Body Modern: Fritz Kahn, Scientific Illustration, and the Homuncular Subject

265 Pages·2017·27.825 MB·English

by  Michael Sappol

BODY
MODERN
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BODY
MODERN
FRITZ KAHN, SCIENTIFIC ILLUSTRATION,
AND THE
HOMUNCULAR SUBJECT
MICHAEL SAPPOL

UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA PRESS
MINNEAPOLIS LONDON
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Sappol, Michael, author.
Title: Body modern : Fritz Kahn, scientific illustration, and the homuncular subject /
Michael Sappol.
Description: Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press, 2017. | Includes bibliographical
references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016036909 (print) | ISBN 978-1-5179-0020-5 (hc) |
ISBN 978-1-5179-0021-2 (pb)
Subjects: LCSH: Kahn, Fritz, 1888–1968. | Scientific illustration—History—
20th century. | Visual communication in science—History—20th century. | Science in
popular culture—History—20th century. | Modernism (Aesthetics). | Human beings.
Classification: LCC Q143.K24 S27 2017 (print) | DDC 741.6092—dc23
LC record available at
https://lccn.loc.gov/2016036909
FOR EVA
who sustained me with love and tenderness
during the making of this book
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Ever since people have had the idea that modern times
needed “modern styles,” all the old rules of thumb
have stopped helping me.
— JOSEPH ROTH, “ARCHITECTURE,”
MÜNCHNER ILLUSTRIERTE PRESSE, 1929
The picture is a model of reality.
— LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN,
TRACTATUS LOGICO- PHILOSOPHICUS, 1921
The fact that the world becomes picture . . . 
is what distinguishes the essence of the modern age.
— MARTIN HEIDEGGER,
“THE AGE OF THE WORLD PICTURE,” 1938
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CONTENTS
Preface xi
Introduction
Fritz Kahn, Modernity, and the Invention of Conceptual
Scientific Illustration 1
1. Reading Kahn and the Homunculus 11
2. “Much Better Than Words”: Pictured Knowledge and the
Rhetoric of Visuality 29
3. Ocularcentric! Conceptual Illustration at Work
in the “Great Loop” 49
4. Variety Show: The Studio of Kahn and Its Visual Devices 71
5. Kahn’s Take Away: Conceptual Scientific Illustration’s
Iconophilic Diaspora 133
6. “To Picture the Body”: Kahn’s Images in the
Postmodern Afterlife 163
Epilogue
Toward a Theory of the Homunculus 185
Acknowledgments 193
Fritz Kahn: A Chronology 197
Notes 199
Index 239