures standing on either side of drapery bearing the title of Vesling's Syntagma anatomicum: beyond, the anatomy theatre of the University of Padua. Engraving by Giovanni Georgi, 1647.

In “On Truth and Lying”, Nietzsche states the following: “Does not nature keep secret from him most things, even about his body, e.g., the convolutions of the intestines, the quick flow of the blood-currents, the intricate vibrations of the fibres, so as to banish and lock him up in proud delusive knowledge?” (p. ). What Nietzsche is trying to say here, is that how could it be possible for us to understand the human, understand ourselves, if we do not understand the most basic of anatomical functions, the things and processes that we all have inside us? This sentiment is one which was crucial for the time of realism - the need to understand man for accurate depiction was vital for the realist painter. Yael Shapira points out that writers of the Gothic genre were fascinated by the possibility that the body - which was normally closed and hidden to its owner - could be penetrated, disordered, and exposed. This possibility really comes about because of the methods of medical science and the practice of dissection - this activity of exposing the body could be made a spectacle for the protagonist. This attitude bled into the visual arts, too, where both the artists and the audience could bask in the spectacle of human anatomy. This blending of disciplines - otherwise always categorised so far apart - demonstrates how the goals of art and science, in some ways, are very similar: to penetrate as deep as possible, to take apart, and to show the audience what is really there. The remnants of this movement are still felt today, with exhibitions such as Gunther von Hagens's “Body Worlds”. 

This culture of dissection gave rise to aesthetics, more presently, the aesthetics of transparency. A culture deeply concerned with self-analysis, introspection, autobiography and confession came about. Seems only natural, after all, that this desire to know the inside of the body is accompanied by a desire to know the insides which are intangible - our senses and affects as key elements of identity and selfhood, all of which have their origin in the body. This excavation of the physical body gave rise to an excavation of feelings and how they are connected to the senses - which is another reason why there was such an interest in depicting the real and the human body in art. As a result of this, the assumption that the more exquisite a body’s organs and structures and the more delicate the nerves hence the greater one’s sensibility arose. This assumption held within it the belief that if you had a body that functioned at a very high level (exquisite delicate nerves that felt everything, senses that taste all the finer flavours, breathed the finer smells) this meant that you had more sensibility; meaning, you felt more deeply, you were more sympathetic, and overall more connected to fellow humans. In turn, the greater one’s capacity for appreciating and producing refined and imagined forms of literary and visual expression, the finer one’s sensibility. This works as a circular thing. There was a really intense ideology that your senses determined who you are, and who you are determined how your senses work. This assumption has a direct link to the belief mentioned at the beginning of the article - so now we are ready to begin to understand this culture of a human with “deeper sensitivities” that surrounds discourses of art. 

Pictured above: The Anatomical Theatre at the University of Padua (Left) and Botticelli’s depiction of Dante’s 9 Rings of Hell from La Divina Commedia. Notice how similar both are, it would be hard not to believe that the anatomical theatre was somewhat inspired by Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy. Once again, reiterates the deep and strong relationship between science and art.

An assumption which is, at its core, entirely hierarchical and reliant on biological essentialism and strata. 

In his Essay Concerning Humane Understanding (1689), English philosopher John Locke talks about external and internal sensations as passages of knowledge, passages to understanding. He writes: “When our perceptive organs resemble wax, overburdened with cold, they will not receive the impression of the seal, they will not take in what is outside. Conversely, if the organs are like the wax of a temper too soft they will not hold it well” (p. 17). If you follow this logic and believe that you need to have this delicate, sensible, sensitive nervous system in order to think higher thoughts, then you can see that there is a hierarchy taking place here. Conversely, if your existence is grinding out a daily living, like howling in the dirt or picking stones, for example, the idea is that you are insensitive and your body is indelicate - you are only muscle and bones. You can’t possibly have higher thoughts, feelings or emotions, your senses are dulled by your environment. But also there is a sense, amongst some thinkers, that you then pass on this dullness of understanding to the next generation. There is a class education division that comes through early ideas of the senses. Why does this happen? How does this happen? Well, when you have built and garnered a society that has an understanding of how personal identity is shaped by the senses and how we engage sensorially with the world, stacked on top of the culture of sensibility of the time (finely tuned senses) then your ability to accurately represent a body through art reflects that. So, in the 19th century, the need to portray the subject with Realist's eyes reflected the ability of the painter, and his highly attuned senses. The culture of sensibility, and especially the principle that the senses and the nervous system produced identity, encouraged observers to view art as evidence that people sense and see the world differently. The time reflects a culture deeply contingent on the belief that artistic merit lay in minute details, accuracy, and evidence of anatomical understanding because these things meant psychological depth. They communicated passions and human sensibility - only a higher-level culture produced this kind of art.

The importance of sensibility, as anatomists began to understand the body, established the brain as the physical seat of thought, the nerves as the conduit between the brain and the world, and the senses as the portal of that world. English doctor Thomas Willis began to study the nervous system and the relationship between the world and the senses: how the five senses are related to the nerves, how they have a connection to the internal mind, to the brain, and how they are directly linked to action. These are the things that make us human because this is a process that every living thing has - sensation. This move towards thinking of the human as a creature of sensibility cemented the idea that the more delicate, refined, and sophisticated one’s body and nervous system is, the wider gamut of feeling you experience, and the deeper your thoughts, sensations and sensibilities. All this centred the brain as the seat of thought, and the nerves as a conduit between the brain and the world. All of this stuff that happens in the body - is undeniably real, it is a material, bodily foundation for one’s emotions. This is why artists and writers wanted to understand human anatomy and its processes so intently because it allowed them to communicate this in their works; which in turn built this culture of the artist as an individual of superior sensibilities to the general population. 

Take someone like Caravaggio, for example. Although the Italian master’s oeuvre dates years before the late 18th century and the subsequent realist movement, these are pieces which are paramount in exhibiting the relationship between a deep knowledge of human anatomy, emotion and art. Caravaggio was a genius at representing affect and initiating an affective response in return. Think of what it is like to be in the presence of a Caravaggio - the paintings are of immense proportions, and they are amazingly sophisticated in their use of light, darkness and understanding of the use of body and expression. The Taking of Christ (1602), for instance, depicts the arrest of Jesus shortly after the last supper. 

The Taking of Christ, Caravaggio. (c. 1602)

Take a look at this painting, the expressions on each individual face tell a different story, look at the masterful usage of light and shadow, the wrinkles, the folds, the tensions, the muscles of the hands, and the face - when taking them altogether, these individual (seemingly unimportant) details conjure a whole cluster of emotions here. Silvan Tomkins famously said that “the self lives where it exposes itself and where it receives similar exposures from others”. This usage of “on the face” and “on the surface” is where we expose ourselves and others. Caravaggio devised this way before Silvan Tomkins was even born. This undeniable feeling of being on the face of divinity that looking upon a Caravaggio instils - which, ironically enough, was the divinity that mediaeval painters were looking to reproduce - is achieved by Caravaggio through the importance of anatomical detailing. So, not only does this heighten the artist's pursuit of deep anatomical understanding, but the feeling the viewer gets also helps cement the artist as a figure above the others. The artist is a holder of the key to divinity - to a higher state of being. 

All of this, however, not only establishes an ableist relationship between art and artist but also within humanity and art itself. This intimate relationship influences the belief that to make art one must be a supra-human - because art reveals the soul. But most importantly, because art is about intention. 

This is an interesting relationship that is beautifully explored in Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel, Never Let Me Go (2005). The novel opens in the scenic Hailsham, a beautiful boarding school somewhere in the British countryside. Narrated by Kathy, the novel is constructed through a series of flashbacks where we follow her and her two best friends, Tommy and Ruth, throughout their years in and outside of Hailsham. The students of Hailsham live an idyllic life, their day-to-day life doesn't seem or sound any different from what a kid in a boarding school does - but there are some odd things. First, the teachers place a huge emphasis on the student's health - they are subjected to health tests every month and are prohibited from smoking, drinking or doing any activity that might pose a health threat, even after they are out of Hailsham. Another odd aspect of Hailsham is what Kathy and all other students call “Madame’s Gallery”. Aside from the enormous emphasis on health, students at Hailsham are also taught the importance of art and are heavily encouraged to take art classes. All this is because one’s art could possibly end up in Madame’s Gallery. Kathy talks about the Gallery as being linked to a sense of pride, a mark of status, in Hailsham. If Madame took your art to the Gallery, it meant something. But the children at Hailsham didn’t know any details about this gallery other than, every month or so, Madame would come to Hailsham, look over all of the kids' art, and pick out the best pieces to take to the Gallery. 

Vintage Books edition, published 2010.

Via Kathy’s first-person narration, we are slowly introduced into a parallel England where Nazi eugenic fantasies are indeed a reality. Slowly but surely, we learn that Kathy and all the other students at Hailsham are clones created with the sole purpose of donating their organs to extend the life of other humans - when they leave Hailsham, they will begin to donate their vital organs to medicine. Some before others but they will all, someday, die a slow and painful death. 

Now things start to add up, such as the emphasis on health. But why such emphasis on the production of art? What was the whole point of Madame’s Gallery? As the story goes on and the characters grow older, the details surrounding the gallery fade, giving way to more adult worries: such as relationships, love, family, purpose, etc. But when Tommy begins donating organs, he rehashes the memory of the Gallery and together with Kathy’s help they track down both Madame and Miss Emily (one of their old Hailsham teachers). 

It is at this point that the purpose of the Gallery is revealed. We learn that Madame, Miss Emily, and all of the teachers are Hailsham formed part of an organisation that wanted to reform and establish stronger clone rights. Hailsham was opened as a result of all the traction the movement got, a school different from the other facilities clones were kept in, and it was purposefully meant to be a place where the clones could grow up as normal kids, raised in more humane conditions. The gallery is also connected to the activist work the organisers and teachers at Hailsham did. As Miss Emily tells both Kathy and Tommy: “we took away your art because we thought it would reveal your souls. Or to put it more finely, we did it to prove you had souls at all” (p. 255). The clones' art was displayed all around the country as a push by the activist group to fight for the clones' rightful ‘human’ rights. 

And that is when the other shoe drops. 

The gallery was a way to humanise the clones, and does it really come as a surprise considering the history we have explored above? 

The students are different, their bodies are “less” because not only are they seen as ‘not human’ due to not having been exactly ‘born’, but they are cloned after drug addicts and prostitutes. They are here simply to serve biological humans, which leads them to live a sheltered, shell-of-a-life. But, if we have this belief passed down through time and culture that for one to create art one must be human and hold human sensibilities, then wouldn’t that make the students human too? This is what the activists at Hailsham were trying to prove. They used this belief, originating somewhat deep within the realist movement (possibly even before that), and flipped it on its head in order to fight their battle. Of course, they did not win. We later learn Hailsham was shut down and the activist began to lose faith. The book ends with no big institutional or political change when it comes to the living conditions of the clones, but that's because this is not what the story is about. It comes as a shock, not only to Kathy and Tommy but to the readers when we learn the art was collected in order to prove the humanity of the clones - because we have seen them as nothing but human. 

Of course, at the end of the day, each individual person will have their stance on the clones in Ishiguro’s novel - whether one sees them as human or not is their own takeaway from the very personal experience of reading the book. But, if one believes them to be “not human”, then what does that say about our relationship between humanity and art? And it raises an interesting side note to this essay: the very latent question surrounding AI-generated art. 

Théâtre D’opéra Spatial, Jason M. Allen. 2022.

Last year, the Colorado State Fair competition awarded its blue ribbon prize to Jason M. Allen for his breathtaking piece, Théâtre D’opéra Spatial. However, it was revealed after the awarding of the blue ribbon that the piece was A.I. generated. This caused a stir in the art world. Of course, many claimed that Allen cheated and that awarding him with this prize undermined the real work that other artists had put into their own pieces. All Allen had to do was type a few words into the search bar and the algorithm would piece together the vision; of course, Allen would have to write down the exact and perfect words in order to reach the final piece (and surely it took him more than just one try). Nevertheless, A.I. has now made it possible for amateurs to be able to rank amongst the top artists in a competition - and even to be auctioned off for ridiculous amounts of money. 

Such was the case of the A.I. generated piece, Edmond de Belamy, which was auctioned off by Christie’s for no more than 432,500 dollars, seven times more than the initial pre-auction estimates. Constructed by the Paris-based collective, Obvious, the work belongs to a series of generative families titled La Famille de Belamy. The subject of the piece is a blurry man, but how did the A.I. generate this, you ask? Well, it used an algorithm that referenced roughly 150,000 portraits from various art periods spanning between the 14th and 19th centuries. At the bottom of the piece, one can see a signature (pictured above) which is a part of the algorithm that produced Edmond de Belamy. Many have compared Belamy to Francis Bacon's own deformed, faceless portraits - most notably the infamous triptych “Three Studies for a Portrait of Henrietta Moraes” (1963).

But if this machine can create art not only worthy of an award but also, quite literally worth 435,000 dollars, then what is the point of the artist? What is the meaning of art anymore? If a few people can piece together enough lines of code to have an AI gather enough images to generate a piece capable of fooling even the most decorated art critics, then why do we even bother? 

Well, it is not the first time in history that technology has ‘challenged’ the artist's very purpose and existence. The invention of the camera also threatened artists worldwide - what was the point of trying to depict the real, of getting as close to reality in the canvas as one possibly can, if the camera is right there? Baudelaire himself called photography “art’s most mortal enemy”. Well, photography brought about the rise of impressionism and more abstract forms of painting and, let’s not forget, the possibility for collaboration between the two mediums. Take, for example, the infamous picture: Dali Atomicus (1948). The picture was inspired by Dali’s own painting, Leda Atomica (1949). These two show the clear collaboration and adoption of photography not only as an individual artistic medium (with enough strength to stand on its own) but also as a medium that can collaborate with more traditional art forms - such as painting. If photography, which was once seen as an outright threat to art, could be brought into the fold, then what is stopping A.I.-generated art forms from doing so? 

Pictured above: Dali Atomicus (Left) and Leda Atomica (Right).

New technology does not necessarily undermine the artist, but rather it could be brought into the long conversation between people and time periods that is art. 

Be that as it may, it is hard to not feel like A.I.-generated art is a direct threat not only to art as we know it but to the deeper facets of artistry. Well, there is more to art than the final product, isn’t there? Think back to Edmund de Belamy and Bacon’s Three Studies for a Portrait of Henrietta Moraes. Yes, they are somewhat similar, but it is pointless to suggest that this similarity undermines Bacon’s artistry. This is because what is missing from Belamy that Bacon most certainly exhibits is this: intent. Although it was Bacon's intent to make his faces deformed, the deformed faces we see in the example of AI art aren't necessarily the goal of the artist or the machine. What we are looking at are instances in which the machine has failed to properly imitate a human face, and has instead spat out some surprising deformities. 

Edmond de Belamy, 2018.

Three Studies for a Portrait of Henrietta Moraes, Francis Bacon, 1963.

Intention and the creative process are essential to art - and I believe that is what makes the action of looking at art feel holy. It’s not its approximation to reality or the doubtful fact that an ubermensch produced this. No, it is the very human action of intent. The fact that this person did this in order to make it mean something is beautiful because, at the end of the day, it sublimates human connectivity - across time and place. The algorithms might have the ability to produce beautiful images worthy of millions of dollars, but they live within the isolated vacuum that is the moment the A.I. produced said image. It lacks social context, it is alone within its own creative space, unlike the rest of human-generated art which is produced by a human force - inspired by other art, people, faces, places, politics, history, literature, etc. This art is created to tell a story and to make sense of the world. 

Take the example of the mediaeval artists and their depictions of Christ crucified. This led to a whole other artistic movement that - although they wanted to prove them wrong - led to the production of so much art and technique that it is impossible to qualify. And that, in turn, prompted me to write this very article, which led you to read it. That is the powerful human aspect of art that A.I. will have a very hard time generating. 

So, what makes art special? Does it take a special kind of human to produce art? Can there be art without an artist? I must say that, after writing all this, I still don’t know the answer - but one thing is clear: art is here to stay.