Artist Views of the ‘Human Machine’ Featured in NY Academy of Sciences Exhibition

Leonardo Da Vinci—artist and scientist—once noted that he “wanted to know the body beneath the clothes, the muscles beneath the skin, and the bone beneath the sinew.” This need to understand the “human machine” in all its guises has remained at the heart of science and art for centuries, with the ability to accurately describe and depict the body continuing to be a crucial aspect of scientific and artistic knowledge—even if the underlying purposes may be different.

The Gallery of Art & Science of the New York Academy of Sciences is taking a close look at how contemporary artists learn to represent the human form in a special collaborative exhibition, “Academy/Anatomy/Academy: Anatomical Studies from the New York Academy of Art,” on view through April 28, 2006. The show features works by faculty, students, and alumni of one of the nation’s only institutions that focus on the figurative tradition in art and its underpinnings in anatomical study.

At the New York Academy of Art, a graduate-level institution offering MFA degrees, students are taught how to recreate the human form as a functioning biological entity while stressing the great expressive potential that arises from the ability to create a living, breathing, convincing human form. The exhibition includes works by Carrie Ann Bracco, Daniel Brusky, Noah Buchanan, Bain Butcher, Harvey Citron, Cynthia Eardley, Walter Erlebacher, Katie Hemmer, Karl Koett, Erin Lakavathu, Jeremy Leichman, Randy McIver, Veronica Obermeyer, Roberto Osti, Philip Pershbacher, Frank Porcu, Phyllis Purves-Smith, Dustin Schott, Meg Willett, and Anthony Visco.

“The study of anatomy is fundamental for artists wanting to represent the human form aa functioning organic volume,” said Martha Mayer Erlebacher, an artist and a professor of anatomy who is curator for the exhibition. “Anatomy at the NYAA differs from medical anatomy in that it emphasizes anatomy as the grammar of the figure.”

She noted that students in the Academy’s program learn about figure structure, where the emphasis in on proportion, balance, volume equivalents to the masses and cross sections of the human form, and the movement potential of the joints. In anatomical drawing, they consider specific bones and muscles and the means to represent them two-dimensionally. The organization of the figure into an artistic construction using the bones, muscles, tendons and ligaments as its components is learned in ėcorchė studies, where three-dimensional flayed figures are modeled from a skeleton to muscles layered on top.

“In all our work, the representation of the human form is presented both as a scholarly study as well as a potent medium for artistic expression,” Erlebacher said.

The Gallery of Art & Science of the New York Academy of Sciences

Address: 2 East 63rd Street, Manhattan
Cross streets: Madison and Fifth Avenue
Hours: 9 am. to 5 pm Monday to Friday.

FREE Admission

Subway: N,R,W to 5th Avenue OR 4,5,6, N, W, R to 59th Street/Lexington Avenue.

For further information, visit www.nyas.org. Additional information on the New York Academy of Art is available at www.nyaa.edu.

Founded in 1817, the New York Academy of Sciences is a nonprofit organization with nearly 25,000 members worldwide. It traces its commitment to science and art to 1826, when Academy member John James Audubon first showed his watercolors of birds at the organization’s headquarters in downtown Manhattan.
—nyas.org—