Monday, February 21, 2011

Wooden Anatomical Eve, "Anatomie des Vanités" Exhibition, Brussels, Belgium, 2008



An astounding wooden Anatomical Eve from an unnamed private collection, as featured in the "Anatomie des Vanités" exhibit at The Erasmus House in Brussels, Belgium in 2008.

An overview of the exhibition, from the museum flyer:
The exhibition includes animals, Narwhal tusks, an anatomical Eve, a whale's penis, 'vanities', turned ivories, testimony to the masters' virtuosity an of the taste for curiosities that could be found in the 'Wunderkammern' of the 16th and 17th centuries. These historic objects are contrasted with contemporary art (Jan fabre, Marie-Jo Lafontaine) and with paintings of this Museum (Jerome Bosh, Quentin Massys, Hans Holbein). The artist Aida Kazarian has helped redesign the layout of the Museum, on the 75th anniversary of the foundation of Erasmus House. The highlight of the exhibition is a pregnant anatomical Eve, coming from a private collection. This exhibition on vanity, though in jubilant fashion, shows many representations of death, at the confluence of the traditional 'memento mori' of the Middles Ages and the birth of scientific thought in the curiosity cabinets.
More about the exhibition here. More about Erasmus House here.

Inspired by Elettrogenica.

1 comment:

Owen said...

A truly astounding anatomical model. Must have been quite a project for the artist to work on. I suppose it was done on commission ? But by whom, and for whom ? And did it require working from models in a dissection amphitheatre ?