Queer Anatomies: Aesthetics and Desire in the Anatomical Image, 1700-1900

In centuries past, sexual body-parts and same-sex desire were un­men­­tionables de­barred from polite conver­sa­tion and printed discourse. Yet one scientific discipline—ana­to­my—had license to rep­re­sent and nar­rate the in­timate details of the human body—anus and genitals in­clud­ed. Figured with­in the frame of an anatomical plate, pre­sen­ta­tions of dissected bo­dies and body-parts were often soberly tech­ni­cal. But just as often mon­strous, provoca­tive, flirtatious, theatri­cal, beau­tiful, and even sensual. Queer Anatomies explores overlooked examples of erotic expression within 18th and 19th-century anatomical imagery. It uncovers the subtle eroticism of certain anatomical illustrations, and the queerness of the men who made, used and collected them. As a foundational subject for physicians, surgeons and artists in 18th- and 19th-century Europe, anatomy was a privileged, male-dominated domain. Artistic and medical compe­tence depended on a deep knowledge of anatomy and offered cultural legitimacy, healing authority, and aesthetic discernment to those who practiced it. The anatomical image could serve as a virtual queer space, a private or shared closet, or a men’s club. Serious anatomical subjects were charged with erotic, often homoerotic, undertones. Taking brilliant works by Gautier Dagoty, William Cheselden, and Joseph Maclise, and many others, Queer Anatomies assembles a lost archive of queer expression—115 illustra­tions, in full-colour reproduction—that range from images of nudes, dissected bodies, penises, vaginas, rectums, hands, faces, and skin, to scenes of male viewers gazing upon works of art governed by anatomical principles. Yet the men who produced and savored illustrated anatomies were reticent, closeted. Diving into these textual and represen­ta­tional spaces via essayistic reflection, Queer Anatomies decodes their words and images, even their silences. With a range of close readings and com­par­ison of key images, this book unearths the connections between medical history, connoisseur­ship, queer studies, and art history and the understudied relationship between anatomy and desire.

Table of Contents:
List of Illustrations Acknowledgements Part One: The unbearable queerness of anatomy Introduction 1.1.1 A queer ventriloquism act 1.1.2 An advisory, an acknowledgment Theory 1.2.1 Queer explains everyone 1.2.2 Queer history 1.2.3 The gaze and its objects 1.2.4 Proliferating views, intensified viewing 1.2.5 A­n odd term 1.2.6 Default genders of anatomy 1.2.7 Homoerotics queered 1.2.8 The epistemology of the anatomical closet Objects 1.3.1 Mystery men, mute images 1.3.2 The mystery penis 1.3.3 The penis and medical eyes 1.3.4 The closet’s edge Part Two: Connoisseurship, taste and “the beauty of the plate” Gautier 2.1.1 Hungry eyes, science and the anatomical mezzotint 2.1.2 Anatomical provocations and the senses Cheselden 2.2.1 “The beauty of the plate” 2.2.2 What is beautiful? 2.2.3 Connoisseurial judgment and anatomy 2.2.4 Cheselden’s figures 2.2.5 Cheselden the man 2.2.6 The learning curve 2.2.7 Headbutting disputation Between Men 2.3.1 Between men: connoisseurs, collectors and anatomy 2.3.2 Conversations and “conversation pieces” 2.3.3 Eyes on the connoisseurial gaze 2.3.4 Between men: a continuum of attachments 2.3.5 Between men: surgical masculinity and objects Part Three: “Overshadowed by the artist”: Mr Joseph Maclise’s queer anatomy Prologue: Nicolas-Henri Jacob 3.1 Medical eyes, surgical hands Joseph Maclise 3.2 The mystery of Mr Joseph Maclise 3.2.1 Misters Quain and Maclise 3.2.2 Queer bedroom scenes 3.2.3 Irrelevant penises (a gallery) 3.2.4 Touching representation 3.2.5 Cascading rhymes 3.2.6 The anus compared 3.2.7 Maclise’s men: An imaginary confraternity? 3.2.8 Race and Maclise’s radical (queer) philosophy of universalist embodiment 3.2.9 Heteronormative queer 3.2.10 A crucifixion 3.2.11 How did Quain and Maclise get on? 3.2.12 Comparative anatomies: predecessors, contemporaries 3.2.13 The queer figure study 3.2.14 The locked atlas and locked closet Appendix 3.3 Maclise’s long goodbye Conclusion: The ontology of the anatomical closet Bibliography Index

About the Author :
Michael Sappol is Visiting Researcher at Uppsala University, Sweden, and a historian of the visual culture and performance of medicine and science, with a focus on anatomy and the Body. Between 1998 and 2016, he was Historian, Scholar-in-Residence and Exhibition Curator at the National Library of Medicine, USA.

Review :
Gay physicians and aesthetes of all stripes will enjoy Sappol's chatty style, peppered with winking asides, and appreciate his deep scholarship and intimate familiarity with anatomical art. Queer Anatomies upends all that we know and assume about the dissected body, the male gaze, and the interior life of early anatomists. Michael Sappol is erudite and learned, clever and brash, always surprising, and consistently brilliant. Rethinking ‘queerness’ through the historical lens of artistic anatomy, Michael Sappol opens the closet on the lushly erotic, macabre—queer—pleasures in exquisite prints of dissected bodies. Wearing its erudition lightly, Sappol’s witty take in Queer Anatomies informs, delights and challenges in equal measure. Lavish, provocative, and richly revealing, this is a visually dazzling and intellectually playful meditation on the transgressive culture of 18th- and 19th-century anatomical illustrations and the men who created, scrutinized, and collected them. Michael Sappol looks at what others ignore, teasing out the places where scholarship and sexuality, medicine and pleasure meet. This exquisitely researched, beautifully written and illustrated book will provoke, fascinate, and delight.