Seeing Art in Medical Archives

A striking show of sculpture from 14th century Europe to the present, Like Life: Sculpture, Color, and the Body, currently on view at the Met Breuer, is full of surprises. How, the show asks repeatedly, did artists over the centuries depict the human body? Works of art that we expect to find in art museums are juxtaposed with much more jarring examples—in many cases, objects not traditionally seen as art at all. There are casts taken from real bodies; paint applied to works of art to imitate flesh tones. There are works with human blood, hair, teeth, and bones.

One of the most shocking is The Digger (1857-1858) by Alphonse Lami, where the flayed figure’s (écorché) life-size body is so realistic that we see all the details of his musculature. He is leaning on his shovel but he hardly seems to be working. His body is painted red, with a sheen that radiates from what seem to be medically delineated tendons.  The Met Breuer’s website reminds us that although most écorchés were created as anatomical teaching models for students of painting and sculpture, Lami “conceived of this figure as a genuine work of art, exhibiting it at the Parisian Salon of 1857 and signing its bronze base before it was subsequently