Le corps transcendé MARILENE OLIVER

COMMUNIQUE DE PRESSE
Marilène Oliver
Le corps transcendé
exposition de sculptures
exposition du 14 avril au 31 mai 2011
vernissage jeudi 14 avril à 18h
signature du livre
Le corps et son image
12h-14 et 18h-20h
Hôpital, entrée principale
entrée libre, tous les jours 8h-20h
Le corps transcendé
MARILENE OLIVER
EXPOSITION DE SCULPTURES
PRESENTATION
Le corps transcendé
Suite à la parution du livre Le corps et son image du Prof. Osman Ratib, les affaires
culturelles présentent les fascinantes sculptures de l’artiste Marilène Oliver
Point commun entre un étonnant ouvrage de vulgarisation médicale et les magnifiques
sculptures de l’artiste anglaise Marilène Oliver : l’image du corps ou plus précisément la
visualisation de son intérieur le plus profond révélé dans ses plus intimes détails. L’invisible
rendu visible par les nouvelles techniques d’imagerie pour l’avancement de la médecine et
au service d’un art exquis.
Ces images étonnantes, qui révolutionnent le diagnostic médical, le traitement de la
pathologie et la relation entre le médecin et son patient, en montrent presque trop pour le
commun des mortels. Elles sont fascinantes mais aussi un peu effroyables lorsque l’on est
directement concerné. Ces données techniques, purement médicales, Marilène Oliver les
transforme pour nous donner à voir une autre vue de notre propre intérieur, elle nous invite
à réfléchir sur notre condition et se questionne sur l’effet de médiation de la technologie
dans nos relations et notre compréhension de « soi ». L’artiste réinvente le genre du
portrait en fonction du savoir actuel, tel que Leonardo dévoilait dans de magnifiques
dessins les entrailles humaines qu’il disséquait, Marilène Oliver expose les strates de notre
organisme et révèle un corps transcendé. Par le biais d’une approche poétique et artistique,
la distance permet de mieux comprendre ces images, leur impact, leur beauté intrinsèque.
La belle n’est que l’autre visage de la bête, qu’il suffit d’apprivoiser.
Les sculptures de Marilène Oliver sont présentée à l’hôpital pour la première fois en
Suisse ; nous avons sélectionnés quatre œuvres qui se situent exactement à la croisée des
techniques d’imagerie développées Genève et d’une histoire de l’art revisitée avec une
méthode et dans une forme résolument contemporaines.
Les Derviches
Cette sculpture mobile représente Melanix, le pseudonyme un rien sci-fi du set de scans CT
d’un corps humain en entier mis à disposition sur le site du logiciel de visualisation OsiriX
et mets à profit l’outil « multiplanar » qui permet à l’utilisateur de fixer un axe sur le corps
et de le visionner en tournant autour sur 360°. Une activité éminemment contemporaine
selon l’artiste qui l’assimile aux recherches par mot-clé sur internet, aux visionnements
panoramiques dans Second Life, ainsi qu’à nos régulières et rapides migrations aériennes.
Chaque figure est identique pourtant toutes semblent distinctes car l’axe est décentré
différemment pour chacune. L’image tournoie et virevolte dans la lumière, symbole de
l’impermanence de notre corps.
La Grande Dame
Fruit d’une longue collaboration avec le Prof. Francis Wells de Cambridge, œuvre majeure
et exemplaire, Leonardo’s Great Lady extrapole en trois dimensions un fameux dessin du
maître florentin. Cette grande dame du XVe siècle se révèle être une créature multiple et
hybride… Réalisée âpres l’étude de dix corps, elle porte un cœur de bœuf, des ligaments
bovins et des artères ombilicales de fœtus ! Toutes ces informations contenues dans le
dessin original sont retranscrites sur les plaques d’acryliques et rendues visibles dans leur
dimension physique. Pourtant la sculpture achevée, le corps flotte, vacille, dance et selon
le point de vue sous lequel on l’observe, l’illusion qui lui donne corps la fait aussi
disparaître.
La Figure Fatiguée
Réalisée à partir du scan du corps de l’artiste, Exhausted Figure est un autoportrait. A ce
titre, elle représente la grande fatigue que ressent cette jeune mère lorsqu’elle allaite son
premier enfant depuis plusieurs mois. Toutes les informations physiologiques ont été
effacées, comme si elles aussi avaient été drainées, l’artiste n’en conserve que la
structure, les traces, autant de chemins de gravure qui capturent la lumière et rendent ce
corps évanescent, pris dans la fragilité du repos.
Le Baiser
Fixer pour l’éternité un moment d’intimité entre deux êtres. Par ce geste simple l’espace du
scanner habituellement réservé à des observations cliniques est subverti en un espace
intime propice à une rencontre romantique. Cette embrasse fait écho aux fameux baisers
de Brancusi et de Klimt. De même que dans ces œuvres, une déformation se glisse dans la
représentation du sujet, comme une sorte d’aliénation de la réalité ainsi condensée,
fusionnée et qui se transformerait une autre réalité.
Voici des œuvres sensibles et belles qui s’inscrivent parfaitement dans notre volonté de
retisser des liens authentiques entre art et médecine.
Anne-Laure Oberson
INFOS PRATIQUES
LIEU D’EXPOSITION
Hôpital, entrée principale, Site Cluse-Roseraie, rue Gabrielle-Perret-Gentil 4, 1205 Genève
VERNISSAGE
Jeudi 14 avril 2011 de 18h à 20h
Séances de signature de 12 à 14h et de 18h à 20h (livre disponible à l’achat sur place)
EXPOSITION
du 14 avril au 31 mai 2011
Entrée libre, tous les jours 8h-20h
CONTACT
Anne-Laure Oberson Affaires culturelles HUG ch. du Petit-Bel-Air 2 1225 Chêne-Bourg
tél. 022 305 41 44 fax 022 305 56 10 [email protected] www.arthug.ch
INFORMATION
Les œuvres sont prêtées par la galerie Beaux Arts London 22 Cork Street London W1S 3NA
Tél. +44(0) 207 437 5799 fax +44(0) 207 437 5798
[email protected] www.beauxartslondon.co.uk
Personne de contact: Nathalie Yue
IMAGES
Dervishes
2007
Impression par sublimation sur de l'organza de verre, acier, aluminium, système de
suspension par sertissage et fil de pêche
Chaque figure 220x50x30cm
Leonardo’s Great Lady
2006
Stylo et encre sur de l’acrylique
25x40x80cm
The Kiss
2004
Sérigraphie à l'encre d'or sur de l'acrylique
50x50x50cm
Exhausted Figure
2007
Acrylique transparent gravé et fil de pêche
167x50x30cm
LE LIVRE
Ratib Osman, Le corps et son image, Lausanne : Éditions Favre, 2011. Chf 58.ISBN 978-2-8289-1144-7
Dans Le corps et son image, un ouvrage magnifiquement illustré et écrit de façon claire et
accessible à tous, Osman Ratib, retrace l’évolution formidable des techniques d’imagerie
médicale, qui, ces dernières années, a changé fondamentalement la pratique de la
médecine moderne. Des scanners de plus en plus performants permettent d’explorer le
corps humain dans tous ses détails. Par ailleurs, les performances de ces techniques
d’imagerie sont renforcées par de nouveaux outils informatiques de visualisation et de
navigation en trois dimensions.
A partir des images obtenues des scanners (CT, ultrasonographie, IRM ou PET), il est ainsi
possible aujourd’hui, grâce à ces nouvelles techniques d’imagerie 3D, de reconstituer les
organes et les structures internes du corps, en couleur et avec des degrés de transparence
pour chaque différent niveau de tissus, avec un résultat d’un réalisme jamais atteint
auparavant.
Le Professeur Osman Ratib, chef du département d’imagerie et des sciences de
l’information médicale aux HUG, le radiologue Antoine Rosset et l’informaticien Joris
Heuberger ont conçu le logiciel OsiriX,( http://www.osirix-viewer.com/ ) un logiciel
d'imagerie médicale disponible sous licence GPL qui permet de traiter les données acquises
par l'intermédiaire d'appareils médicaux tels que l'IRM ou le scanner. A partir des milliers
de coupes réalisées par un simple scanner noir-blanc, OsiriX reconstitue le corps en 3D et
en couleur, il crée une quatrième dimension et même une cinquième : «En 4D, on ajoute le
temps. La vitesse d’acquisition des images est telle qu’elle permet d’observer des
processus comme les contractions du cœur, explique le médecin Osman Ratib. Et en 5D:
grâce au développement des techniques d’imagerie utilisant des radiotraceurs, on ajoute le
métabolisme.»
Le Professeur Osman Ratib dédicacera son livre lors de deux séances de signature
le jeudi 14 avril entre 12h et 14h et de 18h à 20h.
BIOGRAPHIE
Marilène Oliver
1977 Born in UK
1996-1999
1999-2001
2000
2003-2005
2003
2004
2005
2005
2006
2009
Central Saint Martin’s College of Art & Design
B A (Hons) in Fine Art, Printmaking and Photo media
Royal College of Art, London
M A (RCA) in Fine Art Printmaking
Artist in Residence, Takumi Studio, Gifu, Japan
Fine Art Digital Co-ordinator, Royal College of Art, London
Visiting Lecturer, Central Saint Martin’s College of Art & Design, London
Visiting Lecturer, Brighton University
Visiting Lecturer, The Ruskin School of Fine Art, Oxford University
Visiting Lecturer, Royal Academy, London
Visiting Lecturer, Royal College of Art, London
MPhil, Royal College of Art
Solo Exhibitions
2010 Carne Vale, Beaux Arts, London
2008 Digital Subjects/Digital Objects, Riverhouse Arts Centre, Walton-on-Thames
Dervishes, Herrmann and Wagner, Berlin, Germany
2007 Le Grand Jeu, Beaux Arts, London
2006 Selected Works, The Hospital, Covent Garden, London
Family Portrait, Howard Gardens Gallery, Cardiff
When Two Worlds Collide, Beaux Arts, London
2004 Intimate Distances, SPHN Galerie, Berlin, Germany
2004 Intimate Distances, Djanogly Art Gallery, Nottingham
2003 Intimate Distances Beaux Arts, London
Group
1998
1999
1999
2000
2001
2002
2002
2004
2004
2004
2004
2004
2004
2005
2005
2005
2005
Exhibitions
22 Printmakers, Standpoint Gallery, London
Screensavers, Lauderdale House, Archway, London
Now Vision, Victoria and Albert museum, London
Divine Expiration, Takumi Studio, Gifu City, Japan
Never Look Here, Foyles Gallery, London.
ART2002, Beaux Arts, London
Beaux Arts, London
Print Open, Invited artist, RWA, Bristol
Summer Exhibition, The Royal Society, London
Gods Becoming Men, Frissarius Museum, Athens, Greece
Beaux Arts, London
The Magic Inside, The Science Museum, London
Technique, Royal College of Art
Art 2005, Islington Design Centre
Royal Academy Summer Show, London
Young Masters, Art Fortnight, London
Summer 2005, Beaux Arts, London
MiniArttextil 2005, Como, Italy
Oliver & Perucchetti, Beaux Arts, London
2006 Acts, Kulturhof Flachsgasse, Speyer, Germany
Royal Academy Summer Show, London
Summer 2006, Beaux Arts, London
Kunst-Körperlich Kunsthalle Dominikanerkirche, Osnabrück, Germany
Medicine and Art, Kunst Museum Ahlen, Germany
Universal Leonardo, Museum of the History of Science, Oxford
2007 Sculpture Now, Hermann and Wagner, Berlin
2008
2008
2009
2009
2009
2009
2010
Art 2007, Islington Design Centre
Seen and Unseen, The Hub, Sleaford
Productive Matter, Café Gallery, Southwark
Interim Exhibition, Royal College of Art, London
Through the Looking Glass, Building 1000, London
Have A Good Nose, Kunstverein Bad Salzdetfurth E.V. Bodenburg, Germany
Diagnose Art, Kunstspreice Wurzburg, Wurzburg, Germany
Royal Academy Summer Show, London
Summer 2007, Beaux Arts, London
Summer 2008, Beaux Arts, London
East Wing Collection 8, Courtauld Institute of Art, London
The Space Between, The Crypt, St Pancras, London
RCA Degree Show, Royal College of Art, London
Print Open (invited artists), RWA, Bristol
Summer 2009, Beaux Arts, London
Summer 2010, Beaux Arts, London
Public Collections
The Djanogly Art Gallery, Nottingham
Fundación Sorigué, Lleida, Spain
Suttie Centre, Aberdeen
Victoria & Albert Museum, London
The Wellcome Trust, London
Bibliography
2001 The Times, page 5, 30th May
Friday Review, The Independent, 1st June
Bizarre Magazine, August
Printmaking Today, page 5, Autumn
2002 Art Review, December / January
Art Tomorrow, Edward Lucie-Smith, Vilo International, October
2003 Jeanette Winterson, Catalogue Essay, Beaux Arts
The Art Newspaper, no.139, September
Wallpaper, page 245, October
Printmaking Today, page 21, Autumn
2004 Familienfotos aus dem Kernspin-Tomografen ART-Das Kunstmagazin
Intimate Distances Exhibition Guide, Kunsttermine, page 30, January
Körperscheiben, taz Berlin, 21st January
Ungewöhnliches Abbild einer Familie (M. Lintl), Neues Deutschland, 23rd January
Erkundungen an verschlossenen Orten Berliner Zeitung, Kulturkalender,
Blick unter die Haut Berlin Live, Berliner Morgenpost, page 23, 15th January
Geisterfamilie (R. Preuß), Der Tagesspiegel, Ticket No. 3, page 10, 15th January
Exhibition Guide artery Berlin – Berlin Gallery Guide, January/February
Intimate Distances The Exberliner, No.12, page 102, January
Intimate Distances Prinz magazine, February
Marilène Oliver: (Skulpturen) Highlights Kunst, tip Berlin page 102, February
Kunstforum International, page 230, February
Die Welt, 13th February
Marilène Oliver: Intimate Distances (R: Berg), Kunstforum International, vol. 169,
page 230-231, March/April
Marilène Oliver: (Skulpturen) tip Berlin, March
Marilène Oliver: (Skulpturen) tip Berlin, April
Printmaking Today, page 10/11, Summer
Metro, Metro Life, page 17, 27th July
Evening Post, page 21 2nd September, page 3, 30th July
The Independent, The Information page 13, 24th July
The Guardian, The Guide, 21st August
Leonardo Magazine, Issue 37:5, Artist Statement, Autumn
2005
2006
2007
Daily Telegraph, page 19, 1st June
Evening Standard, page 18, 20th June
Eine Rekonstruktion des menschlichen Körpers (J. Schindelbeck), Speyerer
Morgenpost, 10th October
Akt-Ein Spiegel persönlicher Wahrnehmung (S. Mertel), Die Rheinpfalz
Michael Symmons Roberts, Catalogue Introduction, Beaux Arts
Prints Now by Gill Saunders & Rosie Miles, V&A Publication, Spring
Kunst Körperlich, Körper Künstlich, Osnabrück
Diagnosis [Art] Contemporary Art Reflecting Medicine Wienand
research rca Royal College of Art
Rising Stars of the contemporary art world The Times, 28th June
Amelia Jones, Catalogue Essay, Beaux Arts
Awards, Prizes & Commissions
1999 Now Vision, Cannon Photography Prize
2001 Alf Dunn Prize
2001 Printmaking Today Prize
2004 Sound response by Max Richter to Intimate Distances
2005 Art meets Science Award, Highly Commended
2007 Matthew Hay Commission, The Suttie Centre, Aberdeen University
2007 The London Original Print Fair Prize, Royal Academy of Art Summer Exhibition
Broadcasts, Talks and presentations
2004 FAB (Fernsehen aus Berlin) Kultur-Check, Ausstellungsbeitrag, 22nd January
2004 RBB Kulturradio (M. Groschupf), 3:15pm, 28th January
2006 Putting the bits and pieces back together again, RSA, 23rd November
2006 The Great Lady. Discussion with Francis Wells, Museum of the History of
Science, Oxford, 31st October
2007 Resurrecting the Digitised Body: The use of the ‘Scanned In’ body for making
artworks. Presentation at Eva, London, 13th July
2007 Leonardo’s Great Lady. Discussion with Marilène Oliver and Francis Wells,
presented by Geoff Watts on Leading Edge, Radio 4, 26th July
.
ARTICLE
Resurrecting Leonardo's Great Lady: A Collaboration
Marilène Oliver
Francis Wells
Leonardo, Volume 41, Number 5, October 2008, pp. 500-505 (Article)
Published by The MIT Press
For additional information about this article
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/len/summary/v041/41.5.oliver.html
Access Provided by Universite de Geneve at 03/22/11 12:56PM GMT
ABSTRACT
Marilène Oliver
and Francis Wells
Report by Francis Wells, Surgeon
REPORT BY MARILÈNE
OLIVER, ARTIST
Sculptor Marilène Oliver and
cardiothoracic surgeon Francis
Wells collaborated to deconstruct Leonardo da Vinci’s drawing The Great Lady in order
to reconstruct it as a threedimensional sculpture. Employing lessons learned from
contemporary radiology, they
simulated cross sections of
The Great Lady that were drawn
in pen and ink onto a stack of
acrylic sheets. Here Oliver and
Wells give independent accounts
of the project, not only sharing how their relationship with
Leonardo’s drawing evolved over
the course of the project but
also exposing the differences
in approach by the scientist
and the artist to a science-art
project.
It is the springtime of 1977, and I find myself walking along
Piccadilly, in front of Burlington House, the home of the
Royal Academy of Art. I have a break in my preparations for
the rigorous primary examinations to become a Fellow of the
Royal College of Surgeons in England, which preparations
included a comprehensive knowledge of anatomy. The sign
on the railings in front of Burlington House calls out to passersby to come in and be amazed by the anatomical drawings of
Leonardo da Vinci from the Royal Collection. Other than two
showings in the United States, this was the first time that most
of those beautiful drawings had been shown to the public.
Brimming with Latin names for the structures within the
body and mind bursting with the spatial relationships of the
organs therein, I was intrigued to see what a genius of the art
world at the cusp of the Cinquecento had to offer. Would it
be a pastiche of medieval and Galenic ideas, or had this giant
of the Renaissance achieved something special in the secret
world of the body in the midst of the panoply of his other
works? Entering the private rooms of this great house, I was
full of excitement and nervous energy.
Before deciding to train in medicine, I had aspired to a
life in the arts. Our wonderful art master had mesmerized us
with the mythology that surrounded Leonardo’s mirror writing, and had waxed lyrical about sfumato, chiaroscuro and
perspectival drawing. Suddenly and unexpectedly I was to be
in close proximity to some of the treasures produced by his
hand.
Entering the first room, I was confronted with two pen-andink drawings with wash and black chalk. The first one is now
appreciated as likely the first of his surviving anatomical study
drawings. Probably completed in the early 1480s while Leonardo was in his early 30s, it predominantly contains a Galenic
influence. My excitement was tempered by a slight sense of disappointment. However, the next drawing, significantly larger
than the first, was of a different world. It was bursting with
easily recognizable contemporary anatomical imagery and correct spatial relationships. This was my first direct viewing of
what has become commonly referred to as The Great Lady!
As I progressed through the exhibition I became transfixed
by the beauty and the accuracy of the detail of so many of the
drawings. It was for me the beginning of a lifetime of interest
In July 2006 I was introduced via
e-mail to Francis Wells, a cardiac surgeon
working in Cambridge, U.K. I was keen
to follow up this introduction, as I had
been trying to find a research partner
for a project about magnetic resonance
cardiac motion artifacts and it seemed,
at last, that I had a possible lead. I soon
arranged to meet Wells at his office. The
night before our first meeting I was working on the computer, and as light relief
from the endless plotting of coordinates that my project at the time
required, I decided to Google “Francis Wells cardiac surgeon.” I expected
to be directed to National Health Service pages, medical journals and
other impenetrable technical medical information. To my surprise and
delight, however, the links I clicked on led me not to medical journals but
to an abundance of collaborations with artists and, even better, pages
linking him to Leonardo da Vinci: Francis Wells was also an expert on
Leonardo’s anatomical drawings. My mind wandered back to times when,
as a student, if I had an hour or so to spare I would go to the library
and sit quietly with a copy of Leonardo’s notebooks. I loved the powerful
figures, which proudly and forcefully embodied their flayed and dissected
cadavers. I loved the embryos: his curled-up little balls of life. I loved the
sensitivity of the line, the faded sepia tones and above all the blocks of
bizarre code-like script on every spare inch of creased paper. I loved
Leonardo’s drawings.
Our meeting went very well; I showed Francis (Frank) my work and
explained my ideas for making sculptures using MR cardiac motion artifact data. He seemed genuinely very excited and promised to put me in
touch with the right people. I was thrilled that I was finally going to get my
heartbeat project off the ground. Post-“pitch,” we relaxed into a conversation about Leonardo da Vinci and Frank’s relationship to Leonardo’s work.
It transpired that Frank had devised a new style of performing cardiac
valve repair from looking at Leonardo’s drawings. My intimate library
sessions were somewhat upstaged. Frank then went on to show and talk
me through some facsimiles of Leonardo’s drawings that he happened
to have on his coffee table. Before long we came to Windsor 12281r,
which I later found is sometimes termed The Great Lady by academics.
This drawing was so complete—also, it was, in radiology terms, a “full
body” (in radiology a “full body” scan excludes the top of the head and the
Francis Wells (surgeon), Papworth Hospital, Cambridge, CB3 8RE, U.K. E-mail:
<[email protected]>.
Marilène Oliver (artist, researcher), 249 Weedington Road, London NW5 4PR, U.K.
E-mail: <[email protected]>.
Article Frontispiece. Marilène Oliver and Francis Wells, Leonardo’s Great Lady, sculpture, pen and ink on acrylic, 25 × 40 × 80 cm, 2006.
(© Marilène Oliver and Francis Wells)
©2008 ISAST
LEONARDO, Vol. 41, No. 5, pp. 500–505, 2008
501
CELEBRATING LEONARDO DA VINCI
Resurrecting Leonardo’s
Great Lady: A Collaboration
CELEBRATING LEONARDO DA VINCI
in these wonderful achievements, never published as a corpus
of anatomy and yet proclaiming insights of relevance today.
This wonderful discovery became an inspiration for me to
read and learn as much as I could about the work of this Renaissance giant. Sixteen years later, having devoured all of the
standard works on Leonardo, I summoned up courage to approach the Royal Library in Windsor castle to enquire after
the possibility of examining the drawings first hand. To my
delight and amazement an invitation came to spend a day in
the library with these wonderful manuscripts. Seeing them in
my own hands was a spine-tingling experience, enhanced to
a state of intoxication by the fact that it was a snowy February
day. Sitting in the watery half-light of winter, illuminated by the
warm glow of the artificial lighting, made the whole experience
unforgettable.
A few years later I was approached by a television company
to ask if I would be interested in helping them with a series of
programs that they were making on Leonardo and his many
endeavors; a discussion of the relevance of his anatomical work
to the modern world of surgery was to be my brief. Through
this my name became known to a group of Leonardo experts
who had assembled their various talents under the auspices of
the title the Universal Leonardo Project. This eclectic group
of art historians were in the process of the novel organization
of a series of international exhibitions on Leonardo covering
everything from scientific examinations of his major paintings
to a detailed examination of Leonardo’s thinking-on-paper.
Fig. 1. Stages of Wells’s mitral valve repair operation.
(© Francis Wells)
502
Oliver and Wells, Resurrecting Leonardo’s Great Lady
legs). It contained so much information: I saw complex systems of tubes
and pipes leading from one organ or swelling to another. As I continued
looking, more features revealed themselves. Kidneys were tucked behind
the spleen and gall bladder; veins and arteries crisscrossed and disappeared into the perspectival shadows. It reminded me of Canary Wharf
or Kyoto Station—amazing architectural structures whose staircases and
escalators soar back, forth, up and down.
“When I saw your sculpture at the Royal Academy I thought it would
be great to do the same thing with this drawing,” Frank said. Frank was
referring to a sculpture called Sophie (Fig. 2). Sophie is a sculpture made
up of 90 axial (cross-section) magnetic resonance imaging scans taken
at 20-mm intervals that I had printed onto sheets of clear acrylic [1].
The printed sheets were then stacked to give the illusion of a ghostly
hovering figure.
I chuckled to myself. “Impossible,” I thought. “My sculptures are made
up of MRI or CT scans. I need scans to make a sculpture. . . . Although I
could perhaps manipulate sets of scans I have to fit the drawing.”
Fig. 2. Marilène Oliver, Sophie, sculpture made from MRI scans
screen-printed onto sheets of clear acrylic, 192 × 70 × 50cm, 2003.
(© Marilène Oliver)
CELEBRATING LEONARDO DA VINCI
Fig. 3. 3D visualization of the cross-sections of Leonardo’s The Great Lady, with shadows. (© Marilène Oliver and Francis Wells)
As part of the planning for their exhibitions, the Universal
Leonardo group invited me to give a lecture, which was where
I first met Martin Kemp, whose seminal written works had
largely informed me about the life and works of Leonardo. As
our friendship developed, other projects ensued, and through
them I met Mori Gharib, professor of bioengineering at California Institute of Technology. Gharib had been working with
a reproduction of a model that was first proposed and probably
built by Leonardo to demonstrate the true closing method of
the aortic valve of the heart. During our discussions, we explored the idea of minimal energy surfaces, which emanated
from other ideas of Leonardo. The application of this theory,
along with the application of logic in the style used by Leonardo in his notebooks, led me to rethink the surgical methods
I was using to repair faulty mitral valves within the heart (Fig.
1). This approach gave rise to a paradigm shift in my surgical
approach to the problem, the application of which, to my eyes
at least (it is also gathering momentum internationally), has
given rise to a significant improvement in the function of the
repaired valves over more traditional solutions.
Fast-forward to the 1990s; now established as a cardiothoracic surgeon, I had maintained my interest in the arts and
had begun to establish a series of artist-in-residence programs,
initially funded by the Arts Council and in conjunction with
Wysing Arts in Bourne, near Cambridge. Andrew Hunter, curator at Wysing Arts, passed my e-mail address onto Marilène
Oliver, an artist whose MRI sculptures I had seen at the Royal
Academy the summer before. We met to discuss collaboration.
I had long been intrigued by the idea of a 3D representation
of The Great Lady. Enthusiasm for this idea as a project had
further been fired on seeing a reconstruction of her in the
recent exhibition on Leonardo in Florence curated by Paolo
Galuzzi and by discussion with Martin Kemp.
Marilène came to our hospital to meet and to have the opportunity of seeing the human heart in action in the operating
theater. I was immediately drawn to her enthusiasm and can-do
attitude to making such a project work. Ideas were discussed
and plans drawn up to make The Great Lady come to life in
three dimensions.
Once Marilène had redrawn Leonardo’s image and placed
the internal structures in a 2D plane within her computer pro-
A challenge had imposed itself. How would The Great Lady look through
the eyes of radiology? Was there enough information in the drawing to
imagine how a set of axial scans would have looked had she been MRI- or
CT-scanned?
I started by scanning in a reproduction of The Great Lady and experimenting with contrast values to see if there was anything hiding in
the darks that changing the tonal range might reveal. Next I resized the
drawing to be as near life size as possible by measuring the width of my
neck on my MRI scan and then measuring the width of The Great Lady’s
neck. I scaled The Great Lady so that her neck became as wide as mine,
giving her a torso 80 cm tall.
I wondered how she died. Did a pair of hands grasp her neck and suffocate her? What was her last breath like? Was it a sigh, a moan, a scream?
I later learned that the question I should have asked was not how she died
but how they died. In his notes for The Great Lady, Leonardo wrote,
And you, who say that it would be better to watch an anatomist at work than
see these drawings, you would be right, if it were possible to observe all things
in a single figure, in which you, with all your cleverness, will not see nor obtain
knowledge of more than a few veins, to obtain true and perfect knowledge of
which I have dissected more than ten bodies, destroying all other members,
and removing every minutest particles of flesh by which those veins were
surrounded, without causing them to bleed, excepting the insensible bleeding
of the capillary veins [2].
When I read the translation of these notes my appetite to complete
this work increased. I would make sure that the sculpture would be lit to
cast 10 shadows: One for each of the women (Fig. 3).
I divided the drawing into 80 horizontal sections (Fig. 4). Then, on a new
layer of my file, I placed a little marker where my horizontal lines crossed
Leonardo’s drawing. There were so many lines that I had to reduce the
size of my markers many times, because as I traveled down the drawing
there were more and more points to mark, and they were so close together that my markers started to overlap each other. Once I had finished
line 80 I rejoiced that I had all my important points. I had my x (height) and
y (width) planes. Now I needed to figure out the z (depth).
Although I had spent the previous 5 years working with radiology scans,
looking at Leonardo’s drawing shook my anatomical confidence. I knew
the kidneys and the heart but I was not 100%, final-answer sure about
the other stuff. I invested in a copy of Gray’s Anatomy and dug out my
CD of the Visible Human Project. That, combined with the sets of my MRI
scans of my mum, sister and self for my Family Portrait project, would
help me find the z values I was looking for.
Oliver and Wells, Resurrecting Leonardo’s Great Lady
503
CELEBRATING LEONARDO DA VINCI
Fig. 4. (left) Oliver’s working drawing for Leonardo’s The Great Lady, showing the drawing divided into 80 horizontal sections. (right) A 3D
visualization of the simulated cross-sections through Leonardo’s drawing. (© Marilène Oliver)
gram, we met again to tease out the structures into their 3D
relationships.
This was a learning process for both of us. We had to look into
Leonardo’s wonderful drawing more deeply and closely than I
had ever done before. The result was a realization of just how
much he had achieved by the time of this drawing but more
importantly some of the secrets within.
As we scrutinized the detail of the drawing’s elements we
began to realize that it was not simply a representation of Leonardo’s perceptions of the internal anatomy of a woman. It
was much more and in some measure much less: more, in that
this was not simply human anatomy; less in that, as an anatomical statement of the internal architecture of a woman, it
is incomplete. This drawing is an amalgam of human, bovine
and fetal anatomy. As we examined the detail very carefully, the
composite nature of the drawing became apparent. The need
to try to understand each and every mark on the paper led
us to appreciate more completely what was therein. By using
contemporary anatomical knowledge and referring to other
Leonardo drawings, we could begin to make sense of the many
curvilinear lines in the pelvis. The umbilical vessels were accurately reproduced from other studies of Leonardo, such as
those in RL 19101v and RL 19060r. From this we were able to
work out the nature of the convergence of the curved lines to
the left-hand side of the great vessels in the abdomen. This was
the confluence of the fetal and the adult circulation. Other
faint but deliberate circular concentric lines in the pelvis may
have been meant to represent the bladder overlying the cervix
and the uterus.
I had looked at The Great Lady many times over the previous
30 years, but through this close interrogation of the drawing I
began to see things that were completely new to me. We were
truly looking closely and seeing anew. The many almost overlapping lines in the original drawing took on completely new
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Oliver and Wells, Resurrecting Leonardo’s Great Lady
It was not long until I had to go back to Cambridge for help from Frank.
There were things in Leonardo’s drawing that I could not find in any of
my resources.
“It is an ox heart!” he exclaimed.
“They must be bovine uterine ligaments! I’ll call Dad, who used to
slaughter cows, and find out,” he said triumphantly before going to leave
a very bizarre message on his father’s answer phone. “They can only be
fetal umbilical arteries, he was doing it all at the same time you know.”
The Great Lady was not only a multiple human but also a hybrid. She
has an ox heart, bovine uterine ligaments and fetal umbilical arteries
and veins. Could she be more “now”? She is 10 bodies in one—she has
multiple selves. Her body could have been the body of a mother, a wife, a
baker, a teacher, a scientist, an artist. Frank says that this is a “summary
drawing,” that it brings together the knowledge Leonardo acquired from
multiple dissections and that he must have been dissecting many different
cadavers at the same time. Perhaps he never dissected a human heart
and assumed it was the same as a bovine heart. Dissection is a messy
business, Frank told me, and was even messier in those days. He could
have confused other ligaments for those he had seen in a cow. Umbilical
arteries and veins are still present in the adult, said Frank, but they are
simply wizened away. I said that this all seemed a bit too coincidental
for me. Leonardo, who was not just an artist but an engineer, made
“mistakes” that are actually design improvements; much better to have
the heart of an ox than of a woman, given how much more blood it could
pump. Uterine ligaments would be quite an asset, as they would allow a
woman to bear more children. Umbilical arteries and veins carry oxygen
and nutrients to the fetus and then carry away its waste. A posthuman
cyborg dream—no need to waste time eating, drinking, urinating and
defecating: just plug yourself in. Stelarc would approve.
Frank helped me calculate my z axis. I had my dots, and now all that
was left was to join them up with the correct curves. It was tempting to
nudge the point I had originally plotted a little bit over—Leonardo had
put the kidneys too far apart, and the liver was a bit small. It was hard to
get things to fit. When it came to the reproductive system, I often felt as
CELEBRATING LEONARDO DA VINCI
Fig. 5. A working drawing for the sculpture, showing all the axial planes from above. (© Marilène Oliver and Francis Wells)
meaning when they were teased out in three dimensions. It
was an exhilarating and informative process. Working closely
together, the artist and the surgeon/anatomist were able to
produce new insights into the understanding of an anatomical
masterpiece almost exactly 500 years after its making.
It was then some months until I was able to see the completed sculpture (Article Frontispiece). I approached it with
a little anxiety: Had our interference belittled the original, or
could we indeed have shed a little new light upon it?
Marilène had not let me down. The finished piece was at
once both beautiful and mesmerizing. It has a mysterious quality to it that comes from the shadowy accumulation of the data
engraved on each of the plates from which it is constructed.
All of the detail is there, but it demands the viewer’s mental
engagement to create the whole: the minutiae dissected out
and then reconstructed by the brain into the 3D animal that
gave rise to the information in the first place. The effect is
arresting and moving at the same time. The mystery remains.
She is at once human, ox and child, with anatomy taken from
each by Leonardo. Its summation is perhaps a statement of his
knowledge at that particular time. Our Great Lady has taken on
a life of its own, and the experience will live with me forever.
References and Notes
Unedited references as provided by the authors.
1. See also Marilène Oliver, “The MRI Scanner: An Ideal Instrument for Portraiture,” Leonardo 37, No. 5 (2004) p. 374.
2. H. Anna Suh, Leonardo’s Notebooks (2005) New York: Black Dog, p. 150.
General Bibliography
Critical Art Ensemble. (1998) Flesh Machine, New York: Autonomedia.
Dixon, J. (1998) Virtual Futures, London: Routledge.
Manuscript received 6 March 2007.
Francis Wells is a consultant cardiothoracic surgeon at Papworth and
Addenbrookes Hospitals, NHS Foundation Trusts, Cambridge.
though I were trying to untangle a ball of string. It was not always clear
what came in front of what. To add to the confusion, there were creases
in the drawing that in a reproduction could be mistaken for a drawn line
and vice versa. Now that Frank had told me that the Lady had an ox heart,
I was happy to interpret anything as an intervention. I spent two days
calculating the profiles of a vertical paper crease, convinced it was an
anatomical feature that connected the heart to the umbilicus. Sometimes
I still am. We in fact found the bladder in what we thought was a crease.
During our final session, Frank noticed that a faint line we had previously
assumed to be a crease was in fact a score, as it was circular. I remember
driving home from that session regretting having mentioned the crease
issue—it meant I would have to move everything back to make room for
the newly discovered bladder.
I decided I wanted her to be precious, not too big. Fragile and elusive.
I chose to draw the cross-sectional drawings on 8-mm-thick sheets of
acrylic, so that when stacked (Fig. 5) she would form a solid block of
acrylic. I polished the edges of the sheets so that she would sparkle in the
light. I found a middle size between the drawing and the Lady’s calculated
life size. I tried and tested different inks and varnishes, searched to find
the right tones, tried to emulate the browns and sepias of Leonardo’s
drawing. I traced each axial slice Frank and I had worked out onto sheets
of acrylic, referring constantly back to the original drawing in order to
get the shading correct. I started with the bottom slice: number 80—two
ovals for the legs; then 79—a vein and artery arrive; at 76 the legs join.
Over two days she emerged. And as I stepped back to look at her, she
vanished.
Stand 6 feet away from the sculpture of The Great Lady and she
disappears. The optical illusion that gives her 3D form also allows her to
evaporate into a block of solid acrylic. As you approach her she dances,
revealing different parts of herself. Get up really close and she shows
you her umbilical arteries. Stand over her and you can see down her
throat and into her heart. Stand to the side and she will show you the
depth of her womb.
Marilène Oliver is a London-based artist working with digital medical imaging to create sculptures. Oliver is currently an M.Phil. student at the
Royal College of Art researching the use of the digitized body for creating
artworks.
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