Fleshing out surfaces is the first English-language book on skin and flesh tones in art. It considers flesh and skin in art theory, image making and medical discourse in seventeenth to nineteenth-century France. Describing a gradual shift between the early modern and the modern period, it argues that what artists made when imitating human nakedness was not always the same. Initially understood in terms of the body's substance, of flesh tones and body colour, it became increasingly a matter of skin, skin colour and surfaces. Each chapter is dedicated to a different notion of skin and its colour, from flesh tones via a membrane imbued with nervous energy to hermetic borderline. Looking in particular at works by Fragonard, David, Girodet, Benoist and Ingres, the focus is on portraits, as facial skin is a special arena for testing painterly skills and a site where the body and the image become equally expressive.

Fleshing out surfaces is the first English-language book on skin and flesh tones in art. It considers flesh and skin in art theory, image making and medical discourse in seventeenth to nineteenth-century France. Describing a gradual shift between the early modern and the modern period, it argues that what artists made when imitating human nakedness was not always the same. Initially understood in terms of the body's substance, of flesh tones and body colour, it became increasingly a matter of skin, skin colour and surfaces. Each chapter is dedicated to a different notion of skin and its colour, from flesh tones via a membrane imbued with nervous energy to hermetic borderline. Looking in particular at works by Fragonard, David, Girodet, Benoist and Ingres, the focus is on portraits, as facial skin is a special arena for testing painterly skills and a site where the body and the image become equally expressive.

Today, body and language are prominent themes throughout philosophy. Each is strange enough on its own: this book asks what sense we might make of them together.

Skin Crafts discusses multiple artists from global contexts who employ craft materials in works that address historical and contemporary violence. These artists are deliberately embracing the fragility of textiles and ceramics to evoke the vulnerability of human skin and - in so doing - are demanding visceral responses from viewers. Drawing on a range of theories including affect theory, material feminism, skin studies, phenomenology and global art history, the book illuminates the various ways in which artists are harnessing the affective power of craft materials to address and cope with violence. Artists from Mexico, Africa, China, the Netherlands and Indigenous artists based in the unceded territory known as Canada are examined in relation to one another to illuminate the connections and differences across their bodies of work. Skin Crafts interrogates ongoing material violence towards women and marginalized others, and demonstrates the power of contemporary art to force viewers and scholars into facing their ethical responsibilities as human beings.

In centuries past, sexual body-parts and same-sex desire were un­men­­tionables de­barred from polite conver­sa­tion and printed discourse. Yet one scientific discipline-ana­to­my-had license to rep­re­sent and nar­rate the in­timate details of the human body-anus and genitals in­clud­ed. Figured with­in the frame of an anatomical plate, pre­sen­ta­tions of dissected bo­dies and body-parts were often soberly tech­ni­cal. But just as often mon­strous, provoca­tive, flirtatious, theatri­cal, beau­tiful, and even sensual. Queer Anatomies explores overlooked examples of erotic expression within 18th and 19th-century anatomical imagery. It uncovers the subtle eroticism of certain anatomical illustrations, and the queerness of the men who made, used and collected them. As a foundational subject for physicians, surgeons and artists in 18th- and 19th-century Europe, anatomy was a privileged, male-dominated domain. Artistic and medical competence depended on a deep knowledge of anatomy and offered cultural legitimacy, healing authority, and aesthetic discernment to those who practiced it. The anatomical image could serve as a virtual queer space, a private or shared closet, or a men's club. Serious anatomical subjects were charged with erotic, often homoerotic, undertones. Taking brilliant works by Gautier Dagoty, William Cheselden, and Joseph Maclise, and many others, Queer Anatomies assembles a lost archive of queer expression-115 illustrations, in full-colour reproduction-that range from images of nudes, dissected bodies, penises, vaginas, rectums, hands, faces, and skin, to scenes of male viewers gazing upon works of art governed by anatomical principles. Yet the men who produced and savored illustrated anatomies were reticent, closeted. Diving into these textual and representational spaces via essayistic reflection, Queer Anatomies decodes their words and images, even their silences. With a range of close readings and comparison of key images, this book unearths the connections between medical history, connoisseurship, queer studies, and art history and the understudied relationship between anatomy and desire.

The mechanical philosophy first emerged as a leading player on the intellectual scene in the early modern period—seeking to explain all natural phenomena through the physics of matter and motion—and the term mechanism was coined. Over time, natural phenomena came to be understood through machine analogies and explanations and the very word mechanism, a suggestive and ambiguous expression, took on a host of different meanings. Emphasizing the important role of key ancient and early modern protagonists, from Galen to Robert Boyle, this book offers a historical investigation of the term mechanism from the late Renaissance to the end of the seventeenth century, at a time when it was used rather frequently in complex debates about the nature of the notion of the soul. In this rich and detailed study, Domenico Bertoloni Melifocuses on strategies for discussing the notion of mechanism in historically sensitive ways; the relation between mechanism, visual representation, and anatomy; the usage and meaning of the term in early modern times; and Marcello Malpighi and the problems of fecundation and generation, among the most challenging topics to investigate from a mechanistic standpoint.

A child receives the body of Saint Lucia of Syracuse for her seventh birthday. A rebelling angel rewrites the Book of Judgement to protect the woman he loves. A young woman discovers the lost manuscript of Jane Austen written on the inside of her skin. A 747 populated by a dying pantheon makes the extraordinary journey to the beginning of the universe. Lyrical and tender, quirky and cutting. Helen Marshall’s exceptional debut collection weaves the fantastic and the horrific alongside the touchingly human in fifteen modern parables about history, memory and the cost of creating art. 2013 British Fantasy Sydney J. Bounds Award for Best Newcomer (Winner) 2013 Aurora Award for Best Related Work (Short-List) "Masterful horror. In Marshall’s dark landscapes, the metaphors are feral and they’ll turn on you in a heartbeat." --M.R. Carey, Author of The Girl with All the Gifts “. . . A tour de force of imagination, this remarkable debut collection uses the conventions of dark fantasy and horror as the framework for some of speculative fiction’s most unusual stories. VERDICT Fans of experimental fiction and exceptional writing should find a wealth of enjoyment here.” --Library Journal, Starred Review ". . . Amidst moments of body horror and hauntings galore, miracles and expressions of joy are liberally sprinkled, offering moments that lingered in my thoughts well after I’d finished the story. . . . I cannot wait to see what Marshall conjures next."--San Francisco Book Review "The stories in Helen Marshall’s Hair Side, Flesh Side occur in the interstices of our most fundamental relations. Brothers and sisters, parents and children, lovers find the space between them grown strange, shifting, as the familiar becomes the site and the source of startling transformation. Elegant, unsettling, these stories leave the reader no less changed than their characters. Highly recommended work." --John Langan, Author of Technicolor and Other Revelations and House of Windows ". . . Hair Side, Flesh Side is a strong first collection of speculative fiction borne out of faded manuscripts, old libraries and the memories of the past. However, it’s how Marshall sees us reconcile these ghosts with the world of the living that give her stories the weight of immediacy. She is a talent to be discovered." --The National Post

Kulvicki shows that a properly crafted structural account of pictures has many advantages over the perceptual accounts that dominate the literature on this topic. This book explains the close relationship between pictures, diagrams, graphs and other kinds of non-linguistic representation.

Working at the local processing plant, Marcos is in the business of slaughtering humans—though no one calls them that anymore. His wife has left him, his father is sinking into dementia, and Marcos tries not to think too hard about how he makes a living. After all, it happened so quickly. First, it was reported that an infectious virus has made all animal meat poisonous to humans. Then governments initiated the “Transition.” Now, eating human meat—“special meat”—is legal. Marcos tries to stick to numbers, consignments, processing. Then one day he’s given a gift: a live specimen of the finest quality. Though he’s aware that any form of personal contact is forbidden on pain of death, little by little he starts to treat her like a human being. And soon, he becomes tortured by what has been lost—and what might still be saved.

In Experiments in Skin Thuy Linh Nguyen Tu examines the ongoing influence of the Vietnam War on contemporary ideas about race and beauty. Framing skin as the site around which these ideas have been formed, Tu foregrounds the histories of militarism in the production of US biomedical knowledge and commercial cosmetics. She uncovers the efforts of wartime scientists in the US Military Dermatology Research Program to alleviate the environmental and chemical risks to soldiers' skin. These dermatologists sought relief for white soldiers while denying that African American soldiers and Vietnamese civilians were also vulnerable to harm. Their experiments led to the development of pharmaceutical cosmetics, now used by women in Ho Chi Minh City to tend to their skin, and to grapple with the damage caused by the war's lingering toxicity. In showing how the US military laid the foundations for contemporary Vietnamese consumption of cosmetics and practices of beauty, Tu shows how the intersecting histories of militarism, biomedicine, race, and aesthetics become materially and metaphorically visible on skin.