In centuries past, sexual body-parts and same-sex desire were une-mene-e-tionables dee-barred from polite convere-sae-tion and printed discourse. Yet one scientific discipline anae-toe-my had license to repe-ree-sent and nare-rate the ine-timate details of the human body anus and genitals ine-clude-ed. Figured withe-in the frame of an anatomical plate, pree-sene-tae-tions of dissected boe-dies and body-parts were often soberly teche-nie-cal. But just as often mone-strous, provocae-tive, flirtatious, theatrie-cal, beaue-tiful, 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 compee-tence 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 illustrae-tions, 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 represene-tae-tional spaces via essayistic reflection, Queer Anatomies decodes their words and images, even their silences. With a range of close readings and come-pare-ison of key images, this book unearths the connections between medical history, connoisseure-ship, queer studies, and art history and the understudied relationship between anatomy and desire.
