STUFF: Analia Saban

[Editor’s note: Are you having trouble understanding artists through their art? Understand them through their STUFF instead. In this edition of STUFF we bring you 10 of artist Analia Saban’s favorite books. Saban works in a variety of media. She is represented by Thomas Solomon Gallery in Los Angeles as well as Tonya Bonakdar Gallery in New York. She currently has exhibitions open at the Palais De Tokyo and the Gemeentmuseum De Haag.]

1

Art Povera

Because of my career as an artist, I guess it is proper to add a good art book to the list. This book gives a good foundation for much of the artwork being made today.

2

Dissection

Dissection: Photographs of a Rite of Passage in American Medicine 1880-1930 is a collection of group photos. Medical students, proud of practicing dissecting skills, pose with their dissected objects.

3

Embryos in Wax

Embryos in Wax: Models from the Ziegler Studio documents the craft of wax modeling for medical study. Just like making sculpture but for different purposes.

4

Anatomie

Anatomie is my favorite volume of Encyclopèdie. The Encyclopèdie is intended to document the French enlightenment. Human knowledge, from machines to anatomy, is equally documented.

5

Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers

Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers, tells the story of students performing plastic surgery on detached heads. It’s a great book to help readers understand life after death.

6

Gastroenterologia Practica

GASTROENTEROLOGIA PRACTICA is a manual to understand gastroenterology imagery. It was a tough decision between giving myself an ulcer in order to get an endoscopy, or just buying this book to finally have access to the interior self.

7

Kermis of Kennis

I visit all medical exhibitions around the world. This summer I visited the Museum of Wax Moulages in Zurich, which is about skin diseases. This is a catalog from one of the best medical collections: The Museum Dr. Guislan in Ghent. I flew to London to get this book, as it was ₤ 2 off!

8

Medicine Man

Medicine Man: The Forgotten Museum of Henry Wellcome (None) is the catalog from the exhibition of Henry Wellcome’s collection, another incredible collection of medicine artifacts. The exhibition is coming back to the Wellcome collection in London in the spring of 2014.

9

Bodies Revealed

There is a lot of controversy around Bodies, an exhibition in which the bodies have been plasticized. I would much rather see a real anatomy class, but the plastic nervous system imagery gets under the skin.

10

Rudolph Steiner, Blackboard Drawings 1919-1924

A Visionary! or WTF??  That’s the best part of Steiner. You either love him or hate him.

Previous STUFF columns can be found here.

Tagged as: Analia Saban, Anatomy, Art Povera, Bodies, Dissection, Rudolph Steiner, STUFF, Ulcer, Wax