There, that's it!

I cannot mend it.

Studies

In response to the global pandemic, museums, galleries, libraries, and archives around the world have opened their collections and exhibitions to the public through online platforms, rethinking art's role in society where survival is a primary driving force. This exhibition aims to activate thirty digital reproductions of paintings, drawings, prints, objects, music, and photographs in the public domain by many artists from institutional art history and collections of museums, exploring artistic expressions of health and mortality--not to romanticise, but rather, to borrow their contexts to contemporary understanding.

In 1794, the English poet, painter, and printmaker William Blake (1757-1827) illustrated the archetype of reason as a bearded man separating light and darkness with a compass he had set to the Earth. Bearing this architectural tool, reason creates and constrains the universe—designing the world and humanity under universal laws and conventions of society. In the last days of his life, the artist was commissioned for a reproduction of this piece for a sum greater than his previous works, and while bedridden—he threw the tinted copy exclaiming “There, that will do! I cannot mend it.”

By re-exhibiting digitized copies of previously-restricted works and sharing their contexts in the online public sphere, these works lend their historicity into immediacy, thereby creating the potential for a new compass. This curatorial study hopes to reflect on the role of institutional art history in the circumstance of present survival by intimating on the statement, "There, that's it! I cannot mend it.” -- an act of service, the acceptance of limitation, and the renouncing of power to a bigger, more capable mender.

John Alexis Balaguer

Hover or click on thumbnail to expand images or read the extended notes. All files are shareable and downloadable. All works featured in this exhibition are intended for Fair Use and are under Universal Public Domain Dedication (Creative Commons Licenses) permitting copy, modification, distribution, and performance of the work even for commercial purposes, without requiring permission. Acknowledgements to the various institutions listed for making these works and their research publicly available.

Seated in a pose recalling Renaissance representations of melancholia, a young man gazes at a skull, seemingly lost in thought. Is he pondering his own mortality? Although skulls appear in some of Cezanne’s early works from the 1860s, the death of Cezanne's mother and his own declining health is commonly attributed to this painting’s symbolic subject.

Young Man and Skull (Jeune homme à la tête de mort)

Paul Cézanne

oil on canvas

54.3 x 65.4 cm

ca. 1896–1898

Barnes Foundation Collection

Public Domain

Shape altered

Ancient of Days Setting a Compass to the Earth

William Blake

illustration from Europe a Prophecy

1794

The New York Public Library Collection

Public Domain

Europe, A Prophecy

William Blake

17 plates: colored relief etchings

38 cm

1794

Library of Congress (USA)

Lessing J Rosenwald Collection

Public Domain

William Blake’s (1757–1827) "Europe, A Prophecy" (1794) attempted to discern the pattern behind human history. An enthusiast for the French Revolution, Blake saw a world of misery emerging in Europe, depicted in “Famine” (plate 9) and “Plague” (plate 10). Blake’s books are extremely rare, printed only in commissions by private collectors. This digitized version was made available by the US Library of Congress.

Click to view

Coughs and Sneezes

Richard Massingham

film, 1 m 25 s

1945

Contains public sector information

Licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0 (UK)

Public Domain

This photo shows two plague researchers in the Philippines wearing protective masks and uniforms. The Third Plague, which originated in Yunnan, China in 1855 was the last major pandemic of plague, but unlike the Black Death which claimed millions of lives in Europe, the Third Plague was mostly bubonic plague.

By the end 1912, Dr. Heiser, chief quarantine officer, and director of health of the Philippine Islands, reported 17 cases of plague in Manila, with 15 deaths. The cases were traced to the freight warehouse of the Manila & Dagupan Railway Co. where several dead rats were discovered.

Masks worn during experiments with plague

Manila, Philippines, 1912

National Museum of Health and Medicine (USA) Collection

Public Domain

Julie de Graag (1877-1924) was a Dutch draftsman, painter, and graphic artist during the Art Nouveau movement. Her state of health was constantly fragile, and in her early 20s, de Graag stopped making artworks, falling physically and mentally ill, eventually weakening her state. De Graag committed suicide at the age of 46.

Young Woman with Her Hand over Her Mouth

Edgar Degas

oil and turpentine on canvas

41.3 × 33.4 cm

ca. 1875

The Metropolitan Museum of New York Collection

Gift of the Eugene V. and Clare E. Thaw Charitable Trust

Public Domain

Head of a woman with a handkerchief against her nose

Julie de Graag

1894

The Rijksmuseum Collection

Public Domain

Exemplifying the artist's obsession with war, pestilence, and death, this painting by Swiss symbolist painter Arnold Böcklin (1827-1901) shows an allegory of Death riding on a bat-like creature, travelling through the streets of medieval Europe. The artist himself nearly succumbed to typhoid in 1859. It is said that Adolf Hitler was quite fond of Böcklin's work, owning at one time 11 of his paintings.

Heinz Christian Pander (1794-1865) is considered by many to be the founder of embryology. His book, “Comparative Osteology” co-authored by Eduard Joseph d’Alton features seven volumes. Osteologists study bones and frequently work as consultants for museums.

Die Pest (The Plague)

Arnold Bocklin

tempera on fir

149 5 x 104 5 cm

1898

Kunstmuseum Basel

Gottfried Keller-Stiftung Collection

Public Domain

Bone Structure of a Bat

from Die vergleichende Osteologie (Comparative Osteology)

Christian Heinrich Pander & Eduard d' Alton

1821-1828

Smithsonian Libraries Collection

Public Domain

Anatomical illustration

Arnauld-Eloi Gautier-Dagoty (1741-1771)

Illustration for the Royal College of Medicine

Nancy in Lorraine, France

The New York Public Library Collection

Public Domain

In this illustration done for the Royal College of Medicine in France, engraver Arnauld Dagoty (1741-1771) elegantly depicts, with precise details, the muscles of the human body in the perception of scientists from the 18th century, offering a glimpse upon the beginnings of modern medicine.

In this illustration done for the Royal College of Medicine in France, engraver Arnauld Dagoty (1741-1771) depicts a live female body in the nude. While done for scientific purposes, it was during the age of Enlightenment when taboos against nudity began to grow and nudity was considered obscene.

Anatomical illustration

Arnauld-Eloi Gautier-Dagoty (1741-1771)

Illustration for the Royal College of Medicine

Nancy in Lorraine, France

The New York Public Library Collection

Public Domain

Physician Wearing a Seventeenth Century Plague Preventive Costume

watercolor

50 8 x 35 9 cm

1910

Wellcome Library Collection

Public Domain

Gabriel Metsu (1528-1629) created this poignant portrayal of a sick child during the time of the plague in Amsterdam. At first glance, the artist’s genre scenes appear to be simple depictions of daily life, yet many of the paintings contain symbolic meaning. This scene for instance is reminiscent of the pieta, a representation of the Virgin Mary holding her son’s dead body in her lap. Also alluding to this interpretation is the painting of the Crucifixion on the back wall.

Around the 1780s in Paris, only 1,000 out of 21,000 babies were nursed by their own mothers. There was a great demand for Parisian wet nurses, yet they received low wages, forcing many mothers from the lower classes to leave their families—their own children to be cared for by other wet nurses, sometimes poorer than themselves.

The Sick Child

Gabriel Metsu

oil on canvas

32.2 x 27.2 cm

ca. 1664-1666

The Rijksmuseum Collection

Public Domain

La Nourrice (The Nurse)

attributed to Guillaume Dupré

lead-glazed earthenware

22.9 cm

17th century

The Metropolitan Museum of New York Collection

Gift of J. Pierpont Morgan

Public Domain

Virgin and Child with Saint Anne

Albrecht Dürer

oil on linden

60 x 49.8 cm

1519

The Metropolitan Museum of New York Collection

Bequest of Benjamin Altman

Public Domain

In this popular group portrait by Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669), we see the Dutch surgeon and mayor of Amsterdam, Nicolaes Tulp’s demonstration of a corpse's dissected forearm. Because the surgeon's guild commissioned a portrait every five to ten years, some of the spectators depicted are various doctors who paid to be included in the painting.

Earlier in the day, Aris Kindt, the corpse, was hung and had his arm cut off as punishment for thievery. Medical specialists claim inconsistencies in the muscles and tendons, indicating that the artist may have copied a standard illustration from an anatomical textbook. Alluding to this interpretation is the book found in the right corner, likely the 1543 De humani corporis fabrica (Fabric of the Human Body) by Andreas Vesalius. Due to the subjects' performative gesture and the artist's mistake, we are able to look past the doctors’ supposed mise-en-scene, and notice Aris Kidnt.

The juxtaposition in this painting by Paul Cezanne (1839-1906) is between the haunting skull and the bountiful, ripe fruits, connoting life and death and their natural harmony. This work was completed during Cezanne’s final period.

The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp

Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669)

oil on canvas

169.5 x 216.5 cm

1632

Mauritshuis Collection

Public Domain

Still Life with Skull (Nature morte au crâne)

Paul Cézanne

oil on canvas

130 x 97.5 cm

ca. 1896–1898

Barnes Foundation Collection

Public Domain

Nearer, My God, to Thee

Sarah Flower Adams

19th century

Version by Hayden Quartet for Victor Records

3 m, 1 s

1908

Internet Archive

Public Domain

“The Lord sent fiery serpents among the people and they bit the people, so that many people of Israel died. So the people came to Moses and said, “We have sinned, because we have spoken against the Lord and you; intercede with the Lord, that He may remove the serpents from us.” And Moses interceded for the people. Then the Lord said to Moses, “Make a fiery serpent, and set it on a standard; and it shall come about, that everyone who is bitten, when he looks at it, he will live.” And Moses made a bronze serpent and set it on the standard; and it came about, that if a serpent bit any man, when he looked to the bronze serpent, he lived.” Numbers 21:6-9

Note that the serpent-entwined rod also appears in the mythology of the Greek god Asclepius, a deity associated with healing and medicine. The symbol has continued to be used in modern times, especially in medicine and health care.