This loose-limbed, multidisciplinary dissection encompasses art, science, literature and history.
The Beauty of Anatomy (8.30pm, BBC4, Wednesday), in which Dr Adam Rutherford explores the influence of human dissection on art, also intriguingly touches on the origins of the artform in which Rutherford is working.
This group includes one other original member, the guitarist Tom Herman, whose solos ranged from an eerie slide blues to a graceful dissection of art-rock metal.
Like Mr. Lasnik, she taught herself the art of dissection, poring over textbooks and practicing on a cadaver in her classroom after hours.
This idiosyncratic history of decapitation has chapters on executions, on severed heads in art, and on the dissection of heads.
Next month "The Art of War," Sun Tzu's dissection of military operations from more than 2,000 years ago, will join the recent string of novels, television shows and, now, advice, business and motivational books to be turned into graphic novels.
As teacher and later director of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, he introduced anatomy, dissection, and scientific perspective into the curriculum, revolutionizing art instruction.
What seems important to emphasize is that the results of any attempt at art-making are not insignificant; a dissection of them is not an idle or contrarian pastime.
Aldersey-Williams is most interesting, although often rambling, when discussing the body and its parts in literature, architecture and art, and his own experiences in the dissection room.
But really there's no need for these complex dissections to separate head from heart, or morality from art.
And if occasionally the results are a muck-encrusted mockery of art, you just have to take out that dissection knife, and try again.
