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1КУЛЬТУРА И ВИЗУАЛЬНЫЕ РЕПРЕЗЕНТАЦИИ ТЕЛА. СЛУЧАЙ «ЧЕЛОВЕК КАК ПРОМЫШЛЕННЫЙ ДВОРЕЦ»
И «НЭЙЦЗИН ТУ» (^Ш)
Э. Ф. Медейрос1, доктор медицины, Ф. Лань2, Ф. Г. Валлнер3
1 Международная академия наук (Здоровье и Экология), Чиангмай, Таиланд 2 Университет пяти ветвей. Санта-Круз, Калифорния, США 3 Венский университет, Вена, Австрия
CULTURE AND VISUAL REPRESENTATIONS OF THE BODY. THE CASE OF «DER MENSCH ALS INDUSTRIEPALAST» (MAN AS INDUSTRIAL PALACE) AND THE NEIJING TU (ft^ffl)
E. F. Medeiros1, Doctor of Medicine, F. Lan2, F. G. Wallner3
International Academy of Science (Health & Ecology E.V.), Chiang Mai, Thailand The Five Branches University. Santa Cruz, CA, United States University of Vienna,Vienna, Austria
Когда мы рассматриваем изображения человеческого тела на цветном плакате «Человек как индустриальный дворец» и диаграмме «Нэйцзин ту» (Nfeijing tti), мы сразу же замечаем, что, несмотря на то, что эти изображения были созданы в одну и ту же эпоху мировой истории, они представляют различные точки зрения на человека и его физиологию. Эти визуальные образы почти никогда не вступают в какой-либо «диалог» и почти всегда анализируются с индивидуальной и, следовательно, ограниченной точки зрения. В данной статье представлен краткий обзор каждой из этих работ, а затем устанавливаются связи, объединяя их в «беседе», целью которой является углубление нашего понимания каждой из них.
When we examine the depictions of the human body in the color poster «Der Mensch als Industriepalast» and the diagram Neijing tu (Nfeijing tti), we immediately notice that, despite having been produced during the same era of world history, these images represent various perspectives on the human being and his physiology. These visual representations hardly ever engage in any kind of «dialogue» and are almost always analyzed from an individual and therefore restricted point of view. This paper provides a short overview of each of these works and then builds connections by bringing them together in a «conversation» that aims to increase our understanding of each.
Introduction
During mankind's history, the human body has been depicted and represented in several distinct ways using a variety ofgraphic styles that represented the forms of visual communication of each era. There were also moments when visual arts movements sought to break established patterns and unleash creativity in search of new ways to visualize the human body. Thus, it is correct to say that for thousands of years, human beings have used metaphors as ways ofunderstanding the body [1].
When we look at the visual representations of the human body illustrated in the color poster «Der Mensch als Industriepalast» (Man as an industrial palace) and the diagram Neijing tu (Neijing tu l^llfBI) we immediately notice that, despite being created in the same period of world history, these are images represent different views of the human being and his physiology and these visual representations would hardly have any form of «dialogue», being almost always analyzed from an individual and therefore restricted point of view.
In the following, I will present a brief introduction of each of them and then create bridges of connection between these distinct conceptual illustrations and thus bring these two illustrations into a «conversation» aiming to broaden our knowledge of both. Both illustrations emphasize metaphorical aspects and distance themselves from conventional ways of depicting the human body based on descriptive anatomical and natural history illustrations, these types of representations were common in both China and the West and were essentially images that show how things look (albeit always in some idealized or stylized way). «Der Mensch als Industriepalast» (Man as an industrial palace) and the diagram Neijing tu (Nèijïng tu HfBI) are conceptual illustrations that visually explain how things work using concepts, metaphor, and allusion.
Visual language is a tool of design that refers to the use of visual elements and principles to communicate with people. In some ways, it is analogous to the written language and has its special vocabulary and grammar that can be called elements and principles of design [2].
The Neijing tu (^^ffl) Diagram
The Neijing tu is a map ofthe Daoist internal landscape and a storehouse of Daoist cultivation practices, specifically visualization and alchemical techniques. Like earlier mappings ofDaoist cultivation, the Neijing tu was more than likely used (and continues to be used) as a visual aid for meditation [3].
The received Neijing tu is a stone stele housed at Baiyun guan in Beijing. Baiyun guan is the seat ofcontem-porary Quanzhen Daoism. It is also the chief monastery of the Longmen branch of Quanzhen.
The diagram depicts the head and torso of the Daoist body as seen from the side and in a seated meditation posture. It illustrates more commonly recognizable aspects of the human body in combination with Daoist subtle anatomy and physiology. The spinal column, framed on the right and connecting the lower torso with the cranial cavity, draws one's immediate attention [3].
The textual descriptions include names of zangiu organs, two poems attributed to the immortal Lu Dongbin S/P&, and quotations from the «Yellow Court Scripture» (Huangting jing M^fe).
«Der Mensch als Industriepalast» (Man as Industrial Palace)
Fritz Kahn (1888-1968) was a German Jewish physician. Kahn's career as a popular science author blossomed in the 1920s with illustrated articles in famous magazines and news papers in Germany and especially the five- volume Das Leben des Menschen (The life of man).
His most celebrated work is «Der Mensch als Industriepalast» (Man as industrial palace).
A collaboration with artist Fritz Schbler (who was never credited), the poster was created in 1926 [4].
Kahn employed technological artifacts from daily life in order to elucidate hidden and invisible functions within the human body as if a form of techno-literacy would bear the potential to re-connect with the body's machinery in new ways [5].
The Neijing tu and the «Multidimensional Daoist Body»
Inside there are numinous sprouts that live for ten thousand years» (Inner Canon)
From a Daoist perspective, the human body corresponds to, embodies, various «external» presences mountains, altars, colors, rivers, constellations, temples, spirits, forests, and so forth. The Neijing tu maps the landscape which is the human self;
The «Der Mensch als Industriepalast» and the «Spirit of Modernity»
«The spirit of modernity enjoys...only a temporary reign, and is speedily lolled by its inevitable successor». Horace B. Samuel. Temple, October 1913.
«Der Mensch als Industriepalast» shows the interior workings of the upper part of a human body. The head and trunk of the figure were open to lay bare the organs and their operations, but instead of bones, nerves, or blood vessels, the image showed an intricate arrangement of machine parts. The head and trunk of the figure were open to lay bare the organs and their operations, but instead of bones, nerves, or blood vessels, the image showed an intricate arrangement of machine parts [5].
Therefore, by illustrating the body as a factory, Kahn was able to relate the body's complex organic interior to the industrialized space so common in society during that period of time [6].
^WmmmWM^mm^ --..... • .....
«I am properly and attentively _
cultivating my 0Wn field The diagram NeijinS tu (Nfeijing tü ft^lffl) with printed Chinese characters
(left) and the poster Der Mensch als Industriepalast (right).
Transcending Demarcated and Borderless bodies
The Daoist vision of the body as a network of celestial passageways and starry palaces closely overlaps with the medical understanding of the body as consisting of various aspects of qi and the phase-energetics of the live organs and six viscera. Many acupuncture points have Daoist connotations, and Chinese healing practices and physical longevity exercises are at the root of Daoist practice. Without losing any aspect of the medical dynamics, the Daoist vision provides a more cosmic and spiritual dimension of the same basic understanding, allowing adepts to move beyond mundane existence toward a greater, more spiritual realm, reaching out for the gods in the stars and thereby for the Dao at the center [7].
While the depicted figure in Der Mensch als Industriepalast is unambiguously demarcated as human by its silhouette and, in particular, its profile of a human face looking to the right, the installations in the body's interior appear to be as convoluted as an industrial complex that has to accommodate ever-more production lines in its limited quarters [5].
Similar to «Der Mensch als Industriepalast» the idealization and utopia painted in the Neijing tu also reflects the structures of hierarchy, organization and power imagined by Daoism's elite.
The human body is the image of a country rendered with landscapes of mountains, lakes, woods, and shelters. Moreover, the body as a 'country' has an administration with a ruler and officials. The heart, or more accurately the spirit inhabiting it, generally is considered to be the ruler or king of the body while the other viscera are the officials [8].
The Central Role of Visual Metaphors in Representing the Interior of the Body
We perceive the world by — reading the visual language that exists in our world. The visual language allows us to distinguish different things that have various visual features [2].
The body's interior is not just the same as the interior of a house demarcated by walls. Psychological and spatial interiority converge in the so-called phenomenon of bodily subjectivity. It is only on the basis of this phenomenon that we can understand what constitutes a living body [9].
The Neijing tu is a work that illustrates several metaphors of the body. The most obvious is the natural landscape. The Neijing image of a mountain with crags on the skull and spinal column elaborates upon the «body-as-mountain» metaphor, first recorded in 1227 CE [10].
The aesthetics and style of illustrations of the inside of the human body in major medical publications in China followed the blueprint for illustrating anatomy maps first established by the Five Dynasties Taoist Yan Luozi before 944 in illustrations called Neijing tu dllll» , with the most famous being the Side View of the Inner Environment (lH^iHit® IB, The «Inner Environment Map». Its content is roughly consistent with modern anatomy and also include anatomical details but add elements of neidan symbolism.
These diagrams were preserved in the thirteenth-century Daoist encyclopedia Xiuzhen shishu HM^t [Ten Books for Cultivating Perfection c. 1250]. The images are accompanied by a text by Yanluozi on inward contemplation, neiguanlM, it was widely circulated in the early Song Dynasty and illustrate the Nanjing, Classical of Difficulties and had a great influence on the anatomy of later generations.
Important works of East Asian Medicine, such as the DongUi Bogam ^SXM) and the Zang fu
zheng zhi tu shuo ren jing jing CMMM^ffl^A^^» , all reproduce this illustration.
Cha and Jung argue that «compared with frontal depictions of the body in East Asia lateral images are found much more frequently. The preference oflateral images of the inner body is based on the complex reflection of the human's physiology in East Asian medicine.These lateral were popular because they showed all the necessary (zang-fu) organs, but particularly, because they also aimed to show the energy flow inside the trunk, which ascends through the spine and descends through the body trunk, then processed in each organ@ [11].
Looking in the details of the diagram we find explicit references to all the other categories of metaphors like the cosmological metaphor (The infant born of the union of the Weaving Girl and the Herd Boy strings pieces of coin together to form the constellation of the Dipper) ; the theological metaphor (Laozi and a «blue-eyed monk» on top of the mountain in the head region), the alchemical metaphor refers to the «Elixir fields» (San dantian ^^H ), Three Passes (Sanguan ^^ ), etc.
In the case of «Der Mensch», is precisely the fusion of the human body with a machine ensemble that turns this mode of visualization into an epistemologically significant constellation [5].
Kahn and his collaborators favored the machine, the factory, the industrial product, and rejected inherited aesthetic conventions, such as anatomical naturalism and his work have a pragmatic antiaesthetic, moderniz-ers easily appropriated anything useable that came their way [4].
«Der Mensch» presents itself as an industrial/ physiological utopia. Its visual metaphors refer to parts and systems of the body being in perfect harmony, but a very different concept of harmony from what Daoism advocates. The harmony in the
metaphors of «Der Mensch» follows the famous Bauhaus saying «Form follows function» and the ideas of the Amerikanismus. The poster appears to be an almost prototypical example of the Neue Sachlichkeit, the period's idealized representation of its era as rational and clean, technological and sanitized modernity [5].
«Der Mensch» is first of all an historical artifact testifying to the cultural context in which it emerged with the rationalization and technological progress in conjunction with the ongoing industrial modernization of Weimar Germany [5].
Conclusion
Although «Der Mensch als Industriepalast» and the Neijing tu are totally different illustrations, we can find some similarities when «dialogs» between these masterpieces are stimulated:
• Both are not concerned with illustrating the human body with realism and distance themselves from the «medical» standard of illustrations of the human body based on human anatomy.
• These are works conceived by entrepreneurs (Fritz Kahn and Liu Chengyin SJMEP ) and were made by various artists within art studios: The Kahn Studio and the Ruyi Studio (Ruyi guan
• Both are relatively similar in size to the human body. The original «Der Mensch» was a poster just as the Neijing tu was originally a poster in the form of a scroll to be hung and used for visualization during meditation practice (it was later engraved in rock).
• In both, there is in common the idea of an «ideal uninterrupted flow» that must be realized in stages. An orderly transformation in stages.
• Both use homuncular figures as metaphors for work, production, transformation.
• The head region is reserved for authority figures (scientific or religious).
• Both illustrate utopian visions elaborated by intellectual and cultural elites and are not concerned with realism when illustrating the human body. They are essentially concerned with using correlations between the human body and visual metaphors to explain their utopian visions.
The western view of the body as a stable object knowable through evidential study was opposed to medical concepts of the variability of the body through time and space in the styles of medicine that had developed in China between the Song and the Ming [14].
In Neijing tu, it is clear that Daoism also cultivates the body as the body expanding its relationship with the natural world, step by step the relationship between the body and the natural world until eventually the individual body and the natural body into one. The relationship
between man and nature becomes a relationship of ultimate value, not just a utilitarian relationship of using nature to sustain life.
In «Der Mensch,» the body is a cluster of machinery that have been artificially controlled and optimized for performance. There is virtually no tolerance for mistakes or failures in this utopia.
The metaphors through which the body and its constituents are understood often differ. So, when one sees the body as a «machine», one may come to believe that «parts» can be removed and (sometimes) replaced without any lasting disruption [15].
But this is not the case of «Der Mensch». This poster represents an evolution/transformation of Julien Offray de La Mettrie's ideas exposed in «L'homme Machine». The «Modern Body» that Kahn portrayed is not a single machine composed of various parts but instead, as the title of his work shows, a complex and organized «industrial palace» in which each sector has its own specific set of machines, workers, and its own flow of organization within that stage.
In another hand, the Daoists see the body as a «country» or «universe», and recognize the interrelationship and inter-dependence among its «inhabitants». It is also possible that philosophical reflection on and body-based practices employing alternative body-self models may reveal and/or actualize other aspects of a human being [15].
Daoism interrupts the barrier between the body and the outside world and we may discover from the Neijing tu picture that Daoism's body concept implicates a deep ecological significance [16].
The state of being healthy in Chinese medicine is dynamic harmonious functioning of all the parts of a being (composed of body and mind) with the nature, just like the playing of a piece of a mild, smooth symphony in the world, which accords with the etymologies of some sinograms mentioned in Neijing tu very well [17].
Final Remarks
«The human body is the best picture of the human soul».
Ludwig Wittgenstein — Philosophical Investigations (1953)
Every culture is based on assumption so taken for granted that they are barely conscious, and it is only when we study highly different culture and language that we become aware of them [18].
If culture can then be understood as a constructed reality, people's understanding of their embodied experience will be apt to differ in different times and places. Examining metaphors across cultures can further our understanding of how we differ from other humans based on cultural constructs that shape our world-views [19].
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