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# A Magazine Scans the Connective Tissue Between Medicine and Art
- URL: https://hyperallergic.com/a-magazine-scans-the-connective-tissue-between-medicine-and-art/
- Published: 2015-05-06T23:56:57.000Z
- Updated: 2025-11-24T15:47:17.000Z
- Description: Esopus 22: Medicine feels like a giant patient file for the cross between the medical and visual arts.
- Author: Allison Meier
- Tags: Art, Magazines, medicine, Melissa Meyer, Nina Katchadourian, William Villalongo, #wp, #wp-post, #image-position-hidden, #Import 2025-11-24 07:08 (2014, 2015, part 2)

![KATCHADOURIAN_POSTER](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2015/04/esopusmed08.jpg)

Nina Katchadourian, “The Hospital, and other medical thrillers” (2015), included as a fold-out poster in ‘Esopus 22: Medicine’ (all images courtesy ‘Esopus’)

Filled with scrawled notes for poems on prescription pads by [William Carlos Williams](http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poet/william-carlos-williams?ref=hyperallergic.com), photographs by [Stuart Franklin](http://www.stuartfranklin.com/?ref=hyperallergic.com) of a condom factory production line at the peak of the AIDS crisis, and collages by [Melissa Meyer](http://www.melissameyerstudio.com/?ref=hyperallergic.com) based on torturous-looking orthodontic headgear, [*Esopus 22: Medicine*](https://secure.esopus.org/store/product/54?ref=hyperallergic.com)feels like a giant patient file for the cross between the medical and visual arts. The 230-page issue of the nonprofit arts magazine is its first annual publication since it started in 2003, moving to a larger format — with over 60 contributors — from its previous biannual editions.

![Cover of Esopus](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2015/04/esopusmed01.jpg)

Cover of ‘Esopus 22: Medicine’

“I think it’s sometimes too easy to create a dichotomy between medicine — which is often characterized as analytical or ‘scientific’ — and the arts, which are typically thought of as more intuitive,” Tod Lippy, the editor, designer, and main mastermind of *Esopus*, told Hyperallergic. “So the idea was to really delve into the intense creativity that informs both disciplines, especially where they happen to intersect.”

For example, designer [Thomas Juncher Jensen](http://www.jidk.com/?ref=hyperallergic.com) rendered ideal waiting rooms based on reader suggestions, and reproductions of archival material from the Museum of Modern Art present a 1943 exhibition by war veterans, part of the institution’s Arts in Therapy program.

*Esopus 22: Medicine* has its free [launch party](https://www.facebook.com/events/1376984219298629/) on May 7 at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture’s new Chelsea space, and will host an event on [May 26 at The Kitchen](http://thekitchen.org/event/esopus-22-medicine?ref=hyperallergic.com) featuring issue contributors [Nina Katchadourian](http://www.ninakatchadourian.com/?ref=hyperallergic.com) and Okkervil River’s [Will Sheff](http://www.willsheff.com/?ref=hyperallergic.com), who’s included on an accompanying CD of bodily organ–inspired music. Also related is a [screening](http://www.movingimage.us/visit/calendar/2015/06/14/detail/hospital?ref=hyperallergic.com) of Frederick Wiseman’s 1970 documentary [*Hospital*](http://www.movingimage.us/visit/calendar/2015/06/14/detail/hospital?ref=hyperallergic.com)on June 14 at the Museum of the Moving Image. In the magazine, emergency room physician and author [Paul Austin](http://www.paulethanaustin.com/?ref=hyperallergic.com) introduces startling black-and-white images from the film, which he says demonstrate “afresh how our system is still broken” in the “most disturbingly accurate depiction of my workplace that I have ever seen. It gives few indications of the time of day. The light is fluorescent, the shadows unchanging. But that doesn’t matter: The sorrow may speed up or slow down, but it never ends. Night or day.”

![HEALING_ARTS_1](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2015/04/esopusmed04.jpg)

Facsimile reproductions of material related to the Museum of Modern Art’s therapeutic program for WWII veterans

![Esopus](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2015/04/esopusmed05.jpg)

Facsimile reproductions of material related to the Museum of Modern Art’s therapeutic program for WWII veterans

That stark feeling is echoed in Teresa Matas’s *Arte Terapéutico* (2015), shown publicly for the first time in the issue of *Esopus*. For the series, Matas photographed headlights at night and then drew them in pencil and white marker, after her son died in a car accident. Other contributors focus on the medicinal control of bodies, like [Fred Tomaselli](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred%5FTomaselli?ref=hyperallergic.com), who, for his *Chemical Celestial Portraits, Series 2* (2014), asks sitters for their drug histories and birthdays, creating astrological signs from pills on paper.

[William Villalongo](http://williamvillalongo.com/home.html?ref=hyperallergic.com)‘s *Anatomy of a Muse* (2015), on the other hand, examines the historical, anatomical objectification of black women’s bodies, including [Sarah Baartman](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saartjie%5FBaartman?ref=hyperallergic.com), the 19th-century “Hottentot Venus” whose body was displayed both in her life and after her death (her remains were on view in Paris until the 1970s). Alongside poetry by [Nicole Sealey](https://www.pen.org/nicole-sealey?ref=hyperallergic.com), a beautiful fold-out figure by Villalongo reveals dissected layers like an [old paper autopsy flap book](http://exhibits.library.duke.edu/exhibits/show/anatomy?ref=hyperallergic.com). One of the most complicated of the hand-inserted objects in *Esopus*, this particular element took eight people three whole days to assemble. It and all the collected projects in the issue offer a sense of how art and medicine interpret the relationship between our bodies and the world.

![VILLALONGO_1](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2015/04/esopusmed13.jpg)

William Villalongo, “Anatomy of a Muse” (2015), folded out

![DUREX_VS_AIDS_1](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2015/04/esopusmed02.jpg)

Photograph by Stuart Franklin for Magnum on Durex at the height of the AIDS crisis

![MELISSA_MEYER_1](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2015/04/esopusmed09.jpg)

Melissa Meyer’s “Duets” (2015), artist project on headgear orthodontics

![WILLIAM_CARLOS_WILLIAMS_1](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2015/04/esopusmed14.jpg)

Archival material from the William Carlos Williams Papers, Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, reproduced in ‘Esopus’

[*Esopus 22: Medicine*](https://secure.esopus.org/store/product/54?ref=hyperallergic.com) *has its* [*launch party*](https://www.facebook.com/events/1376984219298629/) *on May 7 at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture (136 West 22nd Street, Chelsea, Manhattan).*