Philip Verheyen Project

Finding an empty link in Wikipedia to an anatomist who had purportedly “coined the term Achilles Tendon while dissecting his own amputated leg,” I became interested in this absurd possibility as a metaphor for the beginnings of empiricism in the 17th Century. I then created a fictitious Dutch painting depicting Philip Verheyen performing this simultaneously frightening and erotic procedure, and reinserted it into Wikipedia along with a partially fictitious biography of the anatomist. I was interested in occupying a space obsessed with the notion of truth (information) and infecting it with fiction.

Subsequently, a Dutch surgeon, Raphael Suy who currently practices at the University of Leuven (Verheyen’s Alma Mater) came upon the Wikipedia entry while researching the Anatomist for a biographical publication. He approached me regarding the painting and several works cited in the article. We began a long dialogue comparing my fictions to his conjectures. The painting along with his remarks on the Wikipedia entry will be included in his upcoming biography of Philip Verheyen.