Beauchêne Skull Study 7, New York 2011

Beauchêne Skull Study 7 is a photograph by Norwegian artist Christian Houge. It is part of the Evolution project, which aims at reinterpreting evolutionary study through the lens of contemporary photography. Developed over a course of two decades, Evolution explores the hidden beauty that lies in the perfection through imperfection that can be found in Nature.

Fascinated by the long and tedious process of systemizing and categorizing the thousands of species developed by entomologists and paleontologists, the artist (who himself collects everything from skeletons and horns, rat embryos, human skulls and animals in formaldehyde) has drawn inspiration from these collections that fuse mystery, art and science. The in-depth book on human anatomical study made by Leonardo Da Vinci in the years 1500 has also had a great influence on his work. “Da Vinci’s study of osteology and myology was not only a secretive and groundbreaking work, it was also art” says Houge who also quotes the Italian humanist and scientist Celio Calcagnini (1479-1541): “Sunt Quaedam formosa adeo, deformia si sint: Et tunc cum multum displicuere, placent” (Some things are beautiful just because they are distorted: they please us through the discomfort they create).

In this project, Houge has used everything from large format camera to macro lenses as well as organic material and several different, very playful, techniques. Like most of his photographic series, Houge explores the relation between nature and culture, and pursues his investigation of the beautiful and the brutal, the organic and the artificial. Each viewer’s reality and former experience will determine his/her reaction to each individual image and series. In the taboos that arise in many of these series and the strong visual impact they create, Houge likes to generate cognitive dissonance in the viewer, torn between conflicting emotions.

Beauchene Skull Study is the latest series to be included in the Evolution project and is meant to create a cognitive dissonance to the viewer. These pictures can be viewed as brutal, captivating, beautiful and natural at the same time. In this series, we are reminded of our own structure as well as what we are slowly moving towards in life. The human skull has been used in the arts for hundreds of years. It is symbolic of life/death, nature, ego, vanity and at the same time an anatomical study of our own species. This method of “exploding” the cranial bones was developed by the 19th Century French anatomist Edmé François Chauvot de Beauchêne as a means of studying and displaying the architecture of the human skull.

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