LinDESMA9: Desma9 assignment4 Medicine and Art

Before this week’s lecture, I will hardly relate medicine with art because they seem two things totally different and never should be related. However, after taking the lecture, I really have a new appreciation about the undivided relation between medical technique and art work.

Among all the topics discussed by Professor Vesna, plastic surgery seems most interesting to me. Nowadays, this word is more and more popular in the world because with the development of life, people pay more attention to their outlook than before. In this case, those people need a way to make them more beautiful or handsome and that is plastic surgery. However, with more and more beauties are “produced” under the scalpel, the conception of beauty seems changed and the discussion about that becomes more intense.

To give an example, the artist Orlan discussed in the lecture, did operation many times in order to tell people what is the real beauty. She got different face features from the famous artwork and made it her own body. However, in my opinion, what she did is meaningless because with the period changed, the conception of beauty actually changed. Moreover, those features may look nice separately on each painting, but when they get together it seems so wired and disharmony.

Another example would be the recent Korean beauty contest that all the participants all look the same! Some of friends talked to me about this event and they joked that they may come out of the same hospital.

I think it is no faults that people seek for beautiful. However, we should always follow a simple rule that “The natural one is the most beautiful one.” Plastic surgery, a technique rose during World War I, should still take an important role in medical word but not the work of art and beauty.