The Four Humors - Sanguine

Art Hazelwood

In Art Hazelwood’s series of color linocut, “The Four Humors,” he combines Baroque decoration with Modernist style to present each of the “humors” - early Greek foundational medical conditions described by Hippocrates - as theatrical characters. “Humorism” was one of earliest and most widely employed theories that addressed the ties between health and emotional states. The human medical composition was broken down into four elemental parts: blood, black bile, yellow bile, and phlegm, corresponding with the seasons and each with its own set of emotional descriptors that would hopefully help direct a doctor’s diagnosis of a patient.

Hazelwood chooses a dominant color for each humor, employing poses and expressions that pertain to their differing emotional natures. In “Sanguine,” Hazelwood illuminates Blood, the humor associated with gregariousness, active energy, and enthusiasm - and what might later be described as manic behavior, having “too much blood”. The background is an explosive collection of sharp lines that shoot outward, and the decorative border borrows from medieval medical illustrations, using elaborately detailed borders that are at once elegant and macabre.