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01/27/2015 11:00 PMThroughout the ages, the abnormal body-what was viewed as a "freak of nature"-has provoked wonder, fascination, and even horror. It has been a great source of scientific research and debate, as well as amusement for the masses.
Two concurrent Yale exhibitions explore this phenomenon from very different standpoints, but in equally interesting ways.
Side Show at Yale University School of Art's 32 Edgewood Gallery is an exhibition of fine artworks inspired by the culture of the carnival, as well as original sideshow banners, props, and ephemera, ranging from the mid-18th-century to the present. More than 50 works by 29 artists are on display.
Teratology: The Science and History of Human Monstrosity at the Cushing/Whitney Medical Library looks at the history of the science of human monstrosity, illustrating the ways monsters have been described, explained, classified, and displayed in books, prints, and broadsides (posters or advertisements that were printed on one side of a large piece of paper).
The Spectacle of the Side Show
Curating Side Show is Lisa Kereszi, an artist, photographer, and director of undergraduate studies in art at Yale University School of Art.
Kereszi says she has always been interested in objects that have something to do with escapism and that she has particularly had a long interest in the subject of the side show.
She explains that, traditionally, a side show was a secondary production associated with a mainstream carnival or circus, in a makeshift tent that would feature people born with physical oddities, such as bearded women or conjoined twins; death-defying acts like sword-swallowing or fire-breathing; and exotic animals.
"They were a fad of popular entertainment for the masses looking to forget their worries and cares and fears and problems," Kereszi says. "They were not unlike the proliferations of reality television today-the Honey Boo-Boos and the various Housewives, or the afternoon talk shows of the '80s and '90s, like Sally Jessy and Geraldo."
The exhibit is divided into sections including signage and advertising; issues of race and ethnicity; size-people who are merely overweight, but also giants; medical anomalies-people who have some kind of birth defect; and sex and eroticism because, Kereszi notes, along with putting so-called freaks and unusual people on display, a stripper's tent was a common carnival feature.
Kereszi stresses that she purposely mixed together contemporary fine art and fine art from the last few hundred years with historical documents, side show props, and actual side show signage and banners.
"Another interest of mine is finding out what happens when you put together highfalutin art and low-brow artwork by sign painters and carnival people," she says. "So, the fine art you're seeing is all related to the sides how in some way-it's either of the performer, of the so-called freak, tattoo lady, parasitic twin, [etc]."
For example, she says, Can't Never Could…, an oil painting by Roger Brown, is an example of a "Chicago artist using the side show banner aesthetic in much of his work to make statements and comments about our society," and Toni-Lee Sangastiano's Hunger Artist is "not a real banner that would hang outside a tent; it's a real piece of artwork making a comment about body image by a contemporary young woman artist."
On the other hand, she points to "an amazing example" of real banner artwork by David "Snap" Wyatt, who is probably the most well-known banner painter.
"His work isn't meant for a gallery. It's meant to hang outside of a side show to advertise the unusual people that you'll see inside."
"The side show celebrates the human spirit's ability to overcome any and all challenges, and the acts performed there proved that nothing is impossible," said performer and collector Todd Robbins, who contributed a folk sculpture from his collection to the exhibition.
Teratology Explored
"Teratology is the study of monstrosity and is still a term used today to talk about people, mostly with birth defects," explains Courtney Thompson, one of the curators of the Medical Library exhibition.
"Coined in the 19th century, it's from the Greek word teras, which means monstrosity. It shows how deep this history goes," she says. "People like Aristotle and Plato were talking about monstrous races in ancient times."
This exhibit focuses on early modern accounts of human-animal hybrids and prodigies to present-day studies of birth defects shown in drawings, etchings, engravings-several of which are in the Side Show exhibition.
Thompson says that part of the reason the exhibit begins in the 15th century is because it was a time when two things were happening simultaneously: the invention of the printing press, which made information about this subject easy to disseminate to the public, and the age of exploration.
"Explorers were coming home, talking to naturalists, and forming these networks of scientific explorations," she says. "They were talking about all these new animals, plants, minerals, as well as monsters.
"Ambroise Paré-a very well-known 16th-century French surgeon- wrote a famous piece about science and monsters to explain how monsters came to be, but also trying to explain the natural order and catalogue all kinds of creatures great and small, strange and normal," Thompson says.
"Later into the early modern Renaissance period there is this mixture of wonder and confusion about what's real and what's not-what's a monster and what's just normal human nature," she says. "A lot of early associations with wonder went away and were instead replaced with intense skepticism. Monsters were problematic to social and philosophical order."
Thompson notes that debates were going on during the same period around preformation, a popular 18th-century theory that an individual develops by simple enlargement of a tiny, fully formed organism.
"How did conjoined twins come to be, and could a conjoined twin be half African and half white? These were interesting questions in this period," she says. "Studies on creatures such as hermaphrodites were particularly problematic-how could you be both man and woman at the same time?
"By the end of the 18th century, people were pretty convinced preformation was out, but it still left the question about what do you do with monsters?" Thompson says.
By the 19th century, scientists were continuing to try to fit every single human monster into these intense classification systems that had species, orders, genera, Thompson says, and they also engaged in more anatomical studies-on fetuses, as well as deceased adults.
"This classification scheme lasted into the beginning of the 20th century, and at the same time as all these physicians and anatomists were trying to figure out what do we do with 'monsters,' there was an increasing emergence of the popular side shows of abnormal bodies [as depicted in the Yale University School of Art exhibition].
"These people who had very unusual issues, to use a modern term, were actually well known, but they also went around from city to city, were very refined, had beautiful manners, had great conversation skills, and spoke many languages," points out Susan Wheeler, curator of prints and drawings at the Medical Library.
"Today, all kinds of issues continue in discussion and acceptance and incorporation of these individuals into society," Wheeler says. "So there are very positive ways in which they travel around and exhibit themselves-and there are other ways, as well."
Side Show is at Yale University School of Art's 32 Edgewood Gallery, New Haven, through March 20. For a calendar of exhibition-related programs, visit http://art.yale.edu/32EdgewoodAveGallery
Teratology: The Science of Human Monstrosity is on view through May 15 at the Cushing/Whitney Medical Library, Yale University, 333 Cedar Street, New Haven. For more information, visit http://library.medicine.yale.edu.