Tag Archives: Georges Seurat

Deux Seurats: one (was an artist) and one (is an inquiry into scientifically sound alternatives to animal testing)

It must have been a moment of artistic madness which led to naming one of the European Union’s biggest projects dedicated to finding alternatives to animal testing, SEURAT-1. (Note: [1] All references used for this post are listed at the end. [2] There is a full disclosure statement after the references.)

Georges Seurat, a French post-impressionist painter, left no record that he was ever concerned with animal testing although he could be considered the ‘patron saint of pixels’ due to paintings which consist of dots rather than strokes.

Le Cirque (1891) by Georges Seurat in the Musée d'Orsay [Public domain or Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons; The Yorck Project: 10.000 Meisterwerke der Malerei. DVD-ROM, 2002. ISBN 3936122202. Distributed by DIRECTMEDIA Publishing GmbH; downloaded from https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Georges_Seurat_019.jpg

Le Cirque (1891) by Georges Seurat in the Musée d’Orsay [Public domain or Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons; The Yorck Project: 10.000 Meisterwerke der Malerei. DVD-ROM, 2002. ISBN 3936122202. Distributed by DIRECTMEDIA Publishing GmbH; downloaded from https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Georges_Seurat_019.jpg

Still, the idea of painstakingly constructing a picture dot by dot seems curiously similar to the scientific process where years of incremental gains in knowledge and understanding lead to new perspectives on the world around us. In this case, the change of perspective concerns the use of animals in testing for toxicological effects of medications, cosmetics, and other chemical goods intended for humans.

Animal testing dates back to back to the third and fourth centuries BCE (before the common era) although the father of vivisection, Galen, a Greek physician, doesn’t make an appearance until 2nd-century CE in Rome. More recently, we have an Arab physician, Avenzoar (Ibn Zuhr), in 12th-century Moorish Spain to thank for introducing animal experimentation as a means of testing surgical procedures.

The millenia-old practice of animal testing, surgical or otherwise, has presented a cruel conundrum. The tests have been our best attempt to save human lives and reduce human misery, albeit, at the cost of the animals used in the tests.

Social discomfort over animal-testing is rising internationally and thankfully, it looks like animal testing is in decline as alternatives and improvements (animal physiology is not perfectly equivalent to human physiology) are adopted. Alternatives and improvements have made possible actions such as the

  • European Union’s (EU) March 2013 ban on the sale of animal-tested cosmetics from anywhere in the world; there was an earlier 2009 ban on the sale of animal-tested cosmetics from anywhere in the EU,
  • China’s July 2014 announcement that animal-testing for cosmetics produced domestically is no longer required,
  • Israel’s 2013 ban on importing and marketing of cosmetics tested on animals,
  • India’s bans on cruel animal testing in India’s laboratories (2013) and on importing animal-tested cosmetics (Oct. 2014)

There are also a number of outstanding (as of December 2014) legislative proposals regarding animal-testing and cosmetics in countries such as Australia, Brazil, Taiwan, New Zealand, and the US.

However, cosmetics are only one product type among many, many chemical products. For example, medications, which rely on animal-testing for safety certification. Despite recent victories, the process of dismantling the animal-testing systems in place is massive, complex, and difficult even with support and encouragement from various government agencies, civil society groups, scientists, and various international organizations.

Well-entrenched national and international regulatory frameworks make animal testing mandatory prior to releasing a product into the marketplace. Careful thought, assurances to policy makers and the general public, and confidence that replacement regimes will be equivalent to the old system to the old system of animal-testing are necessary.

Strangely, assuring even sophisticated thinkers can prove surprisingly difficult, David Ropeik, a former Director of Communications for Harvard University’s Center for Risk Analysis and currently an international consultant and speaker on risk analysis, wrote in a Sept. 2014 post for The Big Think about the EU’s 2013 ban on cosmetics testing on animals,

But people use lotions and toothpastes and deodorants and perfumes repeatedly. We  expose ourselves everyday to hundreds of human-made chemicals, and some of those substances, which also fall under the European ban on animal testing for cosmetics, have the potential to do deeper damage, like cancer, or reproductive damage to the developing fetus. And there are no reliable replacement tests for those serious outcomes.

This now-banned animal testing for the systemic risks from repeated exposure to these everyday products was also a source of important information on the health effects of industrial chemicals generally. Results from cosmetic testing become part of the library of what we know about how industrial chemicals might harm us, no matter what products they’re in.

So the European community has eliminated a way for science to study the risk of industrial chemicals…because it feels right to consider the rights of animals. [emphasis mine] We have done what feels right, but in the process, without realizing it, we have made it harder to figure out how to keep ourselves safe.

Ropeik doesn’t substantiate his comment about the EU community acting from ‘feelings’ or discuss how current alternatives are inferior to animal testing or offer data about how this ban has made the earth a more dangerous place for humans. Meanwhile, more jurisdictions are limiting or eliminating testing of cosmetics on animals while an international competition which has already developed new techniques is underway to find yet more alternatives. SEURAT-1 the main European Union project, designed to carry out a set of scientific inquiries to facilitate the transition to animal testing alternatives where possible. It is organized around seven interlinked projects (or borrowing from Georges, seven dots):

  •  SCR&Tox (Stem Cells for Relevant efficient extended and normalized TOXicology): Stem cell differentiation for providing human-based organ specific target cells to assay toxicity pathways in vitro
  • Hepatic Microfluidic Bioreactor (HeMiBio): Developing a hepatic microfluidic bioreactor to mimick the complex structure and function of the human liver (liver-on-a-chip)
  • Detection of endpoints and biomarkers for repeated dose toxicity using in vitro systems (DETECTIVE): Identifying and investigating human biomarkers in cellular models for repeated dose in vitro testing
  • Integrated In Silico Models for the Prediction of Human Repeated Dose Toxicity of COSMetics to Optimise Safety’ (COSMOS): Integrating and delivering of a suite of computational tools to predict the effects of long-term exposure to chemicals in humans based on in silico calculations
  • Predicting long term toxic effects using computer models based on systems characterization of organotypic cultures (NOTOX): Developing systems biological tools for organotypic human cell cultures suitable for long term toxicity testing and the identification and analysis of pathways of toxicological relevance
  • Supporting Integrated Data Analysis and Servicing of Alternative Testing Methods in Toxicology (ToxBank): Data management, cell and tissue banking, selection of “reference compounds” and chemical repository
  • Coordination of projects on new approaches to replace current repeated dose systemic toxicity testing of cosmetics and chemicals (COACH): Cluster level coordinating and support action or this could be called, Administration

As SEURAT-1 nears its sunset date in 2015 (it is a five-year, 50M Euro project started in 2011), there are successes to celebrate. For example, Emma Davies in her article titled, Alternative test data publicly available; ToxBank data warehouse (Sept. 4, 2014 for Chemical Watch) notes that ToxBank, includes data from SEURAT-1’s “gold” standard reference compounds which have documented liver, kidney, and cardio toxicity. As well, data sets from a comprehensive 2012 liver toxicity study supplied by the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (the EU’s research hub and laboratory) have been added. ToxBank has also negotiated with Open TG-Gates, a Japanese toxicogenomics data resource and with ToxCast and Tox21, two US high-throughput screening programmes to add their data to the ToxBank data warehouse. Meanwhile, the warehouse’s data is publicly available on request.

COSMOS, the other data-oriented member of the SEURAT-1 cluster, should provide a good starting point for in silico studies (computer simulations) as it now boasts information on some 19,000 cosmetics-related substances, including toxicity data for more than 12,000 studies according to Davies’ article, Critical toxicity pathways at heart of Seurat-1 follow on (Sept. 11, 2014 for Chemical Watch).

While we can take Ropeik’s point that animal testing has been an important element in ensuring drug and chemical safety, the move to limit or ban animal testing for cosmetics has been over 50 years in the making and this current wave of regulatory changes has been approached cautiously. There may be some unforeseen consequences both good and bad to these bans on animal testing but to remain mired in the procedures and processes of the past is to deny an improved future for humans and the animals we have used for testing.

References

Pointillism

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pointillism

History of animal testing

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternatives_to_animal_testing

2013 EU ban ban on animal testing for cosmetics

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-21740745

http://ec.europa.eu/consumers/archive/sectors/cosmetics/animal-testing/index_en.htm

More legislation on cosmetics testing

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Testing_cosmetics_on_animals

India ban

http://www.hsi.org/news/press_releases/2014/10/animal-tested-cosmetics-import-ban-india-101414.html

China ban

http://www.care2.com/causes/its-official-china-ends-mandatory-animal-testing-for-cosmetics.html

EU 2013 one year later

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/monica-engebretson/celebrating-the-first-ann_b_4994028.html

David Ropeik’s credentials and resistance to eliminating animal-testing

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Ropeik

http://utility.prod.bigthink.com/risk-reason-and-reality/the-ban-on-animal-testing-morally-right-emotionally-appealing-but-dangerous

SEURAT-1

http://www.seurat-1.eu/

Cluster projects

http://www.seurat-1.eu/pages/cluster-projects.php

Emma Davies, Sept. 4, 2014 article (not behind a paywall)

http://chemicalwatch.com/21061/alternative-test-data-publicly-available

Emma Davies, Sept. 11, 2014 article  (behind a paywall)

http://chemicalwatch.com/register?o=21147&productID=1

Reference to cosmetics ban being over 50 years in the making

https://www.nc3rs.org.uk/the-3rs

The principles of the 3Rs (Replacement, Reduction and Refinement) were developed over 50 years ago as a framework for humane animal research.

Johns Hopkins Centre for Alternatives to Animal Testing (CAAT)

Resource list (http://caat.jhsph.edu/resources/) includes (and more):

Full disclosure: (1) SEURAT-1 paid for my flight, lodging, and attendance at WC9, the 9th World Congress on Alternatives and Animal Use in the Life Sciences. (2) I have written about alternatives to animal testing prior to any knowledge of SEURAT-1.

Vancouver Art Gallery show: The Modern Woman and Rennie Collection show: Richard Jackson resonate in unexpected ways

Does the artist’s (visual, literary, musical, theatrical, etc.) personal life matter when you’re experiencing their art? It’s a question that arose in Lucas Nightingale’s response to Robin Laurence’s June 7, 2010 Georgia Straight visual arts review in his June 24, 2010 letter to the editor. The show in question was  the Vancouver Art Gallery’s big summer exhibition, The Modern Woman: Drawings by Dégas, Renoir, Toulouse-Lautrec and other Masterpieces from the Musée D’Orsay in Paris. Laurence in her critique noted,

“I paint with my prick.” So claimed Pierre-Auguste Renoir. Asked what motivated his representations of plump, rosy-cheeked young women, he’s also reputed to have said his art was all about tits and ass. As for Edgar Degas—the perennial bachelor, anti-Semite, and misogynist—he said he wanted to view women in intimate settings, as if he were looking at them “through a keyhole”. That reads a lot like voyeurism, especially in light of his drawings and paintings of naked women drying themselves off after a bath, seemingly unaware of the viewer. Then there’s the aristocratic Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, who hung out with and depicted women who worked in brothels, bars, and nightclubs. He died of syphilis and tuberculosis in 1901 at the age of 36. How and when the prostitutes died is not recorded here.

Nightingale’s comments included,

Despite Laurence’s article, I went to see for myself. I marvelled in front of Angrand’s Ma Mère. Did I see misogyny there? No.

I melted in front of Courbet’s Portrait of the Artist’s Young Sister Juliet, Asleep. Did I see treachery there? No.

Did I care that Degas was a misogynist or that Renoir was a pervert or that Toulouse-Lautrec hung out with prostitutes? No, because finding out about the skeletons in an artist’s closet is not why I go to the gallery—I go to be moved by what they create.

Laurence seems to set a standard that you must approve of an artist’s dirty secrets before you can appreciate their art; call me naive, but I probably wouldn’t know anyone if I set standards like that.

In general, I separate the art from the artist so I can appreciate the work but I also find that knowing a little bit about the background can inform what I’m experiencing. For example, The Lady from Shanghai, a movie directed by Orson Welles released in 1947 and starring then wife, Rita Hayworth is an amazing work. The scene in the hall of mirrors where the two lead characters shoot out their reflections with the shattered glass refracting ever growing numbers of fractured reflections is still studied and marveled over. You can enjoy the movie as a work of art without ever knowing that Orson and Rita were experiencing a breakdown of their marriage and working together on the film was an attempt to repair it. I do find that knowing some of the background story to the movie makes me appreciate the movie all the more even as I wonder at Welles’ insistence that his famous wife dye her legendary hair from red to a platinum blonde and casting her as a heartless vamp.

In a way I find the work that Renoir, Dégas, and Toulouse-Lautrec, etc. all the more amazing given their enormous shortcomings. It’s a paradox and, for me, how you resolve the issue of art/artist is highly personal. For a contrasting example, Leni Riefenstahl produced two film masterpieces when she worked for Hitler, a man who engineered the death of entire Jewish populations in Europe during World War II (1939-1945). I have seen clips of her work but am not sure I could ever sit through an entire film. To date, I have not been able to separate the artist from the art.

There is a good reason for learning about the background or the story of an art work. For conceptual art and a lot of other contemporary art you need the story to make sense of what you’re seeing. For example, the latest show (my previous posting here) at the Rennie Collection features (amongst other pieces) a rifle or two and a huge canvas which is a partial recreation of a Georges Seurat painting from the 19th century. Unless you know something about Seurat and his paintings, you’re likely to dismiss it as it doesn’t make much sense. Thankfully, the gallery insists visitors go on a tour and are accompanied by someone who can tell you something about the show and what the artist is doing. There’s a reason for the rifle. The artist (Richard Jackson) uses it to shoot paint pellets at the canvas and there’s a reason why he picked a Seurat painting rather than another 19th century artist’s work. See my previous posting for more about this but very simply, Seurat was a very precise painter who worked with tiny dots to create his images which contrasts with hurling a paint pellet using the propulsive power of a rifle at a copy of one of his paintings.

Jackson has also created a series of bronze ballerinas reminiscent of Dégas. The Rennie Collection has one on display for this show and I had the good luck to talk to a trainee guide about the piece. I’ve described the piece in more detail in my previous posting but briefly, the dancer has been knocked off her pedestal and lies crumpled below it. There’s paint dripping from the pedestal and elsewhere (including her head as I recall). The paint colour for the ballerina in the Rennie Collection is red, other ballerinas in the series have different colours for the dripping paint. The guide had found out from the artist who visited Vancouver for several weeks before the show was opened, that this series is intended as a commentary on how artists use women in their work and a commentary on how women in the arts were treated in the 19th century. Serendipitously or not, the piece provides an interesting contrast to the big show currently on display at the Vancouver Art Gallery which you can only appreciate if you know the story.

I think there’s something to be said for being able to go and experience a piece of art without having a degree in art history or knowing the backstory. There’s also something to be said for having one or both. As for being able to separate the artist from his/her personal behaviour, that’s up to the individual. Like I said, sometimes I can and sometimes I can’t. I imagine many folks are the same.