Overview

Lavishlyillustrated with more than 100 images, Body Modern imaginativelyexplores the relationship between conceptual image, image production, andembodied experience, offering the first in-depth critical study of Fritz Kahnand his visual rhetoric. Michael Sappol concludes that Kahn's illustrationspose profound and unsettling epistemological questions about the constructionand performance of the self. 

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9781517900212

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The chance meeting of <i>Popular Mechanics</i> and <i>Gray s Anatomy</i> on a dissecting table, Fritz Kahn s cutaway views of our inner workings expose far more than blood, guts, and bones. Taking Kahn s delirious illustrations as his jumping-off point, Michael Sappol uses his vast historical erudition, just enough theory, and a prose style that cuts like a knife to lay bare the visual unconscious of the Machine Age. Delving deeper, he discovers the self, a cognitive widget turned out by Modernism s philosophical assembly line. Witty, incisive, and impeccably researched, <i>Body Modern</i> is an X-ray of our image world in its early years, before the deluge. Mark Dery, author of <i>I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts: Drive-By Essays on American Dread, American Dreams</i></p>

The book is nicely illustrated and the history of our relationship between biology and mythology is brilliantly addressed. -The Daily Heller Densely academic, yet provocative enough for a lay person to extract some meaning. -Santa Fe New Mexican The merits of Michael Sappol's study are numerous. Sappol gives a first-rate overview of the key themes and forms of Kahn's editorial achievements as well as the manifold ways it was appropriated in other countries and cultures. -Leonardo Reviews The author's lucid commentaries provide excellent guidance through the forest of Kahn's topics, ranging from anatomy to architecture, and from physiology to thermodynamics. -Bulletin of the History of Medicine An intellectually important book that is delightfully well written. -ISIS The chance meeting of Popular Mechanics and Gray's Anatomy on a dissecting table, Fritz Kahn's cutaway views of our inner workings expose far more than blood, guts, and bones. Taking Kahn's delirious illustrations as his jumping-off point, Michael Sappol uses his vast historical erudition, just enough theory, and a prose style that cuts like a knife to lay bare the visual unconscious of the Machine Age. Delving deeper, he discovers the self, a cognitive widget turned out by Modernism's philosophical assembly line. Witty, incisive, and impeccably researched, Body Modern is an X-ray of our image world in its early years, before the deluge. -Mark Dery, author of I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts: Drive-By Essays on American Dread, American Dreams

The chance meeting of <i>Popular Mechanics</i> and <i>Gray's Anatomy</i> on a dissecting table, Fritz Kahn's cutaway views of our inner workings expose far more than blood, guts, and bones. Taking Kahn's delirious illustrations as his jumping-off point, Michael Sappol uses his vast historical erudition, just enough theory, and a prose style that cuts like a knife to lay bare the visual unconscious of the Machine Age. Delving deeper, he discovers the self, a cognitive widget turned out by Modernism's philosophical assembly line. Witty, incisive, and impeccably researched, <i>Body Modern</i> is an X-ray of our image world in its early years, before the deluge. --Mark Dery, author of <i>I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts: Drive-By Essays on American Dread, American Dreams</i></p>

The chance meeting of Popular Mechanics and Gray's Anatomy on a dissecting table, Fritz Kahn's cutaway views of our inner workings expose far more than blood, guts, and bones. Taking Kahn's delirious illustrations as his jumping-off point, Michael Sappol uses his vast historical erudition, just enough theory, and a prose style that cuts like a knife to lay bare the visual unconscious of the Machine Age. Delving deeper, he discovers the self, a cognitive widget turned out by Modernism's philosophical assembly line. Witty, incisive, and impeccably researched, Body Modern is an X-ray of our image world in its early years, before the deluge. --Mark Dery, author of I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts: Drive-By Essays on American Dread, American Dreams

Author Information

Michael Sappol is fellow at the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study in Uppsala. He is the author of A Traffic of Dead Bodies: Anatomy and Embodied Social Identity in Nineteenth-Century America and Dream Anatomy, and the editor of A Cultural History of the Human Body in the Age of Empire and Hidden Treasure: The National Library of Medicine.

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