The Anatomist

The wizened face of an anatomist, rendered in stark black and white lines, stares out at us from behind a diagram of the human nervous system, rendered in red. His weathered hands hold a child’s skeleton.

Doing dissections requires an emotional distance from the cadaver, an overlooking of its status as once a living person. Leonard Baskin’s anatomist, however, seems to maintain a human connection with his subject. He embraces the small skeleton in a tender, almost protective fashion.

Baskin had a lifelong fascination with anatomy and collected antique anatomical textbooks. At a time when many American artists were devoted to abstract expressionism, rejecting overt content, Baskin remained devoted to the human figure, maintaining a sense of wonder about it. In an interview, he noted, “Our human frame, our gutted mansion, our enveloping sack of beef and ash is yet a glory. The human figure is the image of all men and of one man. It contains all, and it can express all.” (Time, January 18, 1960)