A surprising Memento Vivere
Art inspires care for this aging body
The first picture by Billy Renkl that seized my solar plexus is a curious one.
I loved the graceful precision of the engraving; the age and patina of the paper; the mystery of its origin and journey to Renkl’s hands; and of course, his bold discretion with the gold leaf, creating new art from old. But I couldn’t put words to why it moved me. I half-expected Eric’s response to be a puzzled “um … why?” only to be happily surprised when he said, “Now that is cool.” Happier still to receive it as a Christmas gift that year.
My fascination with anatomy might date to the un-crating of my grandmother’s life-size anatomical model from her medical school days. She’d inherited it from her father, Dr. Hardman, who probably procured it while studying medicine in Europe during the late 19th century, when anatomical models like these were being marketed as medical technologies. Ethelbert, as Gran called him, looked something like this:
Made of plaster, sometimes wood, these models fit together like life-size anatomy puzzles. The muscles, bones, organs, and circulatory system were brightly painted with tiny lacquered labels. The removable pieces revealed the layers beneath, also painted and labeled, and showed how impossibly compact and efficient our bodies are, despite their mind-boggling complexity.
Ethelbert’s coffin-crate lived in my grandparents’ carport, tucked discretely in a corner. I only saw him exhumed once. Maybe a soaking rainstorm or threat of termites caused Gran to direct Papa (as she did with firm, loving precision) to open it and make sure Ethelbert was safe. He must have been dear to her.
I was silently amazed by it all — the crowbar prying open the crate; the soft, fine straw of Ethelbert’s bed; the crude painting (by late 20th-century standards) and tiny, detailed labels; and the solid heft of each body part. Only the eyeballs, streaky with bright red blood vessels, grossed me out.
Our picture, May 21, 1851: The Standing Miracle, was one of Billy Renkl’s Gleanings, works inspired by revisiting the writings of American Transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau, who was a powerful influence during Renkl’s student years. He elaborates:
Two springs ago a student’s commitment to hiking the whole of the Appalachian Trail unexpectedly brought me back to Thoreau and his essay on walking, published posthumously in 1862. I felt that I would be served by those ideas again, with fresh (however older) eyes. I spent three years thinking about the wealth of ideas in Thoreau’s journals this time. These works are a response to specific journal entries.
As its title suggests, our picture was Renkl’s response to Thoreau’s journal entry on May 21, 1851:
I think that we are not commonly aware that man is our contemporary, — that in this strange, outlandish world, so barren, so prosaic, fit not to live in but merely to pass through, that even here so divine a creature as man does actually live. Man, the crowning fact, the god we know. While the earth supports so rare an inhabitant, there is somewhat to cheer us. I think that the standing miracle to man is man [emphasis mine].
I already shared Renkl’s words about working with old paper in A Gift for the Ages, but they’re so apropos, here they are again:
Vintage and antique paper can be surprisingly beautiful, and I find the way that it carries its history with it moving. It is almost like a body, the way that it ages, gets scarred, bears the marks of what has happened to it, who has owned it and how they used it.
The foundation of May 21, 1851: The Standing Miracle is a gorgeously tattered, age-spotted page from the Journal des Connaissances Médico-Chirurgicales, an engraving (Pl. 2) of a dissected head and neck (region occipito-claviculaire) with the blood vessels and nerves colored in red and blue.
Tiny script on the left attributes the drawing to Durez (Delᵗ stands for delineavit, Latin for “he drew”), with primary credit given to Jacques LeBaudy: Jacopus LeBAUDY dissecuit ipse & direxit (“dissected and directed it himself”).
LeBaudy was a founder of the Journal, with fellow physicians Armand Trousseau and Henri Gouraud. Published from 1833 to 1866, its 212 anatomical engravings were produced over ten years. Close examination and a bit of online research suggest that the page used for The Standing Miracle dates to 1833 or 1852.
Such engravings in medical texts and articles were invaluable reference and teaching tools. Journals like these could be collected as they were published, forming a set of medical encyclopedias. Today, both sets and individual engravings are often collector’s items:
Serious collectors may dismiss damaged volumes and pages, but they’re still treasures. I recall Renkl’s saying he’d amassed enough antique and vintage engravings, prints, letters, and other papers to fill his entire garage, from which he takes endless inspiration and material for his distinctive collages.
Even after living with The Standing Miracle for several years, I couldn’t say why I loved it so. Nor had I tried, figuring it would tell me in due time. This waiting is a quiet, delicious anticipation. Tuning into this experience has been the animating energy — and fun— of Art All Around Me. I was actually writing about other artworks when The Standing Miracle suddenly opened to me — and I to it — at just the right time.
Shortly after New Year’s, I woke in the night with excruciating pain in my hand. I couldn’t extend my thumb; its base joint looked swollen, and the webbing hurt to touch. There’d been no injury, just a few twinges in recent months that I’d shaken off, as we learned to do (yet often regret, the older we get). I spent the better part of January visiting doctors, doing physical therapy, and managing pain, sleep deprivation, and a mood to match.
What feels like a significant hand injury appears, in fact, to be radial pain coming from my neck and shoulder. For years, I’ve had a pair of hamsters (as my chiropractor calls the round knots of muscle) nesting on either side of my neck, surrounded by more knotty muscles and tissue. Starving for attention, one hamster has a brachial nerve clamped in his relentless little jaws. To his credit, crippling the opposable thumb on my dominant hand is an effective way to get mine.
Not uncommonly, neck and shoulders are my chief indicators of poor stress management. Whether a slipped disc at 16 caused or resulted from this vulnerability, I don’t know, but it’s always been a thing. My body, now deep in middle age, is done with the denial and neglect routine of younger days. I was feeling particularly weary and perhaps a bit sorry for myself the other day, when the glint of morning sunlight on The Standing Miracle’s gold beckoned me to it.
I squinted, wishing for my magnifying glass. This is a picture that whispers, Look at me. Closer. Was that big blue nerve the one? My eyes roamed down to the bottom left corner, where Renkl had written The Standing Miracle, May 21, 1851. I felt myself stand up straighter to receive this much-needed memento vivere.
I’ve long appreciated the miracle of the human mind and spirit. But with each passing year, I’m just as amazed by the constant integration of balance and strength in the human body. The miracle of standing at all. Which I am!
Just like that, I shifted from a weary, impatient “Body, get it together!” to an equally weary but encouraging and hopeful “Body, you’re a miracle! We can do this.”
My dad is currently battling sciatica. Last week, we ran into each other in the parking lot, coming and going from physical therapy. We shared grumbles and a hug before heading our separate ways.
He texted me later: “Spines are badly designed, I’ve decided,” and then went on to describe what he’d learned about the juncture of lower spine and pelvis, specifically “the gauntlet of sharp moving joints” our nerves must run through to reach our lower extremities at all. “I don’t understand why the nerves aren’t always pinched.”
Indeed, I thought. The body is a standing miracle.
May 21, 1851: The Standing Miracle, my memento vivere, is not only a reminder to live but to live with care and appreciation for my standing miracle. Free my neck and shoulders from the stress of old habits, fears, and pre-occupations, and take joy in all that is glowing gold — as well as that which is, as it should be, tarnished by time.
This is what art can do.
