{"id":10784,"date":"2015-06-17T11:55:48","date_gmt":"2015-06-17T16:55:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/college.unc.edu\/?p=10784"},"modified":"2024-07-02T16:07:49","modified_gmt":"2024-07-02T16:07:49","slug":"levine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/?p=10784","title":{"rendered":"The art of surgery: Cary Levine on the intersection of art and science"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Levine_Cary\"<\/a>It\u2019s seven a.m. on a spring morning, and associate professor of art Cary Levine is at UNC\u2019s Memorial Hospital, delivering an early morning lecture to an unexpected crowd \u2014 UNC medical students.<\/span><\/p>\n

Enlarged on the projector screen is a slide of Thomas Eakins\u2019s 1875 painting, The Gross Clinic<\/em>. The painting is one of the first to depict a physician performing surgery, Levine explains, and to understand its significance, \u201cwe must place ourselves in the position of a nineteenth century American viewer, or even patient, confronted with a relatively new medical technique.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Gross Clinic <\/em>was painted at a time when surgery was emerging as a major technological advance, \u201cyet it was met with great skepticism by the public,\u201d Levine explains. More than simply \u201cdocumentation,\u201d Eakins\u2019s painting signaled the beginning of a cultural shift in the acceptance of surgery as a medical practice. \u201cThe respect for the physician as seen in this painting was certainly not a given,\u201d he says. \u201cEakins is showing us not only state of the art medical developments, but the birth of the modern idea of the doctor as the master of the unknown.\u201d<\/p>\n

Importantly, Levine argues, it was not simply the scientific ideas or advances that helped make surgery an accepted practice. \u201cEakins presents medicine as a rational, respectable practice, but also an art form,\u201d Levine explains. In both The Gross Clinic<\/em> and a later painting, The Agnew Clinic<\/em>, Eakins helps to \u201cestablish medicine\u2019s conventions by employing aesthetics. Art and science are made to mutually affirm one another.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Levine, this point\u2014<\/span>the interconnectedness of art and science\u2014<\/span>is salient. He points to the distinctions between art and science as a modern phenomenon. \u201cDuring the time Eakins was painting, art and science were much more intertwined,\u201d Levine says. \u201cArtists were scientists and scientists were artists.\u201d Levine has been working to make sure that this point is not lost on students or educators at UNC. \u201cThe idea behind all of this is to advocate for the arts and humanities as relevant to the sciences,\u201d he explains. \u201cI\u2019ve always been a person who likes to bring art into places it doesn\u2019t belong.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Thomas_Eakins_American_-_Portrait_of_Dr._Samuel_D._Gross_The_Gross_Clinic_-_Google_Art_Project\"<\/a>
The Gross Clinic, 1875<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Levine, who was a Faculty Fellow<\/a> in the spring of 2015, serves on UNC\u2019s Quality Enhancement Plan steering committee. The focus on the 2016 QEP is \u201cImproving Learning in the Sciences: Readiness for Science and Health Professionals,\u201d so, naturally, Levine is attentive to the inclusion of the arts and humanities. His medical school lecture on Thomas Eakins\u2019s paintings came from a fifteen-minute presentation to the QEP steering committee. Dr. Bruce Cairns, the John Stackhouse Distinguished Professor of Surgery and chair of the faculty in the School of Medicine, invited Levine to present on Eakins after hearing the QEP presentation.<\/p>\n

Levine is also part of an interdisciplinary research team conducting Pass the Popcorn<\/a>, a National Institute for Health-funded study of children\u2019s perceptions of depictions of diet, exercise, and body image in movies. IAH Fellows Andy Perrin<\/a> and Eliana Perrin<\/a> are the lead researchers on the study.<\/p>\n

For Levine, one of the most important lessons of The Gross Clinic<\/em> is that what we know today as a convention (scientific or otherwise) is actually rooted in a particular historical moment\u2014<\/span>and that moment is shaped by cultural, political, and ideological forces. \u201cDoctors were considered quacks for a long time,\u201d Levine notes. \u201cThrough the arts, we come to understand that our understanding of what a doctor is has changed. This kind of way of looking at art actually sheds light on the historical specificity of science.\u201d<\/p>\n

Story by Jenny Morgan, Institute for the Arts and Humanities<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s seven a.m. on a spring morning, and associate professor of art Cary Levine is at UNC\u2019s Memorial Hospital, delivering an early morning lecture to an unexpected crowd \u2014 UNC medical students.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":10785,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10784","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-carousel","category-fine-arts-humanities"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10784","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10784"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10784\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47302,"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10784\/revisions\/47302"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10785"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10784"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10784"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10784"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}