The Grotesque Body and the Living Nude

Marshall, Jonathan W.

doi:10.1057/978-1-137-51762-3_5

Jonathan W. Marshall²

341 Accesses

Abstract

This chapter uses the work of Charcot’s students Richer and Meige to expand on how the body was considered and displayed within the Charcot school. Succeeding Duval, Richer, and Meige taught anatomy for life drawing at Paris’ École des Beaux-Arts. Their construction of healthy performance is contrasted with Charcot’s writings on the disorderly body to illustrate the aesthetic basis of the neurological definition of health versus disease. Scenes of the grotesque, disorder, carnival, sadomasochism, and the macabre are set against the rhythmic and performative symmetry of the neoclassical athletic body. In Richer’s terms, it is the chaotic “music” or “rhythm” of the body, its sequential or choreographic disorder, which renders the body diseased.

Some of the material from this chapter has appeared in Jonathan W. Marshall, “The Theatre of the Athletic Nude,” Being There: ADSA Proceedings (June 2008), http://ses.library.usyd.edu.au/bitstream/2123/2511/1/ADSA2006_Marshall.pdf and “The Priestesses of Apollo and the Heirs of Aesculapius: Medical Art-Historical Approaches to Ancient Choreography After Charcot,” Forum for Modern Language Studies, 43.4 (Oct 2007): 410–426, reproduced here by kind permission of Australasian Drama Studies Association, and Oxford University Press.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution

Chapter: USD 29.95; Price excludes VAT (USA)

eBook: USD 99.00; Price excludes VAT (USA)

Hardcover Book: USD 129.99; Price excludes VAT (USA)

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

1.
OC, vol. 13, pp. 20–22; Paul Richer [1890], Artistic Anatomy, trans. Robert Hale (NY: Watson-Guptill, 1986), 15.
2.
Jean-Martin Charcot and Paul Richer. “Les démoniaques dans l’art” suivi de “La foi qui guérit,” facsimile reproduction, edited and commentary by Georges Didi-Huberman and Pierre Fédida (Paris: Macula, 1984), Les difformes et les malades dans l’art, facsimile ed. (Amsterdam: N.V. Boekhandel et antiquariaat, 1972); Paul Richer, L’art et la médecine (Paris: Gaultier, 1901), Nouvelle anatomie artistique (Paris: Plon, 1889–1929), 7 vols.
3.
See Marshall, “Theatre”; Anthea Callen, “The Body and Difference,” Art History, 20.1 (1997): 23–60, “Masculinity and Muscularity,” Paragraph, 26.1–2 (March–July 2003): 17–41; Philippe Comar et al, Figures du corps (Paris: ENSBA, 2009).
4.
Jonathan Marshall, “The Archaeology of the Abstract Body: Parascientific Discourse and the Legacy of Dr J.-M. Charcot, 1876–1969,” French History and Civilization: Papers from the George Rudé Seminar, 3 (2009): 94, reproduced on <http://www.h-france.netruderudevolumeiiiMarshallVol3.pdf.
5.
Charles Féré, review of Iconographie photographique de la Salpêtrière, Archives de neurologie, 1 (1881): 626.
6.
Guillaume-Benjamin Duchenne de Boulogne, The Mechanism of Human Facial Expression, ed. and trans. R. Andrew Cuthbertson (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1990).
7.
Revue photographique des hôpitaux de Paris, eds A. de Montméja, P. Jules Rengade, Désiré Bourneville, et al (Paris: Delahaye, 1869–1876), 8 vols.
8.
Bernard and Gunthert, 99–143, 206–211.
9.
Anon, “La femme ‘à la crinière de cheval,’” Monde illustré (5 August 1893), back-page (unpaginated).
10.
Richer, Physiologie, 16.
11.
Georges Guinon, “Charcot intimé,” Paris médical, 56.21 (23 May 1925): 514.
12.
H. Richard, “Richer (Paul-Marie-Louis-Pierre),” Les Biographes médicales, 4.1 (January 1930): 65–76.
13.
Roth, 22.
14.
Désiré Bourneville, Science et Miracle: Louise Lateau ou la stigmatisée belge (Paris: Progrès médical, 1875), 39.
15.
Charles Darwin, The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, commentary Paul Ekman and Phillip Prodger (London: HarperCollins, 1998), 409–410.
16.
OC, vol. 12 [BC], p. 178.
17.
Bernard and Gunthert, 65–98.
18.
The image recurs throughout works of the Salpêtrière school. OC, vol. 9, p. 296.
19.
Meige, “Charcot,” 495.
20.
Richer, Physiologie, 14.
21.
Ibid., 8–9.
22.
Meige, “Charcot,” 498–510.
23.
Bourneville, “J.-M. Charcot,” 202.
24.
Richer, École, 31.
25.
Paul Richer, “L’anatomie et les arts plastiques,” Séance publique annuelle des Cinq Académies (25 October 1907): 12.
26.
Paul Richer, Dialogues sur l’art et la science (Paris: Auxerre, 1897), 30.
27.
Richer’s aesthetic can be considered the rational, scientific antithesis of Futurist “body madness” in this sense. Umbro Apollonio, ed. and trans., Futurist Manifestoes (London: Thames and Hudson, 1973), 38–41, 196.
28.
Henry Meige, École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts. Cours d’anatomie. Leçon d’ouverture (18 décembre 1922) (Paris: Masson, 1923), 5; Paul Richer, Canon des proportions du corps humain (Paris: Delgrave, 1919).
29.
Londe, “Nouveau,” 370–4; Bernard and Gunthert, 99–143, 206–211.
30.
Meige, École, 15.
31.
Jean-Martin Charcot and Paul Richer, “Le mascaron grotesque de l’église Santa Maria Formosa,” NIPS, 1 (1888): 87–92.
32.
OC, vol. 13, p. 79; Jean-Martin Charcot and Paul Richer, Les difformes et les malades dans l’art, facsimile edn (Amsterdam: N.V. Boekhandel et antiquariaat, 1972), 1–5; Paul Richer, L’art et la médecine (Paris: Gaultier, 1901), 166–9.
33.
Jean-Martin Charcot and Paul Richer, “Les démoniaques dans l’art” suivi de “La foi qui guérit,” facsimile reproduction; ed. and commentary Georges Didi-Huberman and Pierre Fédida (Paris: Macula, 1984), 166–175.
34.
Charcot and Richer, Difformes, I, 1–33.
35.
Maurice Debove, “Éloge de J.-M. Charcot,” Mémoires de l’Académie de médecine, 39 (1901): 14.
36.
Lubimoff, 59.
37.
Thomas Bulfinch, Bulfinch’s Mythology (NY: Grosset and Dunlap, 1913), 34–36.
38.
Meige, École, 10.
39.
Maurice Hamel, “Le salon de 1887,” Gazette des beaux-arts, 35–36 (June 1887): 476.
40.
Courrière, 144–6; Reenooz, 245.
41.
Chrissie Iles and Russell Roberts, eds, In Visible Light: Photography and Classification (Oxford: Museum of Modern Art Oxford, 1997), 75–78.
42.
Sylvie Aubenas, ed., L’art du nu au XIXe siècle: Le photographe et son modèle (Paris: Hazan / BNF, 1997), 104–7.
43.
Anon, La revue d’amour, souvenir program (Paris: Éditions artistiques de Paris, 1933), possession of author.
44.
Collection de photographies anciens, Bibliothèque d’ENSBA, Paris. Reproduced in Aubenas, ed., 124.
45.
Foucault, The History of Sexuality. Volume I. An Introduction, trans. Robert Hurley (London: Penguin, 1990), 56.
46.
Antonin Artaud, The Theatre and its Double, trans. Mary Caroline Richards (NY: Weidenfeld, 1958).
47.
Meige, École, 12–16.
48.
Marshall, “Theatre,” 16.
49.
Note that in the English trans. above, the phrase “s’est-il appliqué” has been moved to clarify its relation to its subject “la source.” “s’est-il appliqué, tout au contraire, à partir des régions profondes, à puiser à la source même des mouvements, au milieu des groupes musculaires, les raisons du modelé et des attitudes. C’est ainsi que, s’aidant tout à tour du cadavre et du modèle vivant, que, disséquant avec le scalpel le muscle qu’il … arrive à rendre l’artiste ‘à même d’analyser à travers la peau, comme à travers un voile transparent.’” Étienne Roc, “Professeur Mathias Duval,” Hommes d’aujourd’hui, 273 (1886): 1–4; see also Mathias Duval [1891], Précis d’anatomie à l’usage des artistes (Paris: L.-H. May, 1900).
50.
Aubenas, ed., 155.
51.
Richer, Physiologie, 15.
52.
Richer, École, 1–20.
53.
Richer, Nouvelle anatomie artistique (Paris: Plon, 1889–1929), vol. 5, p. 399.
54.
Henry Meige, “Les ‘écorchés,’” Aesculape, 16 (1926), 1–7, Meige, École, 12–13.
55.
François Sallé, Un cours d’anatomie à l’École de beaux arts à Paris (1888); collection of Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; Callen, “Body,” 23–60.
56.
Richer, École, 21.
57.
Henry Meige, “Une révolution anatomique,” NIPS, vol. 20 (1907), plates 35–36.
58.
Richer, Physiologie, 10.
59.
Richer, École, 22–24.
60.
Anon, “RICHER (Paul-Marie-Louis-Pierre),” in Maurice Genty and Paul Busquet, eds, Les biographies médicales (Paris: Baillière, 1930–36), vol. 5, pp. 65–76; Simon-Dhouailly, ed., 100–101.
61.
P. Bellugue, “Henry Meige,” Presse médicale, 29–30 (2–5 April 1941): 372–4.
62.
Chevalier de Jaucourt, “Dance,” in Denis Diderot, ed., Encyclopédie (Paris: 1751–65); Londe, “Nouveau,” 372–4.
63.
Charcot and Richer, Difformes, 12.
64.
Richer, Art, 540.
65.
Richer, Dialogues, 36–37.
66.
Richer, Art, 6–8.
67.
Richer, Dialogues, 36. Londe took a series of photographs of clowns, animals, and their trainers at the famous Hippodrome des Champs Elysées on avenue de l’Alma, 1887–88. André Gunthert, Albert Londe (Paris: Nathan, 1999), tirages 24–28.
68.
Guillain, x.
69.
Paul Richer, “Locomotion humaine,” in Arsène d’Arsonval, Étienne-Jules Marey, et al, eds, Traité de physique biologique (Paris: Masson, 1901–03), vol. 1, p. 215.
70.
Richer, Artistic, 15.
71.
Richer, Art, 540.
72.
Richer, “L’anatomie,” 10.
73.
Charcot and Richer, Difformes, 144–151; Jane Eade, “The Theatre of Death,” Oxford Art Journal, 36.1 (2013): 109–125; R. Ballestriero, “Anatomical Models and Wax Venuses,” Journal of Anatomy, 216.2 (Feb 2010): 223–234; Petra Lamers-Schütze, ed., Encyclopaedia anatomica: Museo La Specola, Florence, commentary Georges Didi-Huberman et al (Köln: Taschen, 2001); Lynne Cooke and Peter Woolen, eds, Visual Culture (Seattle: Bay Press, 1995), 178–217.
74.
Richer, Art, 8.
75.
Meige, École, 1–20.
76.
Henry Meige, Le juif errant à la Salpêtrière (Paris: Bataille, 1893); Goldstein, “Wandering,” 521–552.
77.
Meige, Juif, 8, Henry Meige, L’infantilisme, le féminisme et les hermaphrodites antiques (Paris: Masson, 1895), 7.
78.
Wouter de Herder, “History of Acromegaly,” Neuroendocrinology (5 Jan 2015): 1–11.
79.
Edouard Brissaud and Henry Meige, Gigantisme et acromégalie (Paris: A. Coccoz, 1895), 3.
80.
OC, vol. 13, pp. 392–9.
81.
Brissaud and Meige, 4.
82.
Charcot and Richer, Difformes, 51; Henry Meige, Sur le gigantisme (Paris: Albouy, 1903), 10.
83.
Brissaud and Meige, 6–22.
84.
Meige, Infantilisme, gigantisme, 11–20, Sur le gigantisme, 4.
85.
Meige, Sur le gigantisme, 3–7.

Reference

———. Le juif errant à la Salpêtrière. Paris: Bataille, 1893.
Google Scholar

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

West Australian Academy of Performing Arts, Edith Cowan University, Perth, WA, Australia
Jonathan W. Marshall

Authors

Jonathan W. Marshall
View author publications
You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Copyright information

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Marshall, J.W. (2016). The Grotesque Body and the Living Nude. In: Performing Neurology. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-51762-3_5

Download citation

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-51762-3_5
Published: 14 July 2016
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-137-51761-6
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-51762-3
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics