Come see this lecture tonight at Observatory, our event space in Gowanus, Brooklyn:
An Iconography of the Industrial Body: Fritz Kahn, Popular Medical Illustration and the Visual Rhetoric of Modernity This
talk focuses on the publications of Fritz Kahn (1888-1968), a
German-Jewish physician. Between 1920 and 1950, Kahn was a widely-read
author of books and articles for the general public on medicine, health
and science. His principal works, Das Leben des Menschen [The Life of Man] (5 vols.; Stuttgart, 1922-31) and Der Mensch: Gesund und Krank [Man: In Health and Sickness] (2 vols.; Zürich, 1939) feature thousands of illustrations. Influenced by Dada, neue Sachlichkeit,
surrealism, futurism, Bauhaus, constructivism, Art Deco,
neo-classicism, comic strips, photomontage, and advertising graphics,
Kahn, and the artists working under his direction, visually explained
how the human body works, based on the findings of modern biological
science. At the same time, the images refer back to the chaos,
violence, impasses, pleasures, dreams, and technological and
sociocultural ambitions of early and mid-20th-century Germany. Kahn
deployed a visual vocabulary of modernism to figure industrial
modernity within the body and the body within industrial modernity. The
result was a corpus of images and tropes which imagined a new body for
the modern age.
Image: Fritz Kahn, Das Leben des Menschen 5 (1931): 53.
Retinal imaging and halftone printing compared.
Artist: Roman Rechn.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Observatory is located at 543 Union Street at Nevins.
Enter Observatory via Proteus Gowanus Gallery
R or M
train
to Union Street in Brooklyn: Walk two long blocks on Union (towards the
Gowanus Canal) to Nevins Street. 543 Union Street is the large red
brick building on right. Go right on Nevins and left down alley through
large black gates. Gallery is the second door on the left.
F or G train
to Carroll Street: Walk one block to Union. Turn right, walk two long
blocks on Union towards the Gowanus Canal, cross the bridge, take left
on Nevins, go down the alley to the second door on the left.
See you there!
Comments