Art or Atrocity – Under the Skin

Macabre
doesn’t begin to describe the
work of German artist/anatomist Gunter von Hagens, who is turning human cadavers into artwork at the Von Hagens
Plastination factory in Dalian, in northeast China. Although he does
the actual body work in hermetic China, the finished products are currently
touring Europe to enthusiastic crowds.

More than 13 million people have viewed "Body Worlds" since
it opened in 1996. Besides Germany, the exhibition has been to London,
Brussels, Singapore and Basel, Switzerland, as well as cities in Japan
and South Korea. Plans are underway to bring it to the United States
in the next two years.

"I go to the depths," von Hagens said recently in an interview
at his "Body Worlds" show in a cavernous exhibition hall
in Germany’s financial capital.

"This is a kind of body celebration; here we are more naked than the
naked — we do not even have our skin."

The 59-year-old von Hagens — medical doctor by training, university
lecturer by profession, artist of anatomy by passion — wants people
to be able to see the beauty beneath the skin, literally. To this end
he has amassed a large array of "specimens," as he likes
to call them.

Among the displays are the body of a man whose skin was removed and lies
draped over his outstretched arm, and the man whose body was cut and
stretched so as to better display his internal organs.

As soon as the US tour is set, the Dowbrigade will bring the itinerary
to our readers attention, so that you can all go and decide for yourselves;
art or atrocity?

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