Corner Society for the History of Medicine: Cutaneous History of Modernist Aesthetics

Corner Society for the History of Medicine: "Cutaneous History of Modernist Aesthetics: Cubism, Dermatology, and the Reimagining of Corporeal and Artistic Surface"

By the latter half of the nineteenth century, syphilis had become one of France’s most prominent public health crises. The disease notably posed a visual problem: its observable symptoms were unpredictable, ephemeral, and mimicked those of other illnesses. This markedly troubled relationship to visuality, my research argues, helped cultivate an attitude towards the visual field for physicians and the broader public alike. This talk explores how this visual attitude shaped and was shaped by modern art and medicine.

Kathleen Pierce is Assistant Professor of Art History in the Department of Art at Smith College. Her research explores histories of health, science, and medicine as they intersect with art and visual culture in the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century French empire. Her book, A Cutaneous History of Modernism: From Dermatology's Formalisms to Cubism's Body Politics, is under contract with the University of Chicago Press. Recent writing has appeared in journals and edited volumes including Histoire, Médecine et Santé [History, Medicine and Health], Representations, and Art & the Critical Medical Humanities.