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Inaugural Lecture - Mechthild Fend

29 April 2020, 6:30 pm–7:30 pm

Mechthild Fend - The Pathological Image

The Pathological Image

Event Information

Open to

All

Availability

Yes

Organiser

Jessica Thomas

Location

Gustave Tuck Lecture Theatre
UCL Wilkins Building
Gower Street
London
WC1E 6BT
United Kingdom

Mechthild Fend, Professor of History of Art, UCL Department of History of Art, delivers her Inaugural Lecture: The Pathological Image

About the lecture

The nineteenth century was the heyday of the pathological image. Treatises on skin diseases published around 1800 were the first to systematically record morbid conditions, and used state of the art printing techniques along with meticulous hand colouring to provide powerful impressions of morbid phenomena. Robert Carswell, hired as the first chair of pathological anatomy at UCL in 1828, was only one of several prominent nineteenth-century physicians who were also skilled draughtsmen, and he produced more than 1000 water colours portraying morbid conditions of inner and outer organs to be used in teaching. This lecture will argue that the rise of pathology as an independent field within medicine was inextricably linked to the systematic use of images for the recording of diseases and the development of diagnostic practices. While considered at the time as a genuine scientific instrument, the colourful images also had an affective dimension which enabled them to negotiate the difficulties of facing disease.

About the Speaker

Mechthild Fend

Professor of History of Art at University College London

Mechthild Fend specialises in French eighteenth-century art and visual culture with a particular focus on the historically changing relations between art and science. Her work is driven by a feminist perspective and an interest in the complex interactions between body and image. She has published widely on questions of flesh tones, skin and skin colour, and her most recent book is Fleshing out Surfaces. Skin in French Art and Medicine (1650-1850) (MUP 2017). She is currently working on a project investigating the conceptual links between portraiture, the notion of character and pathological imagery.

More about Mechthild Fend