Chapter 7, Biology and Crime: Degeneracy and the Visual Trace

fin de siecle

French for end of a century, end of an era and beginning of a new one.

\ˌfan-də-sē-ˈe-k^əl; faⁿ-də-ˈsyekl^ə\

Leading up to the end of the 19th century:

• Degeneration - French Revolution and Industrial Revolution (England mid 1700's - mid 1800's)
• Rapid Urbanization - Effects on human body
• "...threaten the very fabric of society and the future of civilization."
• Crowds, Masses - disorder
• Art - people are inclined to imitate what they see
• Photography - Document, Index
• Modern Art and Literature
• Hysteria
• Crime (repeat offenders)
• Alcoholism
• Prostitution

Degeneration, Max Nordau, 1892, Hungary

"Nordau believed that degeneration manifested itself in 

visually identifiable physical characteristics or stigmata..."

Artists, Architects, Performance (Visual Arts)
Vienna:

• Schiele - Raw sexuality crucial part of human reality and beauty.
• Klimt - Eroticism clad with glamour.

Egon Schiele, Artist

Egon Schiele, 1890 - 1918, Austria

Egon Schiele

Link here to read about Schiele and Klimt in the American Journal of Psychiatry.

Klimt, The Kiss, oil on canvas, 1908.

Gustav Klimt (1862-1918).  Vienna.   

Above image, Judith, 1901, oil on canvas.  

Moulin Rouge, Paris, 1889

Can-can dance is seduction, leads to cabaret across Europe.

Eifeel Tower, Paris, 1889.

Case Mila, Antoni Gaudi, Spanish Architect, completed 1912, Barcelona, Spain.

Belgium architect Victor Horta, begun around 1880.

Criminals and Monsters

1887. Collects evidence through observation.
Ink stain,  shape and size of footprints.
Large conclusions from small observations.  

Human behavior = Like resembles Like

Criminals are born and can be identified.  

Examined exterior, not interior.   

Visual characteristics are undesirable. 

Adam (1880) by Rodin (French, b. 1840- d. 1917)

Andromeda by Rodin, carved 1886. Greek Myth, female offered as a sacrifice 
to a monster to save father's kingdom.  Source link here.

The Scream, Edvard Munch, painted in 1893.

Dr. Hugh Welch Diamond
Photographed inmates, 1850's,
facial expressions of patients suffering from mental illness,
diagnosis and treatment.  
Seated Woman with Bird, about 1855.  
Source is J. Paul Getty Museum.  Link here for more.

Female Hysteria

Hippocrates 460-377 b.c., Greek Physician.
Hysteria a disorder only in women.
Wandering Womb.
Suffocation of the Womb, text published 1603, Edward Jordan
Source of witchcraft.
Connected the phenomenon of hysteria with actions like singing, laughing, crying, and choking.
Persists until microscopes (17th)  and cellular research (19th).
"animal within animal"

Link here for article.

Jean Martin Charcot 1825-1893

Ovary Compressor

Source is Oxford Journals.  Link here.
Ovary Compressor - Trigger Hysteria

A demonstration by Charcot, 1885.

"However, it is as a result of his work on hysteria that Charcot was raised to celebrity stature. He actively encouraged publicity, behaved as a showman and compère, and rapidly became a household name. It is said that on the days of his demonstrations, traffic jammed on the entire Left Bank as ‘students packed into tramways heading for the Salpêtrière lessons’ (Goetz et al., 1995). His lectures were attended by the laiety, philosophers and writers. Private showings of the beautiful and half naked Blanche (séances intimes) were arranged for selected influential laypersons and, particularly, journalists. As Goetz and colleagues (1995) coyly put it—‘Scholarly interest was difficult to disentangle from more sensational voyeuristic attraction’." -source is Oxford Journal

Drawing by Charcot

We can understand how it is, that as soon as some melancholy state passes through the brain, there occurs a just perceptible drawing down of the corners of the mouth, or a slight raising up of the inner ends of the eyebrows, or both movements combined, and immediately afterwards a slight suffusion of tears. (…) The above actions may be considered as vestiges of the screaming fits, which are so frequent and prolonged during infancy. 

— Darwin, Charles, 1809-1882. 

The expression of the emotions in man and animals ; with photographic and other illustrations. London: John Murray, 1872

Source Brown University Library Exhibits.  Link here.

The Arch

Anthropometry

anthropometry |ˌanTHrəˈpämitrē|nounthe scientific study of the measurements and proportions of the human body.

Alphonse Bertillon

1853 - 1914.  
Parisian law enforcement officer.
Document crime scenes with photos. 
Standardized "mug shots". 
Eventually system replaced with fingerprints. 

More here.
Anthropometry.  Repeat offenders.  

Alphonse Bertillion.  
Classification of the Ear.  circa 1900.

Source link  here.

Identity - tactile traces of the body.
Visible trace of evolution.

"There are similar markings in the grain of woods, in the veining of leaves, and in the spots and stripes of flowers.  The barks of some trees often display the very patterns that are so useful and interesting in finger prints. Photography shows furrows exactly like those of finger prints in the overflowing lava of a volcano." 

-Henry Faulds, 1843-1930, Scottish doctor and scientist.