Editorials |
Images of work
Alan and Marcia Emery considered that ‘The relationship between medicine and art has attracted much interest from writers and commentators over the years’ [1] and Robin Philipp has argued persuasively for art's place in occupational medicine [2]. Yet Loudon's illustrated history of western medicine [3] has only two brief mentions of occupational health (neither with images) and the Emery's list of paintings of various diseases (from albinism to strabismus) has none of occupational origin.Work, as a theme in art has been a rare historical event [4]. In ancient times, the topic had a generally ‘bad press’ and was deemed unsuitable for intellectual attention.
Greek and Roman literature stressed its unworthiness [5] and associated it with pain and toil [6] while the Old Testament portrayed it as a punishment and a consequence of sin [7].
The social value and meaning of work improved little during the Middle Ages. However, with the growth of Christianity, it became part of the divine order (labore est orare ‘to work is to pray’) and hence suitable to be associated with religious observation. Craftsmen at work appeared in architectural sculptures and stained glass windows in churches and cathedrals and peasants at work (and nobles at leisure) in devotional illuminated manuscripts. The realistic depiction of the type of work (intermittent, seasonal, localized and task oriented), the tools and instruments used, the clothing worn and the social settings were deliberate and intended to assist the worshippers' involvement so as to enable them to complete their devotional duties [8].
The industrialization of production during the Renaissance saw an increasing dependence on capital investment and the exploitation of labour [9]. As this proto-industrialization [10] expanded, the social value of work began to change and so did its representation in art. As work's place in the divine order waned so its images became more materialistic and less obviously devotional, particularly north of the Alps. For example, in the tolerant but restless society of Northern Europe's commercial and artistic capital, Antwerp [11], secular and religious imagery co-existed with allegory, rhetoric and iconography used in paintings to highlight socio-political issues. However, occupation remained an unpopular topic for artistic attention [12] except for a few genre painters such as Pieter Aertsen (1508–1575) and his nephew Joachim Bueckelaer (1530–1573). Furthermore, although portrait painters conveyed some elements of the sitters' vocation, landscape artists generally did not use work as a theme. An exception was Henri met de Bles who, around 1530–1535, produced a series of paintings depicting, in exquisite and minute detail, the industrial processes involved in the mining and manufacturing of iron [13]. Bles used work as his main focus and the images he created celebrated the arrival of new technology as tribute to man's power over nature. But they were also a riposte to the hostility engendered by the adverse impact of commerce on society and the environment. This industrial landscape style did not survive long beyond the 16th century [14].
During the 17th century, Dutch genre paintings remained very popular north of the Alps [15] but despite Ramazzini's presence there was a surprising lack of graphic occupational material in Italy. Elsewhere with a few notable exceptions, it would be another 100 years before artists like Joseph Wright of Derby (1734–1797) and Leonard Defrance of Liège (1735–1805) would revive the interest in work as a theme in art [16]. Paintings from this era captured the awesome power of technology but as the Industrial Revolution progressed into the Victorian age the meaning and value of work became increasingly questioned. Uncertainties about society's moral obligations and religious duties, the role of women and the real worth of artistic endeavour all contributed to the debate. Should artists celebrate the rural idyll of agricultural labour or denounce the dehumanising horrors of the factory [17]? Evidence of these conflicts and the Victorian obsession with class, religion and gender can be seen to varying degrees in Millet's The Gleaners (1857), Henry Hawkins' Penrhyn Slate Quarry (1831) and most notably Ford Maddox Brown's Work (1852–1863).
The 20th century gave rise to many new ways of producing, perceiving and receiving art with a myriad of bold and self-confident movements from cubism and surrealism to abstract expressionism and pop art [18]. Meanwhile despite two world wars, a depression and the rise of communism, capitalism remained the dominant and prevailing global force and the worlds of work and art responded to its power [19]. Indeed some have seen the ‘culture industry’ as self-replicating capitalism [20]. By the close of the century, employment in the service sector had overtaken primary and secondary industries (agriculture, mining and manufacturing) while commercial globalization, timeless access to information and the virtual availability of resources had transformed the daily lives of working men and women. So too art entered a ‘post-modern’ phase of acceleration and intensification where feelings and perceptions were nothing more than constructs and images keystrokes of the mind. Yet, paradoxically, this ‘cut and paste’ freedom brought with it a return to Renaissance rhetorical values of allusion and parody. Art like work engaged the psychological, linguistic, institutional, economic, political and cultural aspects of life and painting no longer just ‘gave pleasure to the eye’ [21] but produced socially significant signs for the external world rather than mirrors to reflect it [22].
Images of work have appeared in this journal before, most recently in June last year [23] but over the coming months Occupational Medicine will feature for the first time a regular selection of art pieces. The items, which will include sculpture and photography as well as paintings, will explore the relationship between art and working life. They will hopefully give pleasure to the eye but also have some specific relevance to occupational health. They will attempt en passant to demonstrate, as Philipp has suggested, that a renewed interest in the arts and the medical humanities is still relevant to practising occupational physicians [2].
References
- Emery AEH, Emery MLH. Medicine and Art (2003) London: Royal Society of Medicine Press Ltd. ix.
- Philipp R. Do the arts and humanities have a place in occupational medicine? Occup Med (2003) 53:489–490.[CrossRef][Medline]
- Loudon I, ed. Western Medicine: An Illustrated History (1997) Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- Mainz V, Pollock G. Work and the Image I: Work, Craft and Labour (2000) Aldershot, UK: Ashgate. 1–12.
- Lattimore R. ‘Hesiod's "Works and Day"’. In: The Five Ages of Man—Musgrave T, ed. (1965) London: J & W. Chester. 165–218.
- Godelier M. Language and history, work and its representation: a research proposal. History Workshop (1980) 10:164–174.[CrossRef]
- "Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life." Genesis. Chapter 3, verse 17.
- Randall LMC. Images in the Margins of Gothic Manuscripts (1966) Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. 3–20.
- Duplessis RS. New Approaches to European History: Transition to Capitalism in Early Modern Europe (1997) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 126–136.
- Mendels F. Proto-industrialisation: the first phase of the industrialisation process. J Econ Hist (1972) 32:241–261.[Web of Science]
- Belfanti CM. Rural manufacturers and rural proto-industries in the Italy of the Cities from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries. Contin Chang (1993) 8:257–258.
- Kaplan SL. Work in France: Representations, Meaning, Organisation and Practice (1986) Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. 13–53.
- Serck L. Henri Bles et la peinture de paysage dans les Pays-Bas Meridionaux avant Bruegel. PhD Thesis (1990) Université Catholique de Louvain: Département d'Archéologie et d'Histoire de l'Art.
- McKiernan MJ. Henri met de Bles and the Depiction of Iron Manufacture in Sixteenth-Century Europe (2007) MPhil dissertation. UK: University of Birmingham. 1–14.
- Work and play: Scenes from everyday life. Exhibition at the Barber Institute for Fine Art, The University of Birmingham, 6 June 2003 –5 October 2003.
- McKiernan MJ. Henri met de Bles and the Depiction of Iron Manufacture in Sixteenth-Century Europe (2007) MPhil dissertation. UK: University of Birmingham. 78–87.
- Barringer T. Men at Work: Art and Labour in Victorian Britain (2005) London: Yale University Press.
- Ferrier J-L. Art of Our Century (1990) Harlow: Longman.
- Williams R. Art Theory (2004) Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.
- Horkheimer M. Dialectic of Enlightenment (1972) New York: Continuum.
- Apollinaire G. Apollinaire on Art: Essays and Reviews 1902 –1918 (1972) New York: Viking.
- Kahnweiler DH. The Rise of Cubism (1949) New York: Wittenborn, Schulz.
- West Riding Homes of Toil. Occup Med (2007) 57. Cover image.
CiteULike 
Connotea 
Del.icio.us What's this?
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||