The course of morphology replaces, in the School of Beaux Arts, the courses of anatomy which were dispensed there in the past and did not really differ from theoretical courses followed by the students in medicine. The class of Jean-François Debord constitutes the archive from which a new theoretical reflexion must develop today which forges links between art and science. It seems that very early the artists have the idea to look for what under the skin justified external forms of the living being. Tradition wants that in Antiquity Greek they know only observation: the masculine nude was met everywhere, but the dissection of the body seems to have been  prohibited, even for the medical practitioners. From Renaissance the artists could attend dissections practised in lecture halls.

Little by little the academicism of an anatomic tradition settled down, consisting in studying to in the nitty-gritty details a corpse without age nor sex, spread over a dissecting table in " back decubitus " (slept on the back, open arms). They were far from the living being!

Numerous artists refused this perversion. They followed their taste and lived their own intelligence of the living being by keeping only what interested them from the point of view of forms. Finally, Goethe created at the beginning of the XIXth century the term of "morphology" which corresponds to this approach. From its origins, the Royal Academy proposed a teaching of anatomy in which artistic content depended on the practitioner who was in charge of this class...In the XXth century the extraordinary Pol Le Coeur - surgeon and artist - inventor of diverse orthopedic techniques, taught morphology the School of Beaux Arts. Assistant of Paul Bellugue from 1936, he became a professor in 1956. Jean-François Debord, successor to Paul Le Coeur, dispensed a course of exception in this discipline, who marked pupils' generations durably.

During year 2003, the last year of this exemplary teaching - accessible to every public - was recorded and filmed by the compositor Cyril de Turckheim. This teaching leant on a hatred declared by the traditional anatomy described higher. J-F Debord expresses itself so about the class he gave: "Class lasted two hours. The blackboard was 2m50 high on 4m wide, what allowed to draw with scale. It was so possible to play with forms which sometimes I tried to find in the reading of a student undressed, sympathetic or curious about himself. When purpose seemed reached and what I had answered all questions, we passed to the projections which allowed by some photographies to evoke certain attitudes or characteristic details. Then, finally, I could find the artists whom I love thanks to slides. I tried then to give an account of their choice, graphic or pictorial." These courses will be available in free access on the digital library of the site of broadcasting of knowledges of the university Paris Sciences and Letters (PSL), PSL-EXPLORE.