Artists’ Books in the Medical Community
Artists’ Books in the Medical Community
This chapter focuses on a medium that is rarely discussed in relation to the medical humanities by examining the artists’ books of American artist and cancer patient Martha A. Hall. Hall created her books in response to her initial diagnosis of breast cancer in 1989 and the effects of later recurrences until her death in 2003. While art historians and book critics typically describe the handling of artists’ books in terms of a powerful aesthetic experience that emphasises the sensuous pleasures of the book, this chapter shows how the interactive form and content of Hall’s books place a more radical set of demands upon readers. The analysis particularly concentrates on the complex nature of touching and the ethics of responsibility that it generates. It also considers the challenges Hall’s work poses to mainstream breast cancer and the provocations of her artists’ books for medical communities, to whom she attached special importance. The chapter concludes by showing how her work, and artists’ books more broadly, can create spaces for unpredictable and unfinished encounters that can reinvigorate models of empathy in medical education.
Keywords: Martha A. Hall, artists’ books and medicine, ethics of touch, empathy and medicine, artists’ books and illness narrative, interactive form of artists’ books
Edinburgh Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs, and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us.
