Artistic Anatomy (Practical Art Books) [Englisch] [Taschenbuch]

However, this book is nothing less than a classic, and any modern art anatomy book references Richer in one way or other -- just look at the bibliography of any anatomy book. The drawings at the end of the book are especially invaluable. Where else can you find 16 side by side drawings of the rotations of the arm? This alone is priceless in understanding how muscles ACTUALLY WORK rather than simply displaying front and profile pictures.

I would also recommend "Human Antomy for Artists" by Eliot Goldfinger. It is obviously largely based on Richer's work, but deeply expanded in that it covers every single muscle in detail along with photographs of models. However, you need both books, since Goldfinger does not have the case studies that Richer does (Goldfinger shows the muscles clinically and not in actual application) and is not the master illustrator that Richer was.

I used this book as my text in a formal class on artistic anatomy, in which we could select one or more of several artistic anatomy texts. Without the class to correct the confusion caused by the book, I would have been lost.

Although I was able to glean most of the necessary information from the text and illustrations, I was frequently confused by mislabeled diagrams and inconsistent translation of technical terms. A sharp-eyed editor would have caught most of these errors, including text that referred to the wrong plate numbers or the wrong figures within the plates. That a book could still be in print after 30 years -- Hale's translation is copyrighted 1971 -- without ever cleaning up such a mess in later editions is unconscionable.

Some of the problems, such as plate numbers mis-referenced in the text, could be bypassed to a large degree if the modern version of the book were not constrained by the format of the original. In the 1890s, technical constraints often led illustrations and typeset text to be printed on different presses, and thus to be grouped separately in the final book. Modern printing technology (as Edward Tufte has pointed out) is not so constrained, so the convention of sticking all the plates in the back is nothing more than an impediment to use. I found myself reading Richer/Hale with my left index finger as a live bookmark in the text section, and my right on the plate being referenced. Awkward to say the least.

Richer also omits illustrating several bones in the skeletal section, either showing them later when describing the muscles, as for the hyoid bone in the throat, or mentioning them only in the text, as for the smallest bones on the undersides of the thumb and big toe. Richer's illustrations of the bones and muscles of the hand are of insufficient integration and detail. Hale, reverent as always towards Richer's plates, did not see fit to address any of these shortcomings by adding any new illustrations of his own.

Finally, readers sensitive to how racial differences in the human body were regarded by late 19th century Europeans might want to either avoid Richer, or view his remarks as an unscientific historical curiosity. Stephen Jay Gould has written on "The Mismeasure of Man," and in Richer we see an example of this mindset, the obsession with measuring the human body with an eye to racial categorization. How long is the Negro humerus -- when you don't account for regional differences within the category of "Negro"?