Seeing The Patient
Presenters: Dr. Mark Gilbert and Professor Megan Hildebrandt
This presentation will consider portraiture’s capacity to engender intimate interactions that require space for open communication between artist and sitter as well as creativity and imagination. We will examine Scottish-born artist Mark Gilbert’s “Portraits of Care” alongside Megan Hildebrandt’s “Aesthetics of Health” curriculum, which centers portraiture as a vehicle for storytelling and illness narratives. Artistic representations of medicine and illness are present in anatomical and physiological illustrations of the human body, medical instruction manuals, treatment documentation, and aesthetic works that have, over the centuries, facilitated the discovery and understanding of various aspects of medicine, health, illness, and disability. The artistic medium of portraiture can provide interactions and resources which can highlight the nature and form of illness, disability and care caregiving. The tacit knowledge and behaviors residing in complex interactions that shape not only portraiture but also medical interactions, can be illuminated by beholding and reflecting on expressive works about illness, recovery, and care.
The Aesthetics of Health is a pioneering curriculum, in which the Department of Art and Art History at UT-Austin partners with a variety of local, national and global clinical settings to explore the intersections of art and healthcare. At the heart of this undergraduate course is the act of portraiture: students create portraits as our guest storytellers (cancer patients and folks carrying a variety of other ailments, their loved ones, clinical staff, etc) tell the students about their life experience.