On Ecorché
An excerpt from an upcoming
handbook on artistic anatomy
Nature is complete in all that it reveals. It is structured throughout with
its design resolved in what is visible as well as the invisible. The form
of ecorche is the art of making what appears to be invisible, visible. It
is the art of uncovering the covered, hence it is the art of discovering.
Anatomy is to representational art what grammar is to literature. As such,
it must be recognized for what it gives and not be taken for prose itself.
As in all languages, practice and application aid in assimilation just as
repetition in turn promotes memory. Making an ecorche figure is perhaps
one of the most unforgettable ways in which we learn the language of anatomy.
As grammar, it does not make what we say more “real” but it
does make it more “realized”.
As it becomes increasingly evident that representational art training
is experiencing a renewed interest in learning human anatomy, artists
are being made increasingly aware of what vast amounts of information
had been lost, ignored, thrown out or forgotten during the last half of
the twentieth century. As our revitalization of human content comes upon
us, the artistic desire for anatomical studies need to be made more readily
available as well as redressed as we enter the new millennium. One form
of the anatomical studies that has resurfaced is the art of ecorche, the
art of building the body from its skeletal framework to its superficial
musculature.
The art of ecorche reveals to us what give cause to our impressions of
the body. It is the study of the full expression of the forms beneath
the skin that we call “anatomy”.
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