You are looking at human corpses as Art Objects…
Art aficionados found themselves stunned by a work impossible to identify as medical science because of its gruesome and disturbing beauty.
Honoré Fragonard 1732-1799 (cousin of the famous painter) spent nine years preparing some 3,000 of anatomical items. What is photographed in this book is what is left.
However, these items were supposed to be used as tools in the education of medical practitioners. The scorched were intended for teaching focused on a specific apparatus highlighted by actual dissection of specific human bodies. These skinned bodies, such as The Horseman of the Apocalypse and The Man with a Mandible, are highly impressive. Fragonard chose to stage Death, using the human body as artistic material, elaborately posed as Death could have caught them, according to Fragonard’s creative fantasy.
It was the first time a photographer was allowed to enter into “The Horror Gallery” of the Veterinarian Museum of Maison Alfort near Paris, France. For two centuries the remaining pieces of Fragonard’s Ecorches were locked out, hidden from the public’s eyes. They still are.
Most of this work was destroyed during the French Revolution, perceived as a symbol of the upper class decadence.
Back in the 18-century, Aristocrats used to have a “horror room” in their mansion in order to entertain their guests in a morbid fashion.
Many legends have been created around Fragonard, they are exposed in this book, but the most amazing fact is that his work would be impossible to reproduce today. His dissection technique and chemistry knowledge will always remain a mystery.
