Medicine and the visual arts

Abstract

I have alluded to three kinds of links between medicine and the visual arts, two of which are addressed further within the case studies in this section. First, there are visual artists who use medical themes in their work – the graphic novels discussed in Ian Williams’ chapter provide an example. Second, medicine may draw on the help of visual artists or technologies in the process of education or diagnosis – Louise Younie’s chapter shows that this includes art forms ranging from traditional drawing to installations, sculpture and photography. In a third type of link, visual art may be used therapeutically – particularly in psychiatry and in hospitals. Thus, we can appreciate the ubiquity of medicine in art, medicine as art, art in medical practice, and art as medicine. To understand British culture and society since 1945, including its inter-national context, some attention needs to be paid both to ‘medicine’, seen in a generous way, and to the visual arts, which in recent decades are enjoying a glamour, prestige and commercial success that are particularly noteworthy. We may want to connect these phenomena to, on the one hand, an unprecedentedly open environment with regard to the human body, and on the other, with confessional and celebrity cultures that exploit the body. I want to note the surprising fragmentation between scholarly writings on the three key areas addressed here: medicine, the visual arts, and contemporary Britain. Distinct specialized literatures have grown up in each one, and they seem to be unconnected in terms of themes, sources, theories, approaches, guiding assumptions and target audiences. One possible mission, then, for the medical humanities is to act as a bridge between medicine and any other discipline that relates to and bears upon it. Writings in this spirit might succeed in bringing together historiographies now separated, thereby showing how fundamental visual phenomena are for understanding the recent history of medicine as well as the societies for which health and medicine are central concerns. Standard medical history works pay little or no attention to visual culture (for example Cooter and Pickstone 2003; Jackson 2011). Medicine may productively be considered as a form of culture; since1945 its cultural prominence has increased through its presence in the visual arts. These trends need to be seen in historical context, which includes broad shifts in politics, economics and society. Books about contemporary Britain hardly mention the areas I am considering in this chapter (for example Addison and Jones 2005; Clarke 2004; Hollowell 2003; Morgan 2000). Many writings on the visual arts feel little need to engage with social trends, although they certainly acknowledge the role that second-wave feminism, for instance, has played in the art world (Parker and Pollock 1987; Archer 2002). Furthermore, scholarship on museums, galleries, heritage and leisure forms yet another distinct field. Thus, we lack a basic map of the principal shifts, confluences and trends for the multiple relationships between medicine and the visual arts since the war. This chapter sketches in some of the main issues, and mentions a fewof the most striking examples of medicine and visual arts coming together. It does not dwell on art in hospitals and the rise of art therapy, important phenomena though these are. Rather it takes a range of examples and draws more general points out of them, concluding with brief reflections about the opportunities for medical humanities in this area.