Drawing Blood S1 Ep1: Severed Breasts, Lee Miller, and Surrealist Photography
Dec 1, 2021
Explore the haunting beauty of Lee Miller's surreal photographs of severed breasts, merging art and medicine in unsettling ways. The hosts dive into the uncanny aesthetics and feminist implications, questioning consent and objectification. They discuss Miller's complex legacy, her role as both muse and artist, and the chilling history of surgical photography. With humor and horror, the conversation reveals the tension between art and reality, challenging modern viewers to confront their discomfort with fragmented bodies.
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Breast On A Plate As Surreal Critique
- Lee Miller photographed a real severed breast from a mastectomy and staged it as a place setting to create surrealist shock.
- The image collapses erotic objectification and abject flesh to critique how women's bodies are served up as "meat."
Walking A Breast Through Paris
- Lee Miller walked through Paris carrying the wrapped breast from the hospital to the Vogue studio and shot two photos before being kicked out.
- She reportedly simply asked the surgeon if she could take the specimen and he agreed.
Anticanonical Flesh Versus Marble
- The photo inverts classical sculptural ideals by presenting textured, blackened flesh on a white plate rather than smooth white marble.
- This move echoes Bataillean collapse of high/low aesthetics and the turn from optical to animal, olfactory registers.
