Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam
From Paluzzi et al., Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, 2007
For a few years, Nature Reviews Neuroscience stuck to a humorous theme in its cover art: everyday objects that mimic brains. A dandelion, spilled wine, a rock, a cave painting: if you know what features to look for, a surprising number of things resemble brains. We are a species that sees faces on the Martian surface and the Moon; we’re very good at pattern recognition, and it’s probably evolutionarily better for our brains to err on the side of “recognizing” something that isn’t there, than vice versa.
That’s why I’m skeptical of a recent paper by four UK scientists, resurrecting an idea nearly two decades old: that Renaissance painters planted hidden neuroanatomical imagery in their paintings.
This idea apparently originated with gynecologist Frank Meshberger. In 1990, Meshberger proposed that Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel fresco, The Creation of Adam, represents a midsaggital view of the human brain. He argued that the prominent violet oval of God’s billowing cloak outlines the cerebrum, the bump in the front is the Sylvian fissure, and the dangling angels’ legs depict the pituitary and spinal cord. The foot of the frontmost angel is strangely shaped - Meshberger calls it “bifid” - which is consistent with a bilobed pituitary.
The thesis is attractive because it fits the message of the painting: God is giving the divine spark of life to Adam. Couldn’t that spark be wisdom, or intelligence? Meshberger thought so: “the larger image encompassing God is compatible with a brain. Michelangelo portrays that what God is giving to Adam is the intellect.” We know Michelangelo was fascinated by human anatomy; like Leonardo da Vinci, he dissected cadavers, and could plausibly have made and studied a midsaggital brain section. Meshberger’s original paper includes a series of striking figures where he pairs tracings of modern anatomical illustrations (by the renowned Frank Netter, on left) with tracings of the fresco, on right:
from Meshberger, FL, JAMA, 1990
The resemblance is obvious. But is it intentional?
In December, a group of UK-based neuroscientists led by Alessandro Paluzzi extended Meshberger’s hypothesis to two other Renaissance paintings: Rafael’s Transfiguration of Jesus and Gerard David’s Transfiguration of Christ. To my eye, the Rafael bears no resemblance to a brain whatsoever; even the authors note, “[the resemblance] may not be immediately obvious at first sight (and perhaps it was not meant to be).” But the David is strikingly similar to a midline coronal section of the human brain, cropped just right, with Elijah and Moses perched in the ventricles. Judge for yourself:
David, Transfiguration of Christ; coronal section of human brain
From Paluzzi et al., Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, 2007
Is it wrong that Elijah and Moses remind me of Statler and Waldorf?
Despite my skepticism, Paluzzi and colleagues aren’t alone in finding Meshberger’s point of view alluring. In 2006, Michael Salcman revisited Meshberger’s hypothesis, citing putative anatomical influences in other works by Michelangelo, including another part of the Sistine Chapel fresco that he says resembles a “bisected right kidney.” However, Salcman also admitted, “a cynic might suppose that neurologists and nephrologists are prone to discover brains and kidneys everywhere.”
What can I say - I’m just such a cynic. As far as I’m concerned, a 1990 NYT article by Natalie Angier (she’s had the science beat for a long time) says it all too well:
‘I certainly see how he had the idea, but I think it is a retrofit of his own modern knowledge onto Renaissance culture,” said Dr. Kathleen Weil-Garris Brandt, a professor of fine arts at New York University and a consultant for Renaissance art at the Vatican Museum.
”All the elements in the image have profound traditional roots in the visual culture of the Renaissance and Middle Ages. God is more than a flying brain.”
Wouldn’t it be cool if God were a flying brain? (Or a flying spaghetti monster? But I digress.)
Unfortunately, no matter how intriguing these resemblances, we have no explanation for why master artists of the Renaissance would have concealed brain imagery in their work. Paluzzi et al. don’t claim to have an answer, although they suggest “perhaps this was a tongue-in-cheek send-up of religious themes, unbeknownst to the commissioners of the paintings, or maybe just the product of a new philosophical climate where a revitalized passion for life sciences was permeating all aspects of society, including art.” An in-joke/symbol that only a handful of self-educated anatomist-artists could appreciate? That’s a little too Da Vinci Code for me. Still. . . wouldn’t it be cool if it were true?
References
Angier, Natalie, “Michelangelo, Renaissance Man of the Brain, Too?” NYT, October 10, 1990.
Meshburger, FL, “An Interpretation of Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam Based on Neuroanatomy”, JAMA, Vol 264, October 1990. Pubmed
Paluzzi et. al, “Brain ‘imaging’ in the Renaissance”, Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, Vol. 100, December 2007. Pubmed (subscription) (Via Street Anatomy)
Salcman, Michael, “The Creation of Adam by Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564)”, Neurosurgery, Vol 59, December 2006. Pubmed
There is something primally captivating about the successful reproduction of life in art or technology. The Bowes Silver Swan is a wonderful example, dating back to the 18th century. To the accompaniment of a tinkling music box, the life-size swan moves its head, preens, and appears to catch a silver fish (which is really concealed in its throat) out of the glass “stream” it rests in.
This YouTube video captures the swan in surprisingly good resolution, but even better, it captures the genuine childlike enthusiasm of the rapt museum-goers watching the swan’s performance. Apparently we haven’t been totally jaded by CGI - not yet, at least!
John Bowes bought the Swan for 200 pounds in 1872; the Swan is first recorded in an account from 1773, and was made by, I kid you not, someone named John Joseph Merlin. Normally, the Swan performs once or twice daily at the Bowes Museum, but on Friday, Jan. 25, 2008 it will be taken off display for an expert analysis of its three clockwork mechanisms. It is expected to return to catching fish the following day.
Ironically, real swans eat insects, tadpoles, and vegetation, but not fish, so far as I know.
Andrew Severynko’s website reveals an idiosyncratic mix of pastoral watercolors, mixed media, and metal steampunk beasties. He’s represented by Williams Gallery.
Digital artist Almacan (Kazuhiko Nakamura) creates intricately detailed surrealistic portraits, equal parts Giger and da Vinci. This one reminds me of an insectoid Green Man about to disperse into the undergrowth. . . and also, strangely, of Richard Dadd’s Bacchanalian Scene. Almacan says:
I am inspired by surrealism and cyberpunk styles of art. I find myself drawn to 19th century machine designs and armor among other things from that time period as motif. All of these images have been created with a portrait style while still containing a puzzle type quality.
I’ve always loved antique patinas, rusty found objects, and vintage photographs, but these days it seems like EVERYONE has joined the mixed media bandwagon. Suddenly we’re saturated with sepia ancestors, butterfly wings, grungy fonts, and faux-scientific labels. I’m hesitant to work on the mixed media pieces I have on my back burner, because I’m afraid they’ll seem too trendy! My protests that I was doing collage before ephemeramania may sound disingenuous, but I really was. (I also routinely anticipate Pottery Barn trends by a year. And I was never a fan of New Kids on the Block or Milli Vanilli. See? You don’t believe me, do you?)
Although there are hundreds (thousands?) of creative people out there making lovely collages, I rarely find an ephemera artist who makes a strong impression on me with his or her body of work. Mikel Robinson is such an artist. I love his judicious use of illumination, which evokes the primitive technology of advertising lightboxes and magic lanterns, or the gentle fading of souvenirs abandoned under a perpetually sunstruck window. He understands the light-spirited whimsy-wrapped-in-history that is the heart of ephemeral art.
But at the same time, there’s a deeper tension in Robinson’s pieces. Zeppelin, the steampunky image above, is at first glance ridiculous. Check out those coke-bottle goggles! But it’s also a tragic juxtaposition: a humble, self-taught amateur inventor, whose aspirations to flight are embodied in a broken wing and a black machine of war. Sadly funny; damaged, yet stubbornly resourceful - it’s a quintessentially American take on Icarus.
Although there may be a lot going on under the surface, Robinson keeps his pieces refreshingly simple, resisting the insidious urge to layer and texture an image to death. He lets the artifacts speak for themselves, with minimal (or no) framing: in short, he knows when to stop! In his restraint, Robinson is more closely aligned with the intimate assemblage tradition of Joseph Cornell, than with current trends in altered books or scrapbooking - though the stray butterfly wing here and there does keep his work looking current.
The Browns’ sub model is prettier, but Duke Riley handily wins the contest for best artist’s statement:
My work addresses the prospect of residual but forgotten unclaimed frontiers on the edge and inside overdeveloped urban areas, and their unsuspected autonomy.
I had to read that one a few times. And it gets weirder. According to Riley’s website,
From 1992 to 1997, I lived and worked in an 8 by 10 foot pigeon coop constructed out of a widow’s walk on the roof of an old dilapidated building in Providence, RI. I shared the space with both domestic and street pigeons.
Wouldn’t it have been great if he took pigeons along in the Turtle?
Back when I was six or seven, my personal computer was a cassette-tape driven TRS-80, and my favorite game was Pyramid. Pyramid was an endearingly primitive choose-your-own adventure game, in which you gave the program commands it rarely understood, hoping to randomly stumble on something useful, like THROW BIRD. I made it pretty far into the game, only to discover at the heart of the infamous maze of twisty passages, a coin-operated vending machine!
I felt totally ripped off: everyone knows there were no vending machines in ancient Egypt! The game lost some of its luster from this cheap anachronism, and eventually I gave up, moving on to the more fast-paced Centipede clone, Slay the Nereis (OK, I just paused in the middle of writing this post to waste thirty minutes playing Atari’s online version of Centipede. I still get a thrill from the sound of those falling fleas, but how I miss the arcade version’s rollerball).
Anyway, it turns out that Egyptian vending machine wasn’t such a stretch after all. Ancient machines that were derided as toys or flights of fancy are now taken seriously by archaeologists and engineers. The Antikythera mechanism is the best example of this (there was an excellent article about it in the May 15 New Yorker). And Cabinet of Wonders just posted a wonderful essay and collection of links on ancient automata. It’s incredibly interesting reading.
Apparently there was a coin-operated vending machine (for holy water!) two thousand years ago - designed by the Greek engineer Hero of Alexandria (or Heron). That was long after the Pyramids were built, but who knows? Maybe Hero wasn’t the first to figure it out. The Antikythera Mechanism survived, albeit in terrible condition, but how many gadgets, including proto-computers and primitive robots, have been lost? It’s a dizzying question - but also an important reminder that biologically, we are neither more intelligent nor more creative now than our ancestors were a few thousand years ago. We’re just starting at a much higher technological baseline.
Last weekend I discovered Seattle’s Gas Works Park. By accident. And ended up on a tour through the derelict gasworks - led by the park’s designer, Richard Haag. The structures are fenced off, so I got the impression this was an unusual privilege. Fortunately my camera’s battery wasn’t completely exhausted, though I was torn between taking photos and listening to Haag recount his efforts several decades ago to convince the city that the industrial site could be bioremediated. Among his persuasive arguments: growing a nice crop of tomatoes in what was thought to be dead soil.
A former refinery that converted oil and coal to gas, the plant became obsolete in the 1950s, leaving the ground beneath saturated with tar and aromatic hydrocarbons. It was one of the first toxic industrial sites to be successfully reclaimed for public use through bioremediation (although it is still monitored, and intermittent cleanup efforts continue).
My first reaction was WTF?!? How could I know nothing about this extraordinary place? I am so impressed with the city of Seattle (and Haag) for maintaining the towers in their rusty steampunk glory, instead of leveling them, as the original plans for the site demanded. Out of 1400 such gasification plants once operating across the US, this is the largest remnant left standing.
From the park outside, the gasworks now resemble a gigantic modern sculpture with a fashionably distressed patina. The unreal blue-green of the Seattle grass contrasts so strongly with the red rust that it stings the eyes. But in among the towers, the scene is ghostly. Blackberries twine lushly through the iron girders, obviously undaunted by any lingering contamination in the soil. Small piles of bleached bones, perhaps from rodents or birds, litter the ruins. Only a few dangling loops of slender T1 cable, probably from a security system, betray that the Internet Age has supplanted the Industrial.
Although the refinery is barely over 100 years old (and despite its rivets and cogs, not properly “steampunk” at all), rain and benign neglect have left it seemingly ancient, like a half-exposed fossil. I hope these images capture its aura of timeless decay.
Portrait (thought to be of Charlotte Spaulding)
autochrome photograph
Edward Steichen, circa 1908
This is almost as good as discovering an unknown Klimt! Two Steichen autochromes (primitive color photographs) were recently donated to the George Eastman House collection of historic photographs. (Story - Sunday’s NYT)
The dreamy palette results from the primitive autochrome process. . . but I wouldn’t mind believing that light was just a different color in the first decades of this century. The last of the Gilded Age dwindling away, and all that.
Another Steichen photograph, The Pond-Moonlight (1904), sold for almost $3 million in 2006, well more than its weight in gold. The Pond-Moonlight is often described as autochrome, but predated Steichen’s adoption of the Lumiere autochrome process, which was not widely available until 1907. The Sotheby’s auction catalog listed it as multiple gum-bichromate print over platinum. (Not that I have any clue what that means.) The Pond-Moonlight was the most expensive photograph ever auctioned - until it was surpassed in 2007 by Andreas Gursky’s 99 Cent II Diptychon.
