A short history of anatomical maps provides an overview of the evolution of anatomical knowledge and the visual documentation that accompanied it.
posted by zeoslap on Dec 23, 2008 - 11 comments

Michael Mararian creates pen and ink drawings of mischievously macabre babies and children. Meet the dark and wicked little demons in his current exhibit or explore the world of childhood terrors in his phobias, foibles and fiends collection (scroll down a few) where humor and horror collide.
posted by madamjujujive on Dec 14, 2008 - 12 comments

Skelewags - drawings from a delightful Burtonish/Goreyesque world, including some skewed takes on Carroll's Alice.
posted by Wolfdog on Feb 6, 2008 - 13 comments

Topor et moi. Roland Topor was the graphic artist behind the beautiful Planète Sauvage (Cf. a few posts below) but his body of work also included founding the Panic Movement with fellow oddballs Jodorowsky and Arrabal, writing plays and novels (The Tenant, turned into a movie by another Paris-born celebrity of Polish extraction and amateur of bizarre, Roman Polanski), and making strange and popular TV shows for children (YouTube clips from the 80s). Except for the kids shows, most of the links are quite NSFW with abundant sex and/or violence, though in a cartoonish, disturbing, surreal, or even political way: Topor once said (YouTube documentary in French starting with his Phallunculi series) that to renounce sex was to banish oneself from mankind. Topor himself was also a familiar figure of the French cultural landscape, instantly recognisable thanks to his manic cackle (heard at the beginning of this video where he explains how to make art from random pornographic images), that he (over)used to play the madman Renfield in Herzog's Nosferatu.
posted by elgilito on Dec 11, 2006 - 10 comments

The Many Deaths of Norman Spittal. Hilarious, in a morbid sort of way. Also, chortle over these gags.
posted by Chasuk on Aug 20, 2005 - 10 comments

Reliquaries are containers built to hold objects of special religious significance, such as the foot of a saint, or the skull of a king. The art of European reliquary making reached it's zenith in the Middle Ages when craftsman created fantastic objets d'art for cathedrals and monasteries in the form of caskets, bodily appendages, and freestanding holders built to visually display occasionally gruesome bits of the venerated individual. The layperson had access to reliquaries as well, typically in the form of small lead crosses worn around the neck, containing pieces of bone or one of the ubiquitous fragments of the True Cross. Reliquaries are not unique to the Christianity, but can also be found in Buddhist and Islamic tradition.
posted by MrBaliHai on Oct 6, 2002 - 27 comments

The Zymoglyphic Museum including the works of Frederik Ruysch. Ruysch made about a dozen tableaux, constructed of human fetal skeletons with backgrounds of other body parts, on allegorical themes of death and the transiency of life.... One fetal skeleton holding a string of pearls in its hand proclaims, "Why should I long for the things of this world?" Another, playing a violin with a bow made of a dried artery, sings, "Ah fate, ah bitter fate."
Ruysch's work was eventually purchased by his student and admirer, Peter the Great.
posted by vacapinta on Aug 30, 2002 - 13 comments

He never got as famous as Gary Larson or Edward Gorey, and is best known for his cat pictures, but the rest of his bizarre brand of vulgar social commentary is worth attention. He's B. Kliban, and his humor ranges from the strangely funny to the surreal. More of this gallery here.
posted by interrobang on Aug 22, 2002 - 27 comments