Picturing Health and Illness in Northern Europe : Medicine, Art, and the Body, 1880-1930

How did advancements in modern medicine influence artists at the turn of the 20th century? How, in turn, did visuality come to dominate health culture?

The human body has perennially been a focus of the visual arts, yet the idea of the ‘perfect’ body is a largely modern one. This book explores the ways in which visual culture shaped, as well as reflected, public perceptions of health at the turn of the 20th century. In Germany, Austria and Norway, images of idealized or diseased bodies proliferated in illustrated media and visual art, and anxieties over good health dominated popular culture. Newly independent, these countries viewed health and well-being as an issue of national importance; a means of creating social cohesion and strength of identity. Moreover, the drive to enhance medical literacy gave impetus to new forms of medical illustration and narration as well as a burgeoning interest among artists in the medicalized body.

This book presents ten case studies in how modernity manifested in the visual narration and public display of bodies, exploring contexts as diverse as early Swiss sanatoriums, Germany’s Freikörperkultur movement, Edvard Munch’s vegetarianism, and changing reproductive rights, among others. Together, they reveal the vital role of visual culture in our understanding of what constitutes ‘good health’; an ideological construct where health, technology, nationhood, gender, and race are at play. Novel artistic approaches, from interactive pop-up books to over-exposed nude photography, celluloid “stitching” to Oscar Kokoschka’s intimate letters to a tuberculosis sufferer, show how modern art offered new understandings of the human body and humans’ position in the world. Combining original research and unpublished documents, Picturing Health and Illness in Northern Europe reveals how preconceptions around health and body-image can be traced to a defining moment in modern European history.