Showing 1 - 10 of 142 Painting/Drawing annotations

See You On the Other Side

Wong, Matthew

Last Updated: Nov-04-2019
Annotated by:
Lam, MD, Gretl

Primary Category: Visual Arts / Painting/Drawing

Genre: Painting

Summary:

A tiny figure sits alone, looking back at a building in the distance. The building looks like a one-story home, the rudimentary kind you learn to draw in kindergarten, with a triangle roof and a blocky rectangular body, embedded with smaller rectangles to signify the door and windows. The figure in the foreground and the house in the background are the same size, and this scale emphasizes the depth of the landscape – the figure and the house are separated by a vast white space. And yet they are clearly connected, not only because the house is centered in the figure’s line of vision, but also because they share the same teal colors.  

The house sits at the foot of a spring-green mountain, painted over with long cascading strokes of darker green, giving the impression of a verdant and peaceful setting. Contrast this to the brown ridge where the figure is sitting, huddled in a long sleeve jacket, hands tucked into pockets. The ridge is barren except for a single tree that is mostly bare branches with sparse pale-pink leaves.

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T.B., Harlem

Neel, Alice

Last Updated: Mar-01-2017
Annotated by:
Winkler, Mary

Primary Category: Visual Arts / Painting/Drawing

Genre: Painting

Summary:

A young man lies propped up on pillows, his hand pointing toward a bandaged area on his side. The composition is a powerful diagonal sweep, the body in the bed forming a triangle. At its apex, the head of the man with its mass of dark hair is haloed in the white of the pillow. His dark, glistening eyes arrest the viewer, demanding attention and implicitly evoking sympathy. Neel’s expressionism is displayed in the elongated curvature of the neck, the ears splayed out from the head to rest on the pillow, and in the eloquent gesture toward the bandage.

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T.B. Harlem

Neel, Alice

Last Updated: Mar-01-2017
Annotated by:
Teagarden, J. Russell

Primary Category: Visual Arts / Painting/Drawing

Genre: Painting

Summary:

The Alice Neel painting, T.B. Harlem, can be seen at the National Museum of Women in Arts in Washington, D.C.

We are looking at a young man who has tuberculosis (TB) and who is at home recovering from a surgical procedure designed to collapse a part of his lung that is infected. He looks sick. His presentation conveys how TB can be called “consumption.” From this picture, however, we can tell that it is not just the subject’s body that is being consumed, but also his spirit and any reservoir of hope.  

The painting appeared on the cover of the June 8, 2005 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).  In his accompanying essay, William Barclay, a pulmonary specialist, surmises that “thoracoplasty” was the surgical procedure used for this person. The procedure involves the removal of several ribs so that the soft tissue the ribs held up collapses upon the lung and closes it off. Barclay calls thoracoplasty “the most radical form of collapse treatment” at the time. He also notes how Neel captured the anatomical consequences of the procedure: His body forms a graceful sigmoid curve, for a thoracoplasty always resulted in a thoracic scoliosis from the pull of the muscles on the side not operated on, with a compensatory cervical scoliosis in the opposite direction.  

A white wound dressing on the left side of the subject’s chest draws our attention because of its brightness and because the subject’s right hand is pointing to it. It’s not covering the surgical incision because that’s on his back. Barclay suggests that the dressing is covering a wound that opened up a track from the skin to the chest lining or to the lung (i.e., a fistula). The dressing takes the shape of a cross, which made the writer of the text accompanying the painting at the museum where it hangs wonder if we are to see the subject as a martyr in the form of Christ.

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The Sick Child

Munch, Edvard

Last Updated: Nov-08-2016
Annotated by:
Bertman, Sandra

Primary Category: Visual Arts / Painting/Drawing

Genre: Painting

Summary:

In this painting, Edvard Munch shows, as the center of attention, a stricken young girl, propped on a thick white pillow, covered with a heavy blanket, at the end of her short life. A grieving companion sits next to her, her head so deeply bowed that we can only see the top of her head, not her features. The companion is so overcome with grief that she can neither hold her head up, nor look at the dying girl. Only the young girl's haunting profile is visible, as she looks steadily toward a dark ominous drape, perhaps representing the unknown or the mystery of death. Her reddish hair appears thin, damp, and uncombed against the pillow.The two figures make contact by holding hands for comfort. The artist omits the details of fingers, and just indicates a simple connected shape for both hands. Striving for only simplified and essential forms, Munch enhanced each surface by impassioned brushstrokes, nuanced colors, and thick layers of impasto paint.

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The Sick Child

Munch, Edvard

Last Updated: Nov-08-2016
Annotated by:
Teagarden, J. Russell

Primary Category: Visual Arts / Painting/Drawing

Genre: Painting

Summary:

Edvard Munch’s painting, The Sick Child, hanging in the Tate in London, England is his fourth version of the painting. This version is done in oil on canvas and was completed in 1907. The first version was painted in 1885.  

As we come upon this painting, we quickly realize we are standing at the end of a bed intruding upon a poignant moment. In this impressionistic painting, we can discern an adolescent girl propped up in bed. She is facing an older woman sitting at her side. We don’t see this woman’s face because her chin is on her chest in a way that makes her look distraught. We can easily conclude that she is the girl’s mother and that the girl is sick, very sick.  

When we look around the room with the view Munch gives us, we see little in the way of medical supplies or equipment. There is only a bottle on a nightstand that might be some potion and a glass of water on a dresser. Nothing more is to be done for this child. She seems to know it and so she tries to comfort the woman who is attending her. The painting reminds the viewer that often those who are dying offer comfort to the ones attending them as well.

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Little Angel

Sesow, Matt

Last Updated: Jun-28-2016
Annotated by:
Lam, MD, Gretl

Primary Category: Visual Arts / Painting/Drawing

Genre: Painting

Summary:

Two harshly drawn figures make up this painting, an adult cradling a baby. Both figures stare out and confront the viewer with round bulging eyes. Their wide red mouths are drawn into grimaces, displaying long rows of teeth. Their bodies are pale, but are outlined roughly in black, and marked by gashes of blue, pink, and red. They stand, highlighted in yellow, against an angry and energetic backdrop of red and orange.  

A small black halo sticks out stiffly from the head of the baby, while two sharp black horns protrude from the crown of the adult. The adult’s disproportionately large thick hand presses the baby close to their body. Is this an adult or is it a monster or a devil? The viewer is left to decide. Whoever or whatever the figure is, it holds the baby in a way that is protective and menacing at the same time.

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Theodor Billroth Operating (Billroth im Hörsaal)

Seligmann, Adelbert

Last Updated: Jun-06-2016
Annotated by:
Shafer, Audrey

Primary Category: Visual Arts / Painting/Drawing

Genre: Painting

Summary:

Theodor Billroth, one of the most innovative and outstanding surgeons and educators of late 19th century European medicine, is depicted in this painting at the height of fame when he was about 60 years old. Billroth, in full white beard, stands in the center of the canvas, looking away from the patient--an assistant is handing him a surgical instrument. His visage is regal, his bearing composed.Seven white-coated assistants surround the patient, who lays supine with his head elevated. The patient's head is shaved, and according to the artist's notes, the operation is a neurotomy for trigeminal neuralgia--a painful condition of the face. The patient is receiving general anesthesia by open drop method. Billroth favored a mixture of alcohol, chloroform, and ether, anticipating a modern trend to administer multiple agents in anesthesia. Billroth is also using Lister's methods of sterilization and antisepsis. Note that rubber gloves were not yet used in surgery at this time.Light from a large window to the surgeon's right bathes the operating theater with brightness. A full gallery of onlookers includes the artist on the right side of the first row, and the Duke of Bavaria, seated at the opposite end, who came to the operations and lectures for entertainment. Billroth was a celebrated teacher, and thousands came to the Allgemeines Krankenhaus, the General Hospital of the University of Vienna, to observe and study his techniques.

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The Anatomy Lesson of Nicolaes Tulp

Van Rijn, Rembrandt Harmenszoon

Last Updated: May-25-2016
Annotated by:
Clark, Stephanie Brown

Primary Category: Visual Arts / Painting/Drawing

Genre: Painting

Summary:

In this famous group portrait, seven figures, situated in the anatomical theatre of the Surgeon’s Guild in Amsterdam in 1632, gaze intently in various directions--several look towards the cadaver of Aris Kindt, a criminal recently executed for robbery; others towards the 39-year old surgeon and appointed "city anatomist" (Praelator Anatomie) Nicolaes Tulp; several figures seem to look towards the large text at the bottom right of the painting, possibly the authoritative anatomical atlas by Andreas Vesalius, De Humani Coporius Humani [Fabric of the Human Body] published in 1543; several figures gaze out towards the viewer. Tulp himself appears to look beyond the guild members to an audience elsewhere in the anatomical theatre.Only the left forearm and hand of the cadaver have been dissected. With forceps in his right hand, Tulp holds the muscle which, when contracted, causes the fingers to flex (flexor digitorum superficialis). Tulp’s own left hand position seems to demonstrate this movement. The figure farthest from the cadaver appears to imitate this position. The palour and stiffness of the cadaver contrasts with the intensity and colour on the faces of the onlookers, and with the living hands of Tulp the dissector.

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Cauda Equina

Lehrer, Riva

Last Updated: May-05-2016
Annotated by:
Lam, MD, Gretl

Primary Category: Visual Arts / Painting/Drawing

Genre: Painting

Summary:

A woman stands nude with her back to the viewer. Her arms are raised, hands interlaced behind her neck. Her back is deformed and scarred, but her body, depicted in warm flesh tones, looks solid and capable. She stands uncomfortably but patiently, as if she is waiting for a medical exam in a doctor’s office, or as if she is inviting the audience to look and learn.  

A skeleton is superimposed anatomically over the lower half of the woman’s body, including her lower spine, pelvis, and femurs. A round form surrounds the lower spine which looks abnormal. In the blue background is a skeleton of a horse. The horse is angled away from the audience, such that we see its rear and tail most prominently. But its head is turned to look backwards, so that its empty eye sockets appear to be peering at the woman and at the audience.  

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Sheri / Dragon

Lehrer, Riva

Last Updated: May-05-2016
Annotated by:
Lam, MD, Gretl

Primary Category: Visual Arts / Painting/Drawing

Genre: Drawing

Summary:

A woman drawn in charcoal crouches tensely on all fours, arms wide as if proudly claiming territory, but with one hand raised in hesitation. Her legs are strong, and her breasts are exposed animalistically. But the viewer’s eyes are drawn to her face, which looks sad and weary.

A green dragon is super-imposed onto the body of the woman. It glares at the audience, snarling toothily with a red open mouth. Its head is raised proudly, and its wings are spread defiantly. It is ready to attack. But the dragon looks partly mechanical, and it fits onto the woman like a costume, with her head, chest, arms, and legs exposed. It is armor that simultaneously protects yet burdens her.

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