Anatomica: The Exquisite and Unsettling Art of Human Anatomy

 

Nearly 300 images, 272 pages, 8.4 x 1.1 x 10.6 inches, 3.1 pounds
by Joanna Ebenstein
Published by Laurence King
Order here

"There’s a fine line between the horrible and the sublime, and Joanna Ebenstein’s Anatomica: The Exquisite and Unsettling Art of Human Anatomy walks it.”
— New York Times

"If Morticia Adams had a coffee table book, this would probably be it. This is not a book to read, so much as to drink in… it’s a book you can browse, like a good exhibition.”
—The C Word: The Conservator's Podcast

"A lovingly curated and beautifully printed collection that belongs on every morbid enthusiast's bookshelf.”
— Caitlin Doughty, mortician, author, and founder of The Order of the Good Death

"Joanna Ebenstein is one of our very best spelunkers into the world of the oddball and the offbeat. She is a masterful curator of things beautifully disgusting and morbidly fascinating. A true resurrectionist, she excels at dredging up from our collective unconscious items of uncanny beauty and terrifying wonder."
— Colin Dickey, author of Ghostland and The Unidentified

This stunning new book, by Morbid Anatomy founder Joanna Ebenstein, with the assistance of medical editor Marie Dauenheimer MA, CMI, FAMI and published by published by Laurence King, explores the intersections of art and anatomy in nearly three hundred incredible images spanning seven centuries of anatomical artworks.

For centuries, humankind has sought to know itself through an understanding of the body, in sickness and in health, inside and out. This fascination left in its wake a rich body of artworks that demonstrate not only the facts of the human body, but also the ways in which our ideas about the body and its proper representation have changed over time.

At times both beautiful and repulsive, illustrated anatomy continues to hold our interest today, and is frequently referenced in popular culture. Anatomica brings together some of the most striking, fascinating and bizarre anatomical artworks from the 14th through to the 20th century, drawn from collections such as The Wellcome Collection and the University of Toronto's Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, The New York Academy of Medicine historical collections, and the Duke University History of Medicine Collection, exploring the art of human anatomy in one beautiful volume.

Reviews of and press for Anatomica