Archives - Fine Art: Page 26
Author: amparo enriquez (Mon Jan 16, 2006 9:10 pm)
Title: Art and Forensics
Diagnosing art’s unsolved mysteries with state-of the-art medical knowledge is irresistible. The speculations arise in every season: Oscar Wilde’s skin condition resulted from hair dyes; Van Gogh suffered from xanthopsia induced by digitalis; Dostoyevsky owed his visionary power to epilepsy; Pick’s disease produced Ravel’s “Bolero”; the Mona Lisa’s unusual facial musculature came from Bell’s palsy. But our present obsession with science’s ability to solve crimes and put ancient mysteries to rest has become epidemic.
Three of the county’s top 10 television shows feature forensic pathologists, and forensic science has become one of the hot undergraduate degrees. We are fed a steady diet of sensational, horrific, aura-filled, definitive revelations bout unsolved mysteries that only our latest technologies can provide. We have always wanted to speak with the dead, and now we have more and better tools for listening than ever.