Dead Men and their Naked Truths

A single-authored essay for the book which accompanied the exhibition The Nakeds (Drawing Room, London, 2014; De la Warr Pavilion, 2015), which drew attention to contemporary female artists' transformation of the modernist tradition of explicit figurative drawing, and interest in the pornographic gaze. Including excerpts from interviews with Fiona Banner, Tracey Emin, Chantal Joffe, Nicola Tyson and Georgina Starr, the essay established new knowledge on their influences, drawing practices, and reparative methods, especially in relation to working with found pornographic material

A mind weighted with unpublished matter

Rebecca Fortnum’s A Mind Weighted with Unpublished Matter marks a development in the history of portraiture, raising questions about the relationship between sitter and painter, issues of authority and control as well as social attitudes around gender. Working from photographs of nineteenth-century sculptures of women, Fortnum’s source material allows for continual extended returns to elusive objects, a type of close, careful looking that leads the artist towards the depiction of every surface detail. This is a rumination on how representation is mastered; on the ‘accomplished’, intrinsically feminine status of the copy of the work of art in comparison to its ‘inventive’, ‘ingenious’ original, wrought by male hands: a critique of a value-laden history that is inherently masculine, and copying as a submissive, secretive other. Fortnum’s transcriptions strive for a form of reduplication that creates a space for difference and subtle deviations to ask what other singular likenesses might emerge through the task of copying within the legacy of women artists’ thwarted ambitions. In essence, Fortnum’s works engage with her female portraits’ sources in a conversation across time and space, through the creation of intimate and empathetic cross-temporal facsimiles that reflect the sexed connections between reproduction, training and accomplishment

Mechanosensitive Enteric Neurons in the Myenteric Plexus of the Mouse Intestine

BACKGROUND: Within the gut the autonomous enteric nervous system (ENS) is able to sense mechanical stimuli and to trigger gut reflex behaviour. We previously proposed a novel sensory circuit in the ENS which consists of multifunctional rapidly adapting mechanosensitive enteric neurons (RAMEN) in the guinea pig. The aim of this study was to validate this concept by studying its applicability to other species or gut regions. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: We deformed myenteric ganglia in the mouse small and large intestine and recorded spike discharge using voltage sensitive dye imaging. We also analysed expression of markers hitherto proposed to label mouse sensory myenteric neurons in the ileum (NF145kD) or colon (calretinin). RAMEN constituted 22% and 15% of myenteric neurons per ganglion in the ileum and colon, respectively. They encoded dynamic rather than sustained deformation. In the colon, 7% of mechanosensitive neurons fired throughout the sustained deformation, a behaviour typical for slowly adapting echanosensitive neurons (SAMEN). RAMEN and SAMEN responded directly to mechanical deformation as their response remained unchanged after synaptic blockade in low Ca(++)/high Mg(++). Activity levels of RAMEN increased with the degree of ganglion deformation. Recruitment of more RAMEN with stronger stimuli may suggest low and high threshold RAMEN. The majority of RAMEN were cholinergic but most lacked expression of NF145kD or calretinin. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: We showed for the first time that fundamental properties of mechanosensitive enteric neurons, such as firing pattern, encoding of dynamic deformation, cholinergic phenotype and their proportion, are conserved across species and regions. We conclude that RAMEN are important for mechanotransduction in the ENS. They directly encode dynamic changes in force as their firing frequency is proportional to the degree of deformation of the ganglion they reside in. The additional existence of SAMEN in the colon is likely an adaptation to colonic motor patterns which consist of phasic and tonic contractions

I care by...

The Care research group at the Royal College of Art (RCA) was conceived in the last week of June 2020, a month after the killing of George Floyd by police in Minnesota, an act which catalysed global protests on systemic racism and police brutality. In the UK, tens of thousands of protesters took to the streets to show solidarity with demonstrators in the US. Coinciding with the easing of the lockdown restrictions imposed to manage the coronavirus, the marches shone a light on the government’s failure to protect Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic people from the disproportionate risk posed by COVID- 19, and on the police’s increased use of stop and search in areas with large BAME populations. The pandemic has shone the harshest of lights on the question of care in the age of neoliberalism: who gets it; who needs it; who does it; who controls it. The Care research group, comprising staff and postgraduate researchers within the School of Arts and Humanities at the RCA, works in this light. Over the course of a year, as the inequalities of the virus were becoming all too clear, the group regularly came together via Zoom to reflect on: the question of how to care for the human body in the technical-patriarchal societies the virus has re-inscribed; the ‘un-doing’ of what Judith Butler describes as the binary of vulnerability and resistance; the politically-transformative potential of prioritising care (rooted in empathy, solidarity, kinship) over capitalist gain; the activation of creative research practices (including but by no means limited to writing, looking, painting, drawing, filming, performing, collecting, assembling, curating, making public) as means of caring/transforming. The group’s activities through the year of trying, failing, and trying again to care for its work and members are gathered in a co-authored Declaration of Care, published here, and expanded upon with attention to some of the methods group members developed in their research through practice. The Declaration was recited in a participatory performance with invited artist Jade Montserrat on 10 March 2021. Over the course of a two-hour webinar, participants including members of the public were invited to draw alongside Montserrat with whatever materials they had to hand as they listened to texts on the vulnerabilities of bodies, the structuring of care within institutions, and the tactile, sensory, healing qualities of creative practice. This book includes a selection of the participants’ drawings, a Reader comprising the texts that were shared, and Montserrat’s drawings created through the performance. Ahead of the performance, Montserrat delivered an address to the Care research group which looked back on a lifetime of calling for a kind of care that was never provided. Excerpts from Montserrat’s address are included here too, alongside a text and image which reflect on the group’s affective reactions to the experience of listening to it, titled Episode. The Declaration is a list of methods (approaches, processes, techniques), an enumeration of how Care research group members have worked, and would like to work: ‘I care by…’. This is a statement which has reverberated throughout the year, which bears repeating, which resounds still. Gemma Blackshaw, Care research group convenor, 2020–202

The modernist offence: Schiele and the naked female body

Rising to prominence in Vienna alongside Gustav Klimt and Oskar Kokoschka in the turbulent years around the First World War, Egon Schiele (1890-1918) is one of the most important artists of the early 20th century and a central figure of Austrian Expressionism. He produced some of the most radical depictions of the human figure created in modern times - so radical that in 1912 Schiele was imprisoned for two months for exhibiting his 'offensive' nudes. At the trial the judge is alleged to have burned some of the artist's drawings in open court with a candle flame. Accompanying the first ever museum show in this country devoted entirely to the artist, this publication will explore in detail one of Schiele's most vital and original subjects - his extraordinary drawings and watercolors of male and female nudes. It will bring together an outstanding group of the artist's works to chart his groundbreaking approach during his short but urgent career. Schiele's technical virtuosity, highly original vision and unflinching depictions of the naked figure distinguish these works as being among his most significant contributions to the development of modern art. This sharply focused catalogue will be provide an opportunity to examine more than thirty of these radical works, assembled from international public and private collections for the exhibition. Schiele arrived in Vienna in 1906, aged just fifteen, to train as an artist. He quickly proved his precocious talent and the following year sought out Klimt, who mentored Schiele and helped establish his reputation. Nothing he produced during these first few years in Vienna prepares us for the extraordinary breakthrough Schiele made in 1910 when he began to draw the figure in an entirely new way and the subject of the nude took on an increasingly important role. Highly gestural and expressive, his nudes from this year are manipulated to perform a psychologically charged body language that soon became a hallmark of his art. This catalogue will begin with a rich selection of nudes from this seminal year including a number of Schiele's powerful naked self-portraits. The main section will explore his provocative nudes of the following few years when he pushed artistic convention to offer a more direct expression of human experience, bound up with themes of self-expression, procreation, sexuality and eroticism. Many of these works affronted contemporary standards of morality and were considered pornographic. The last part of the book will look at works from the final productive years of Schiele's short life before his untimely death in 1918 from Spanish influenza, aged just 28. His later nudes suggest a more classical solidity and sometimes lyricism, whilst retaining their unflinching rawness as naked bodies. Throughout the book will be a number of major self-portraits, demonstrating how Schiele's approach was linked to his sense of self and his ongoing examination of his physical and psychological make-up. An important aspect of all these works is Schiele's unique draftsmanship and the authors will investigate the development of his technique and approach to the medium that he made so distinctively his own, as well as his wide-ranging influence on the course of modern art that still resonates today

Egon Schiele's Passion: Spirituality and Sexuality, 1912-15

The 1909–1918 catalogue of Egon Schiele, as never seen before After Egon Schiele (1890-1918) freed himself from the shadow of his mentor and role model Gustav Klimt, he had just ten years to inscribe his signature style into the annals of modernity before the Spanish flu claimed his life. Being a child prodigy quite aware of his own genius and a passionate provocateur, this didn’t prove to be too big a challenge. His haggard, overstretched figures, drastic depiction of sexuality, and self-portraits in which he staged himself with emaciated facial expressions bordering between brilliance and madness, had none of the decorative quality of Klimt’s hymns of love, sexuality, and yearning devotion. Instead, Schiele’s work spoke of a brutal honesty, one that would upset and irreversibly change Viennese society. Although his works were later defamed as “degenerate” and for a time were almost forgotten altogether, they influenced generations of artists – from Günter Brus and Francis Bacon to Tracey Emin. Today, his then-misunderstood oeuvre continues to fetch exorbitant prices on the international art market. Presented in a voluminous format that captures all of the intensity and emotional truth of his work, Egon Schiele. The Complete Paintings 1909–1918 features 221 paintings and 146 drawings that retrace the fertile last decade of Schiele’s life. With many pieces newly photographed for this edition, these works are paired with excerpts from his countless writings and poems, as well as essays introducing his life and oeuvre, to situate the Austrian master in the context of European Expressionism and trace his extraordinary legacy

Sacred/secular bodies: The identification of artists with Christ in turn-of -the-century Vienna

EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

Sick Pleasure

'Sick Pleasure' uses correspondence as a feminist research method and practice, producing a textual work examining where does the subjectively of the researcher sit in examining the role of Care and Carer as radical acts

Multifunctional rapidly adapting mechanosensitive enteric neurons (RAMEN) in the myenteric plexus of the guinea pig ileum

An important feature of the enteric nervous system (ENS) is its capability to respond to mechanical stimulation which, as currently suggested for the guinea-pig ileum, is encoded by specialized intrinsic primary afferent neurons (IPANs). We used von Frey hairs or intraganglionic volume injections to mimic ganglion deformation as observed in freely contracting preparations. Using fast voltage-sensitive dye imaging we identified rapidly adapting mechanosensitive enteric neurons (RAMEN, 25% of all neurons) in the myenteric plexus of the guinea pig ileum. RAMEN responded with phasic spike discharge to dynamic changes during ganglion deformation. This response was reproducible and increased with increasing forces. Deformation-evoked spike discharge was not changed by synaptic blockade with hexamethonium, ω-conotoxin or low Ca2+/high Mg2+, defunctionalization of extrinsic afferents with capsaicin or muscle paralysis with nifedipine, suggesting direct activation of RAMEN. All RAMEN received hexamethonium-sensitive fast EPSPs, which were blocked by ω-conotoxin and low Ca2+/high Mg2+. Seventy-two per cent of RAMEN were cholinergic, 22% nitrergic, and 44% were calbindin and NeuN negative, markers used to identify IPANs. Mechanosensitivity was observed in 31% and 47% of retrogradely traced interneurons and motor neurons, respectively. RAMEN belong to a new population of mechanosensitive neurons which differ from IPANs. We provided evidence for multifunctionality of RAMEN which may fulfil sensory, integrative and motor functions. In light of previously identified mechanosensitive neuron populations, mechanosensitivity appears to be a property of many more enteric neurons than generally assumed. The findings call for a revision of current concepts on sensory transmission within the ENS