Tuu AxnroMY oFBony WonLDS

Critical Essays on the PlastinatedCadavers of Gunther von Hagens

Edited by

T. Christine Jespersen,Alicita Rodriguezand loseph Starr

McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers

lefferson, North Carolina, and London

LTBRARY oF CoNcRsss C,ttar-ocurNc-rN-PuBLIcATloN DATA

The anatomy of Body Worlds : critical essays on theplastinated cadavers of Gunther von Hagens / edited by T'

Christine fespersen, Aiicita Rodriguez and loseph Starr.

p. cm.Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-78 64-3656-9

softcover : 50# alkaline PuP., @

l. Hagens, Gunther von-Exhibitions. 2. Human anatom)'-Exhibitions. 3. Cadaver in art - Exhibitions. 4.Human figure

in art - Exhibitions. 5. Tissuses- Plastic embedment -Exhibitions. 6. Plastination-Exhibitions. 7. Medicineandart-Exhibitions. L Jespersen, T. Christine, 1964- II.Rodriguez, Alicita,7972- III. Starr, |oseph' 1969-

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02009 T. Christine Jespersen, Alicita Rodriguez and |oseph Starr.

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Emergent Bodies:Human, All Too

Human, PosthumanAra Osterweil and David Baumflek

Between the mass public exhibition of dissected human cadavers in thetraveling Body Worids show, and the celebrated, hyper-realistic figurative scuip-tures by artist Ron Mueck, it is clear that contemporary "art" is charting nervcorporeal territory. Although some critics cite the distinction between science

and art to distinguish the exhibition of plastinated corpses at scientific institu-tions from the exhibition of Mueck's sculptures at more traditional fine art ven-ues, both genres can be described as corporeal spectacles of the highest order.

And while these works undoubtedly diverge from each other, methodologi-cally, artistically, and perhaps even ideologically, what distinguishes their sharedterritory from earlier corporeal traditions is ultimately what connects them inthe collective unconscious.

This essay aims to interrogate the ontology and the politics of these equiv-alently shocking corporeal spectacles to comprehend what is at stake in, and whatis so disconcerting about, these perverse millennial representations of the alter-nately surreal and hyper-real cadaver. For despite the fact that only ore of these

exhibitions utiiizes actual human cadavers, the uncanny appeal of both BodyWorlds and contemporary body sculpture can be seen as analogous to the mixofattraction and repulsion that one experiences at the sight ofthe dead.

Unlike Body Art of the 1960s and '70s, which may be regarded as its log-ical forebearer, this contemporary body of corporeal work presents the humanform from a radically depoliticized point of view. For in their quest to metic-ulously document the corporeal mechanics of either the real cadaver or thelatex simulacra, both Body Worlds and contemporary hyper-real sculptureaspire to a supposedly universal condition of humanity. As the following essay

argues, this artificial sense of universality is diametrically opposed to the idio-syncratic and highly individualized expressions of personal subjectivity thatcharacterized the work ofBody Art pioneers.

Emergent Bodies (Osterweil/Baumflek) 241

Being Human: Body Art in the 1960s

In order to understand the important ontological differences between theBody worlds endeavor and contemporary hyper-realist scuipture, it is neces-sary to situate these current phenomenon in their appropriate art historicaitraditions. In order tt-r do so, we shall sketch out two parallel but related ten-dencies, both of which were animated by an urgency to represent the humanbody in innovative and explicit ways.

while western Art has always been invested in the representation of thehuman figure, Body Artists of the 1960s and '70s interrogated the traditionalseparation ofartist and art object. Rather than drawing, painting, or sculptingthe body in their work, Body Artists used the body "not simply as the 'content'of the work, but also as canvas, brush, frame and platform."tAs part of a gen-eration of artists for whom formalist criteria were considered insuffrcientlr-political, Body Artists recognized the body as a privileged site of porver tharcould be transformed into a tool with which to challenge the dominant ideo-logical apparatus. The body "that had been used, usurped, abused, disprar-ed.a body that had been cut, wounded, Iand] dramatized" became, in the 196rls."the body that struggles, rebels, and indicates the escape from the coercions tr:power."2

what art historian Hal Foster has described as the urqent "return Lri tntrreal" in the postwar avant-garde was founded upon both the [,.riiiica. :ect,-sity of real action and the philosophical rejection of rhe fiction oi cisrnrcd-ied subjectivity. For BodyArtists, to be human was not ro lrrn'e a botir-. r.:r rr.be abody. conceived as an implicit attack on carresian norions of the sub,ierras split between mind and body, Body Arr rvas profoundh' Conceprual.Although artists associated often-relied-upon sensational shock tactics in orderto trouble the conventional relationship between artist and viewer, Bodv Artwas' first and foremost, a practice of thinking with, through, and about thebody as body. For Body Artists, embodiment was not something to be recog-nized abstractly, but the framework for both artistic and political rebellion.

Linked to the radical Minimalist practice of presenting the "thing as itseif,"tsody Artists used "the body itself" to contest the problematic inscription ofsubjectivitS gender, sexuality, race, and ethnicity on the corporeal apparatus.For many artists, the taboo act of asserting the body, in all of its messy, corpo-real "effervescence," was a deliberate act of political resistance. During a timeof intense political and social upheaval, their visceral assaults on themselves(and the viewer) served as bold reminders ofthe corporeal carnage that char-acterized political conflicts at home and abroad. In the tumultuous era of the'60s and'70s, the act ofdisplaying the abject, pained, suffering bodies by artistssuch as Ana Mendieta, Chris Burden, Yoko Ono, and paul McCarthywas a wayof making visibie war's anonymous casualties- at home and abroad.

within this highly charged historical context, rhe simple act of sitting upon

242 SEcrroN FrvE : AtsrnErrc eNo lxstRucrrvE BUT Nor Monarrv Orrr.NstvE

a stage and inviting audience members to cut away parts of one's clothing, as

Yoko Ono didin Cut Piece (1964), rvas a complex act of political confrontationthat revealed the sadism of an audience willing to participate in the public vio-lation of a vulnerabie Asian female body. Similarly, Chris Burden's infamous piece

Shoot (1971), in which the artist had a friend shoot him in the arm with a .22

caliber rifle from a distance of fifteen feet, implicated its audience by revealingtheir failure to intervene in the corporeal abuse of another human being. Far

from being a senseless act of self-mutilation or a shameless spectacle designedto titillate audiences, Burden's performance was an intrepid attempt to forge an

empathic relationship to pain between audience and performer, and, by implica-tion, spectator and victim. As Burden asked curator Paul Schimmel, "How doyou knowwhat it feels like to be shot if you don't get shot?"3 To cast oneselfin the role of victim, as Ono, Burden, and other artists did, was to visibly andpublicly identify oneself with the cast-out, violated, injured, dehumanizedOther in the hope of enabling viewers to meaningfully consider the body in pain.

HumAn, All Too Human: The Act of Seeing withOne's Own Eyes

Within the medical profession, the tradition of public autopsy can be traced

back at least to the Renaissance. Within the plastic arts, however, the publicspectacle of the dead or dissected body is a much more recent and rarified phe-nomenon.* Like the taboo against touching or coming into contact with the

dead, the "artistic" use of actual human corpses had been unthinkable - untilrecently. With the ever-shrinking distinction between public spectacle and pri-vate ritual, as well as the concurrent re-territorialization of the flesh by tech-nology, this taboo seems to be rapidly approaching its expiration date.

Artistic use of the wounded, dying, or deceased body has become morepervasive since the corporeal experiments of the 1960s. Within the increasinglyrobust "genre" of self-mutilation that artists like Burden, Ono, and Mendieta"founded," we find the grotesque defacements of the Viennese Actionists, the

video-recorded facial surgeries of performance artist Orlan, and the masochis-tic self-flagellations of performance artists such as Bob Flanagan, Gina Pane,

and Mike Parr. On the other side of the spectrum of contemporary art, we findthe sadistic work of Briti sh enfant terribleDamien Hirst, whose scandalous dis-play of dissected sheep seemed, for an ephemeral moment, the true emblem ofour controversial age of cloning.

*As Rosenblum has pointed out, the use of real body parts in art was already evident in tlrc lryperre-alist polycfuone sculpnres of the Spanish baroque period, which used real hair, blood stains, and glass

tears "to contribute to the uficanny illusion of a living, ard usually suJferhtg, hunnn presence." Mueck,

72.

Emergent Bodies (Osterweil/Bau mflek)

For their own respective cultural moments, each of these artists thrust thepained, disfigured body to the limits of representation. Yet even as the taboosconcerning treatment ofthe dead are constantly encroached upon, displayingan authentic human corpse remains particularly problematic. For obvious rea-sons, the public dissection of human cadavers broaches a host of moral, 1egal,

and aesthetic issues that the dismemberment of farm animais can (thoughshould not necessarily) evade. It thus comes as no surprise that the most thor-ough investigations of the dead body have - until now - occurred within therealms of cinema and photography. As founder of Cahiers du Cintrna AndrdBazin has argued, it was the advent of these technologies of mechanical repro-duction that liberated the plastic arts from their "mummy complex"-or the

aesthetic burden of preserving or "embalming" man's bodily appearance in theface of inevitable death.a

A different impulse than embalming is at work in Stan Brakhage's 19ilavant-garde documentary, The Act of Seeing with One's Own E1'es, in which thelegendary experimental filmmaker documented the post-mortem dissection oihuman beings in a Pittsburgh morgue. The clever title of Braklage's film, rthichreferences the etymological transcription of the meaning of the rvord "autopsv,"

suggests the profound psychological impetus that animates the ostensiblt sci-entific need to witness the internal secrets of the human bodv. Bv making thescientific examination of the corpse available to the lav audience, Brakhage'sfilm lays bare the "personal necessity of coming into contact rvith the humancorpse in order'to see for oneself'the reality ofthe flesh dissected": Trrentr-years later, Andres Serrano's large format photography series The lfor.que(beginning 1992), which depicts close-up details of corpses, demonstrated a

similar Ionging to witness the obscured complexities of the flesh. Even moreextreme than either of these projects is John Duncan's necrophilic "perform-ance" piece Blind Date (1980), in which the artist recorded himself having sex-ual intercourse with a female corpse that he had purchased in Mexico. Follorvingthis experience of "indescribable intense self-disgust," Duncan returned to Cal-ifornia to have a vasectomy in order to ensure that "the last potent seed t hadwas spent in a cadaver." After the operation, Duncan arranged a showing ofBlind Date in order to explain to the public "what can happen to men that are

trained to ignore their emotions."6It is within this highly charged and potentially incendiary vein of "foren-

sic" Body Art that we would like to situate Body Worlds. Like Body Art, BodyWorlds insists upon using the real body, rather than a representation or simu-lacra, as its primary material. And like Body Art, Body Worlds is particularlyinterested in the extreme body- in this case, the dead, diseased, splendidly col-ored, stupendously posed, and possibly even necrophilic body.

In various traveling shows, Body Worlds invites viewers to scrutinize theusually hidden organs of actual corpses, preserved and made visible throughthe techniques of plastination developed by German anatomist Gunter von

243

244 Stcrtou Ftvr: AEsrupttc AND INSTRUcTIvE BUr Nor Monenv OrrsNstvn

Hagens in 1977 . Here, bodies are splayed open to reveal an intricate design ofmusculature and arterial passages normally hidden from view by the protec-

tive armature of the skin. In many of the exhibits, bodies are posed in a vig-orous parody of animation. Smiling ecstatically, engaged in convoluted positions

ofsport or play, these cadavers suggest that they are not only real human spec-

imens, but, ironically, extraordinarily vital ones. Mocking the limits of livingflesh, many of these human sculptures pose in genuinely outrageous fashion -holding their own removed skin up for contemplation (The Skin Man, 1997)

or displaying the hidden compartments of their body as if spilling from a

wardrobe (The Drawer Man,7999). While the Body Worlds' literature explains

that these appalling poses reference scientific studies dating back to the Mid-dles Ages and the Renaissance, they more closely resemble the exploitative' sen-

sational theatrics of a freak show.In the aggrandizing style of turn-of-the-century impresarios like Barnum

and Bailey, Body Worlds claims to be nothing less than the "world's most

successful traveling exhibition," boasting 25 million visitors in over 40 cities

in Europe, Asia, and North America since its inception tn 1995.7 Its unprece-

dented popularity is undoubtedly due to its use of real bodies, for as the official

Body Worlds website maintains, "the authenticity of the specimens on display

is essential" to the success of the exhibit. "It would be impossible to convey

this anatomical individuality [what is elsewhere described as the "interiorface" of the body] with models, for a model is nothing more than an interpre-

tation. All modeis look alike and are, essentially, simplified versions of the real

thing."8According to von Hagens, who first realized the path towards piastination

with the revelatory discovery of a meat slicer in a butcher shop,e the display ofreal human bodies is indispensable. Though von Hagens insists upon the inim-itable pedagogical value of using real bodies, one wonders whether the stated

mission of creating a place of "enlightenment and contemplation" is best served

by von Hagens' methods. If having your body sliced like bologna and force-

impregnated with plastic is considered the "enlightened" treatment of a human

being, then one might be tempted to inquire about what medieval options are

available.As Brakhage, Serrano, and Duncan's work demonstrate, the need to "pen-

etrate" deceased flesh often exceeds the purely scientific desire to study the

body's functions and dysfunctions. Though Body Worlds makes its interest inscientific pedagogy explicit, one wonders whether the spectacle of the human

cadaver can everbe detached from our inherent voyeurism, curiosity, and pruri-ence. Why does Body Worlds strive so assiduously to disavow the potential ofits cadavers to elicit any response other than scientific enlightenment? Whereas

Brakhage made his own not-purely-scientific interest in the autopsied body

evident in his title (as well as his extremely personal, highly idiosyncratic style offilmmaking), Body Worlds insists upon two grand, but ultimately problematic,

Emergent B o dies (Osterweil/Baumfl ek)

"truths": 1) the uncompromised, scientific objectivity of its endeavor, and 2)

the singular genius of its intrepid creator.*In our digitally manipulated, cinematically enhanced world, the histori-

caily privileged realm of vision has proved to be fundainentally unreliable.Within the context of increased surveillance and ever-decreasing individuaiprivacy, Body Worlds seems a symptom of the simultaneous insatiability and

insufficiency of vision rather than a resolution of it. Although Body Worldsemphasizes the didactic vai,ue of seeing the "truth' of the body's inner mechan-ics, its constant injunctions against touching the corpses suggests that seeing

alone cannot satisfy the desires that Body Worlds incites. Like the long-stand-ing Western prohibition against touching the corpse, Body Worlds' repeated

prohibitions against touching call attention to audiences' barely repressed

desires to physically rather than visually penetrate the bodies of the dead. Is itpossible that the necroscopic desires that Body Worlds authorizes belie intenselynecrophilic urges? Perhaps the desires that continue to make Body Worlds so

popular are not so different, after all, from the scandalous urges that animated

John Duncan's obscene performance.

Post Human? The Reinvention of the Bodyin Contemp orary Figurative Sculpture

In the previous section, we situated Body Worlds in the tradition of BodyArt in order to understand its particular insistence upon using real rather thansimulated bodies. We would now like to turn to the work of contemporarysculptor Ron Mueck (born 1958). By putting Mueck's work in dialogue withBody Worlds, we shall elucidate the ways that these two contemporary phenom-ena distinctly fetishize bodies that exist on the border between the human andthe machine.

The tradition of hyper-realism - of which Mueck is the latest and mostexemplary incarnation - emerged in the early 1970s, on the heels of, and verymuch as a reaction against, the radical antics of 1960s Body Artists. Like BodyArt, which departed from the non-objective work of the Abstract Expressionists,hyper-realistic sculptors were invested in the return of the body as subject.

*In the tradition of Conceptual artkt loseph Beuys, Gtuttlrcr von Hagens clains the ststus of war vic-tin in his.fantastical biography. In a life delined by terri.fying escapes, perhaps tlrc ntost extrtordinaryadventure followerl his bit'th itr 1945 in a remote sectiolt o.f Polond, tlwt pnrt of Gertnnny. As the BodyWorlds website notes, "To escape tlrc imninertt ttnd eventtrttl Russiatt occtrptttiotr of their honteland,his parerrts placed tlte Jive-day-olcl inJant in a lnutdry basket and began o six montlr trek west by lrorsewagon." Wile no rnetrtion o.f tlte Holocaust is made, World War II is trcated as n kind of historicttlprintil scene, seconded only by von Hagens' two-year irnprisorrntent in Enst Germnny dttring tlrc ColdWar. A self-proclaimed victim of historical tnrntoil, political prejudice, misunderstandirry, and clrild-hood infirmity, the ntythical origitrs of von Hagetts' assumed gertius are treoted as all importatlt partof the Body Worlds ofliciol sttga.

245

246 SrcrroN Ftt'r : AtsrHnrrc eNo IwstRucl-rvE BUT Nor MORALLY OrrnustvE

However, rather than using the real, often de-sanitized body as subject, method,and political tool, sculptors such as Duane Hanson and John DeAndrea laboredto create convincing, but ultimately depoliticized, human facsimiles. Ratherthan using the raw material of the flesh - its fluids, its capacity for movementand sound, its ability to feel pleasure and pain - as tools, hyperrealist sculp-tors looked towards technology to reproduce bodies that were conspicuouslynon*effervescent.

Hyper-realistic sculptors, as they were designated in 1971, were not inter-ested in displaying the abject or wounded body. In sharp contrast to BodyArtists, hyper-realistic sculptors were resolutely not concerned with the bodyin pain, the victimized body, the dirty body, or even the non-Caucasian body.On the salacious side of the hyper-realist spectrum are John de Andrea's nudeswhich - like the airbrushed figures in Playboy magazine- aspire to, and poten-tially surpass, the classical (and classically misogynist) ideals of beauty, youth,and fitness that had animated much of traditional sculpture. Unlike Ana Mendi-eta's bloody rape victim or Paul McCarthy's obscenely defiled body, de Andrea'snudes were young, attractive middle-class Americans captured in exquisite andun-ironic poses of self-satisfied narcissism. More ethnographically inclined isthe work of Duane Hanson, whose "family album of America" presents ananthropological gallery of middle class types such as typical tourists, wait-resses, policemen, and shoppers.lo

Like Pop Art from which it emerged, hyper-realism was invested in thesynthetic face of America, and fittinglypresented the human form as a com-mercial symbol of artificiality rather than an emotionally-charged, embodiedsubject. "More real than real Americans,"lr hyper-realistic sculptures were, par-adoxically, not real at all. Devoid of emotional content, the seeming immedi-acy of hyper-realism was a trompe l'oeil, an illusory effect of technology andtechnique. Diametricaliy opposed to the Conceptually-oriented Body Art,which strove to eliminate the mediating structure of representation by present-ing the body as itself, hyper-realism celebrated representation as pure repre-sentation, "with the necessary elimination of the subject."12

While several contemporary artists, such as Charles Ray, Judy Fox, ReuvenCohen, Tim Noble, and Sue Webster, work in the contemporary genre of hyper-realistic figure sculpture, we shall look primarily at the work of Ron Mueck.For as art historian Robert Rosenblum has noted, within the "vast populationof body doubles" that characterizes the facsimile body trend in contemporarysculpture, Mueck has pushed "the goal of human cloning farther than any ofhis colleagues, right down to each eyelash and toenail."13 Indeed, as curatorSusanna Greeves has acclaimed, "Mueck has created the most flawlessly hyper-real figures in art history, so effectively imitating nature that the categories ofart, image and reality seem to be suspended."ra

Indeed, since his debut in Sensation: Young British Artists from the SaatchiCollection, which opened at the Royal Academy of Arts in London in 1997, the

Emergent Bodies (Osterweil/Baumflek)

work of the Australian artist has astonished botl-r the public and the gatekeep-ers of the art world. Meticulously constructed from modern materials such as

silicone and fiberglass, Mueck's sculptures are technically indebted to his rvorkas a special effects model maker in the television, fiim, and advertising indus-tries.

As Rosenblum has written, Mueck's contribution to Sensation "immedi-ately established his singularity, not only in its fanatical insistence on the per-fect replication of every hair, pore, wrinkle, or muscle that defines an individualface and body,"ts but also in its impassioned emotional appeal to vierr'ers.Approximately forty inches long, Deod Dad (1996-1997: see figure 5) is a minia-ture sculpture of the prone corpse of a nude, slightlyelderly man, rendered inpainstaking detail.

With a matter-of-fact pose to match its matter-of-fact title, Dead Daddepicts the most commonplace of all occurrences: the ordinary death of an

aging man. As Rosenblum r'vrites, "after all, this physical reality of death, thedetritus of life, could always be seen in countless numbers at hospital morguesor funeral parlors."16 Thus, what is extraordinary about the sculpture is thennot so much what it represents, but the obsessive skill witli which it is rendered.Here the impeccability of N{ueck's craft - most striking in the hard-to-capturedetails of skin, hair, or nail-attempts to disguise itself as what philosopherRoland Barthes calls "punctum," or the capacity of a particular detail of an art-work to pop out and prick, bruise, or tttove the viewer with the recognition ofthe "wound" of the real.rT

Is it genuinely the recognition of the real that is communicated throughthese ruptures of perception? Or is it the wizardry of special effects technologythat masquerades as real pathos, as pulrctum? Though they may appear to blurthe boundaries "between the natural and artificial" world, as Rosenblumclaims,18 there is nothing "real" or remotely human about Mueck's figures. Why,then, are these synthetic replicas so much more emotionaliy compelling to view-ers than their human counterparts in the Body \\iorlds show? Why do vierversseem to experience Mueck's sculptures as tnore real than real?

For Barthes, the punctum could not be intentional. Unlike the "studium,"which Barthes described as the sum of the artwork's cr-rltural, anthropological,ethnological, and historical information, the punctum could not be "put there"by the carlera operator, but could only occur accidentally, bursting throughand puncturing the "studium" with the sudden force of its emotional impact.Yet'as Mueck leaves no room for accident, his sculptures capture nothing spon-taneously. Even with their surplus of anthropological data, Mueck's sculpturesIack the accidental, idiosyncratic revelation of real emotion.

According to Barthes, the studium "is a contract arrived at between cre-ators and consumers ... a kind of education ... which allows me to discover theOperator, to experience the intentions which establish and animate his prac-tices."re Much of the seeming pathos in Mueck's sculptures is dependent upon

247

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Figtrre 5: Approximately forty inches long, Iton NIueck's Deail Dnd (1996-1997) acutelydistills trauma's vocabulary. While its qtrotidian presentation ol'an ordinary corpseallolvs the vierver to inspect tlre nude male body without the niceties of funerealarnngement' the scrrlpture gains surplus emotional value from the knowledge thatit depicts Mueck's own father. courtesy and @ Anthony d'ollay Galler.y, London.

this contract between creator and consumer. Every detail bears the intentionalmark of the technician whose painstaking process has created them. Like a truespecial effects operator, Mueck has endowed his work with what Barthes calls.futtctiotts: "to infonn, to represent, to surprise, to cause to signify, to provokedesire."r0 In a culture where images of the pained, traumatized body politic havebeen banished, Mueck's sculptures serve the perverse function of ailowing spec-tators to feel empathy for plastic replicants. tsy relating so emotionally toMueck's organless, fleshless "bodies," we purchase the right nol to risk the emo-tional hazards ofconfronting the suffering ofreal human beings.

Bodies Without Organs Without Bodies

certainly it can and rvill be argued that it is the vr.rlnerable, poig'rant posi-tions of Mueck's figures that move viewers to a state of startled cognition, inrvhich the sensations of belief and disbelief coexist on a spectrum of emotionthat includes empathy, intimidation, wonder, and delight. Indeed, many ofMueck's figures are posed in configurations pregnant with hopeful expectancy,anxious fear, quiet loneliness, or self-conscious timidity.

In order to counter this predictable objection, r,ve shalr briefry analyzethree of Mueck's sculptures lvhose surplus of corporeal meaning has beenscrupulously implanted by the artist in order to engage an int,estigative ratherIhan emotive mode of address. when regarded together, these three sculptures

Eme rge nt Bodies ( Osterweil/Baumflek) 249

Figure 6: Mueck's larger than life Pregnant Woman (2002) leaves the vierver longingfor X-ray vision in order to see the corpulent Iittle fetus that undoubtedly residesinside her hugely distended stomach, Thus, the paradoxical fascination ofthe sculp-ture is contingent upon wl.rat presumably remains hidden rvithin the (plastic) body'sinterior cavities. Courtesy and O Anthony d'Offay Gallery, London.

reveal a profoundly forensic mode of address that is comparable to the BodyWorlds endeavor. We have already mentioned Dead Dad, whose quotidian post-mortem pose allows the viewer to inspect the nude body of a man without theniceties of funereal presentation. To this explicitly forensic sculpture, we shalladd two seemingly unlikely bedfellows: Pregnant Woman (2002) and Motherand Child (2001; see figure 7), both of which were constructed in conjunctionwith Mueck's residency at the National Gallery in London.

250 SecrroN Frtrr : Asstuetrc AND INSTRUcTI\.E BUT Nol Monerlv OrpnNstvn

Fiorrre 7: Mueck's minuscule, state-of-the-art Mother and Child (2001) insists that

;hffi";;i;:;;;G;;;;;;, i'deed ha'e real human insides, as rhe nervborn seenls

;; h.;"-;.;"tg"o di.".tlylro- Mothe''s womb rather than Mueck's hands' Yet like

the classical Madonna lid;;;h;;;f"*nces, Mueck's Mother is also an empty vessel;

her bewildere.t gur".""r.r.,.io suggest that she alone k'ows the secret behind her own

*i."..tf"tt conleption. Corlrt"iy atttl o Anthony d'Offay Gallery' Lontlon'

PregnantWontanisalarger.than-lifeportraitofanexhausted.lookingwoman,-with stocky proportions and a hugely sweliing belly' holding her arms

above l.rer head. Constructed entirely of fiterglass, the expectant, undeniably

fleshy-looking mother looks as if her immensely swollen stomach is on the

verge of bursting open to cleliver what we imagine would be a corpulent little

offspring.Although it was completed a year earlier, Motlrcr and Child seems to be a

postscript ti pregna,t Woman.This minuscuie, state-of-the-art Madonna and

Child depicts anlther exhaustecl mother' (Or is it the same one? Aias' it makes

no difference, since, like von t{agens, Mueck is concerned with universal spec-

imens, rather than particuiar inclividuals.) Here, Motl-rer is presented presum-

abiy momei.rts after she has delivered her mucus-slicked baby' who seems

miiaculously to have crawled upon her deflated stomach, umbilical cord still

intact. As the babe gazes (demonically?) into the eyes of the sweat-dipped ves-

sel from which he has emerged, the mother seems bewildered - if not

Eme rge nt Bodies ( C)sterweil/tsaumfl ek)

terrified - by what has come out of her. Has she really birthed him? Has he really

crawled from inside of her?

Perhaps it is not so much the newborn child that alarms Nlother, but her

or,vn indeterminate state of being, since in spite of all of her apparer.rtly humancharacteristics, she has neither agency nor insides. In the classical N,Iadonna

tradition, the \rirgin Mary (also an empty vessel) never seemed terrified of the

precocious infant she had miraculously delivered. But Mueck's mother has

ample reason to fear. The mystery of chiidbirth has remained a mystery toMother, since she is, of course, completely hollorv and seems to knoi.v it. As

in the story of the Immaculate Conception, it is the Invisible Patriarch-arlr/not Mother at all-who has fathered these nto overlr'-signified but ultirnatelyempty beings into existence.

What unites these trvo sculptures, besides their obvious maternal theme,

is their forensic or "autopsic" mode of address. \lueck's trvo N{ommys (or shall

we call them irlummies? ) compel the spectator to imagine their internal organs.

By making their tascination contingent upon u-hat presumabl,v remains hid-den lr,ithin the (plastic ) bodv's interior cavities, Ilueck dares us to see throughtheir meticuloush'detailed fiberglass "skin." Longing ior x-ra1' 1.l5ion - or, bet-ter vet, a scalpel -\re cra\-e to eramine tl.reir alternatell' jam-packed or just-emptied rvomb. The fact that their organs do not exist is, of course, both the

point and the forensic foil ofthese u'orks. Perhaps the strange glance exchanged

betrveen \Iother and Child can be understood as a sl,v acknorvledgement of thisemptiness, this deceptive artificiality. As rvith Dead Dnd, rvhose invisible cause

of death must surelr- lie beneath his immaculate surface, the only way to pen-etrate the m\-sterv oi \lueck's mothers wouid be to slice them open.

Ntueck enthusiasts are quick to defend his artistic integrity by suggesting

that son.rething ber-ond technology is at work. As Greeves insists, "Mueck's

hvper-realism is not 'simply' the flawless technical imitation of reality, butrequires another definition."rrYet, what Mueck's sculptures suggest is the par-ador oia seeminglv "humanist" art form that it is so thoroughly reliant upontechnologl- that it implies, and perhaps even requires, the extinction of bothtraditional forms of iigurative representation and traditional forms of humanbeings.

Nearlv all ol NIueck's admirers remark upon the ahnost tactile phenome-non of discovering the work-a significant paradox when one considers thatthet' are made of plastic. As Greeves exclaims, "ln the presence of a Muecksculpture \ve are astonished by the perfection of the illusion: leaning in, it is

impossible to fau1t, hor'vever close your range.":r During our visits to Mueck's

retrospective at the Brooklyn Museum in 2006, we were struck by the frequer.rcy

rvith rvhich security guards reprimanded viewers for their inappropriate prox-imity to the art objects, a practice that would not have been so remarkable had

it not exactll. mirrored our experience at Body Worlds. Even adults could notseem to help then-rselves from violating the s<lcially acceptable distance of art

251

252 Spctrox Frve : AaslHstrc eNo lxstnucl'rvE BUT Nor Monerrv OFFENSIvE

viewing. In their insistence upon getting a closer look, viewers searched for tell-taie clues that would convince them, finally, that these tremendous plasticineclones were not human after all.

As in the Body Worlds exhibit, the urge to touch Mueck's sculptures is

deliberately constructed to seem irresistible and universal. As Greeves writes,"The overwhelming desire to touch that a// viewers seem to feel is an urge tocorroborate their eyes' impression of living warmth and softness" (italicsours).23 Again, the spectator's body must be disciplined to resist its almostinvoluntary urge towards palpation. Again, the mere act of seeing with one's

own eyes seems inadequately stimulating or fulfilling. Like scolded children,we long to engage in the forbidden behavior of "seeing" with our hands.

Undoubtedly a result of his meticulous artistic process, Mueck's sculptureslabor to persuade the viewer that they are made of flesh and blood. In spite ofthe prohibitions against tactility, Mueck's sculptures "ask" to be stroked; "fleshi-ness" is part of their studium. Not only can Mueck enable viewers to detect thesubtlest trace of sweat on the brow of one of his silicone leviathans, but "he

can also convince us that underneath their skins, his bodies must contain, likeours, fully defined internal systems of muscles, veins, and bones."'n Often, itis the tiniest detail that makes the most persuasive claim to anatomical truth.Were it not for the flawlessness of these external details, we would never be com-pelled to insist, like Rosenblum, that any doctor "could give an anatomy les-

son after cutting them open."25 Of course, any doctor cotld not slice Mueck'sbodies open and give an anatomy lesson since they are constructed of wiremesh, clay, fiberglass and silicone. These bodies, which are not really bodies,

have no organs to speak of.

Disregarding the Pain of Others

No "we" slrould be taken for granted when the subject is looking at otherpeople's pain.

- Susan Sontag, Regarding the Paitr of Others

Unlike the Body Artists of the 1960s and '70s who used their own bodiesas material - often endangering their own physical well-being in the process-the extensive team of scientists, medical doctors, designers, and technicianswho are responsible for the manufacture of Body Worlds do not put their ownbodies at risk. Rather than blurring the boundaries between subject and objectas Body Artists did, here the traditional distinction between doctor and"patient," or in this case, medical specimen, is rigorously preserved.* "We are

r Since votr H agens' tecluritltLe of plastination obviously requires the denh of tlrc specimetr, it rnay seem

ludicrous to critique the use oJ other people's bodies in hk displays sirtce one catmot reasonably inng-ine the roles o.f autopsee and autopseer collapsed into one. To be dead is to no longer be able to outhor,or so it tyould seent. Atd yet even this pret:ious distinctiotr has been challengerl by Body (corttinued)

Emergent Bodies ( Osteru'eil/Baumfl ek) 253

doctors," the exhibit seems to whisper, attempting to disavolv any suspicionthat the bodies on display might have arrived there by less than scrupulousmeans. "Through the use of our technology," the hushed voice continues, "tr'e

have made these bodies available for your perusal." "But who are they?" one

quietly wonders, to which the exhibit replies, "They are specimen; their iden-tities do not matter."

In spite of an official rhetoric that superficially promotes the universalitl'of the "medical specimens" on view in Body Worlds, the bodies on display are,

by definition, radicaliy Othered. Indeed, the very status of the unnamed,unclaimed, diseased, and impoverished corpses- disemboweled, flayed open,

and cast out from their nation to be displayed for the "edu-tainment" of a pay-ing audience - is irretrievably, irrevocably Other.

Considering typical Western attitudes toward death and the cadaver, thegenerally. unperturbed demeanor of Body Worlds audiences is perplexing. Trac-ing modern antipathy to the corpse back to primitive societies, in which corpses

signified the threat ofcontagion and the essence ofviolence, Surrealist philoso-pher Georges Bataille rvrites, "In the presence of the corpse, horror is immedi-ate and inevitable and practically impossible to resist."26 Likewise in Powers ofHorror, contemporarv philosopher Julia Kristeva describes the corpse as thepenultimate s1'mbol oiabiection. For Kristeva, the sight of this "most sicken-ing of all rrastes" is so upsetting because it confronts the viewer with what he

or she "permanentlv thrustIs] aside in order to live."27 "A border that has

encroached upon even'thing," the corpse is indeed "the border that has becomean object."r8

To our amazement, we detected no evidence of pathos, horror, disgust,or pin'in the facial expressions, body language, or overheard conversations atthe Body Worids exhibit. Families gathered around the bodies and pointed,couples sniggered, children giggled. Flying in the face of the long-standingtaboo in Western culture against looking at corpses, the mainstream popular-itv of Body Worlds suggests that perhaps traditional Western attitudes towardsdeath have changed drarnatically in the virtually post-human era in which welive. Unlike Shakespeare's Hamlet who contemplated Yorick's skull with a sud-den arvareness of his own mortality vielvers who examine von Hagens'plasti-nated corpses celebrate the triumph of technology over the organic body.

By making the autopsied, plastinated body available to the scientific andmedical iay person, Body Worlds promises that each paying customer canapproach and understand the mechanics of the formerly off-limits body withthe expertise of a doctor. This discursive gesture rather misleadingly locates thespectator on the side of life and scientific mastery rather than on the side of

Artists. Cotrsider per.formance artist HannahWilke, wlrose life-sized color photographs of her own body,deformed b), carrcer and medicsl treatrnent, were exhibited posthutnottsly at the Ronald FeldnnnGallery in New York a year after lrcr deatJr fron lynplnnro (Intra-Venus, 1993).

15 1 S!tlir.\ F]\ r : ArsrHlrlc A\D II-STRUCTIVE BUT Nor MoR,cl-Lv Orrlxstve

de ath. ,:ntrn','rrl:r-. and loss of corporeal control. We do not identify with the

'.irri rhe :n"'i.irle L,odies (si"rrely clad in lvhite coats) who have placed them there

ior tru: peru'ai. -{s in \lueck's sculptures, where we ultimately identify rvithr:e -1.r:rst is Invisible Operator, in Body Worlds, we identify with the Artist as

In,,'is:'r'le -\naromist rather than the bodies he has dissected.

Ontological Banishment and the Absence of Affect

\\-ith the Body Worlds exhibit, what is considered the reasonable treat-ment of human beings has plummeted. The corpses on display have been ban-

isned - not onl,v from their home and nation - but, more importantly, fronlthe lerr-notion of what it means to be human in a civilized society. Apparentl1",

their anonr-mity has reduced thern to a kind of criminal or outlaw status, where

their dead, naked, and dismembered bodies can be regarded utterly withoutpitl bv par-ing customers.

in his book Honto Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, Italian philoso-pher Giorgio Agamben describes the condition of the medieval bandit. Excom-

municated from civilization, and ousted from the presumed sacredness of life,the bandit i,vas considered "aiready" dead; it was thus legally permissible foret1\'one to kill him. Like Agamben's bandit, whose liminal existence was poised

betrteen life and death, the human beings in Body Worlds have been ousted

from a cii'ilized order in which the body is granted some degree of sacred cap-

ital. \'et as in Agamben's medieval scenario, the corpses displayed in Body

\\brlds are not completely outside of latv and civiiization, but a necessary com-

ponent to it. While these corpses have been stripped of their own rights to par-

ticipate in society and be protected by it, they, like Mueck's sculptures, continue

to serve a crucial functicln for the civilized lvorld.Through its disavowal of pain and empathy and its radical de-individu-

alization of the body, Body Worlds constructs the fiction of death without suf-

fering. The illusion of lir.ing and dying painlessly-a hallmark of the opulent,leisure-obsessed society in which we live - is dependent upon the disappear-

ance or banishment of pain, its forced non-existence. The notion that Other

bodies exist to be sacrificed in order to enhance the leisure time of the paying

customer is part and parcel of this cultural stance. As is consistent with capi-

talist ideology, we must purchase the experience of being in proximityto such

profanity in order to disavow it. Like the law that pronounces the bandit"already dead" (and thus fit for sacrifice), the steep admission fee to Body

Worlds guarantees our own immunity from death, mourning' and melancho-

lia. For the price of admission, we are granted the privilege of not feeling. Or,

in other words, by aftrxing our "first-hand" experience ofdeath to a totem that

can be left behind within the museum walls, we attempt to liberate ourselves

Eme rgent Bodies ( Ostelrveil/Bau mfl ek) 255

from the burden ofpathos. As we have purchased the right not to experience

emotion for the doomed bandit, we refuse to bear responsibility for these out-cast bodies.

In a world defined by global capital, "exile" no longer exists "out there"in the un-chartered territory beyond the city walls, but inside civilization,within the very institutions that traditionaily defined it. By enshrining the dead,

radically Othered body in a museum - the final resting place of all historicbandits and outlaws- I3ody Worlds has authorized both the disappearance ofthe human being and the banishment of death itseif.

The Politics and Aesthetics of Trauma

\{e've never trwnpeted so ttntclt crirrre agnirtst ltuttartitl, ttow thnt scierrce

can no lottger rell vhat i-i *irl * /int 6.;1,'L:?';;:T"*.. , The Accitlertt of Art

Art history and theorl' mav help illuminate the significant relationshipbetween Body Worlds and contemporarv hvper-realistic sculpture for our pres-

ent cultural moment. In their book-length conversation The Accident of Art,theorists Sylvdre Lotringer and Paul \iirilio argue that a direct relation exists

between trauma and art. Echoing'vValter Benjamin's prescient discussion of the

aestheticization of violence in "The !\rork of Art in the Age of MechanicalReproduction," Lotringer suggestively deciares, "Art is rvar b,v other means."tn

By characterizing contemporary art - in its trajectorl- from surrealism to ter-rorism - as a "victim" or "casualty of lvar," Lotringer and Virilio help us tounderstand the ways in which art of the twentieth and trventy-first centuriesspeak the trauma of the terrorized.

In the same way that you can't divorce painterli'abstraction from its onto-logical roots in the disfiguration of the Second World \\rar, one cannot approach

either tsody Worlds or contemporarv hyper-realism rvithout attempting tounderstand its larger significance for our cultural moment. What, in otherwords, is the relationship of both Bod.v \Vorlds and contemporary hyperreal-ist sculpture to our current political, cultural, and historical landscape? Whattypes of trauma do these disfigured bodies speak?

While both Mueck and von Hagens attempt to banish the experience ofreal trauma from the perceptible rvorld (a/l bodies are made of plttstic, there.fore

none suffer), Lotringer and Virilio suggest otherwise. For them, the trauma ofcontemporary art in general, and Body Worids in particular, is inextricablefrom the delining anxiety of our time: the very definition of what it means tobe human.

In his discussion of the Body Worlds exhibit that took place in Mannheim,Germany in 1997, Lotringer suggests that contemporary Body Art should be under-stood less as a "rediscovery of the body than a sort of farewell to any permanence

256 Srcttox Frvt : ApsrHErtc nNo lxslnucrlvE BUT Nor Monellv OrrsNsrvE

it used to have."30 Indeed, in a world where "fragmentation has become a new

reality and the body a mere logo game," dead bodies "have taken over some ofthe attributes living bodies had to relinquish."3l The "posthumous perform-

ance" of the dead in Body Worldss2 may be a suitable return of the repressed

for a culture that has forced the reality of death and suffering to the margins

of consciousness. "Now that we no longer know what life is, or where it stops,

\ve may feel the need to put death on display."33

In spite of its compelling insistence upon the "bodyness" of bodies, bothBody \4rorlds and contemporary body sculpture replace the actual flesh and

blood of hurnan beings with plastic. "The paradox is that art over the last twenty

years has tremendously emphasized the body, as though it had to show it one

more time before it disappeared altogether. It wasn't a rediscovery, or a post-

modern ressucitation Isic], it was post-mortem before the fact...."3aRosenblum writes that by depicting "momentous events in the stages of

life, love, and death," Mueck allows us to recognize his sculptures as "mem-

bers of our own world."3s What is so disconcerting about this claim in the con-

tert of the increasingly post-human world in which we find ourselves, is that

realhttman beings- in Body Worlds and elsewhere - no longer seem to be rec-

ognizable as members of our own rvorld. Why do we feel absolutely no pathos

when confronted with evidence of the real organs that Mueck's sculptures lack?

Why can we relate to human suffering better when it is rendered in plastic

rather than flesh? It is as if our ability to identify ourselves with technology has

risen, in inverse proportion, to our ability to identify with human beings'

Conclusion

In the context of the supposedly outstanding scientific and educational

r.alue of Body Worlds, moral indignation has been re-signified as an inappro-

priate, even cantankerous, response to the technological wizardry that disavows

even the slightest moral ambiguity. In the postmodern, virtually post-human

tvorld that we precariously inhabit, the vocalization of humanist concerns has

been rendered pass6. And yet, these bodies are casualties of an unnamed war

of scientihc progress.

The rhetoric of the Body Worlds endeavor insistently locates the tech-

niques of plastination in the realms of science and epistemology, suggesting ofcourse that barbarism plays no role. While it would be comforting to think ofscience and barbarism as diametrically opposed systems, the history of science

and technology suggest otherwise. Von Hagens' innovative use of technology

does not neutralize questions of his enterprise's dubious ethics. On the con-

trary, considering the history oftechnology and the dangers ofits fetishization,

rve should be even more sensitive to its potential abuses.

Our ongoing indifference to the casualties of contemporarywarfare is mir-

Emergent Bo ilie s (O sterweil/Baumflek) 257

rored by our indifference to the corpses on display in Body Worlds. When con-fronted with these human sculptures, we are not supposed to feel anyrhtng.That is, we are not supposed to feel anything akin to affect; in place of the

recognition of pain, suffering, and loss, we are provided with a surplus of won-der, incredulity, and delight. Rather than experiencing empathy for the deceased

individuals whose bodies constitute the display, we are invited to marvel at the

scrupulous process by which these corporeal phenomenon have been so art-fully exposed and composed.

Viewing the cadavers in Body Worlds is explicitly contingent on the sus-

pension of structures of identification. For to actually believe in our shared

humanity with the bodies on display is to admit to oneseif the unspeakable

spectacle of exploitation in which one has not only willingly participated, butpaid a rather extravagant price to witness. If we were to contemplate the priorexistence of these carcasses as once-vital individuals- each with unique andirreplaceable personalities-we would surely recoil in horror. For what we are

being asked to contemplate, as we unthinkingly exchange curiosity for empa-thy, are the after-effects of a hyper-sanitized, scientifically approved GrandGuignol in which nameless dead bodies have been eviscerated for our viewingpleasure.

Body Worlds is an alarming milestone in the increasing de-personaliza-tion, de-humanization of the corporeal body. Unfortunately, so is the spectac-

ular work of Ron Mueck.

I,{otes

1. Warr and Jones, The Artist's Body, 11.

2. Miglietti, Extreme Bodies, 15.3. Burden, quoted in Warr and Jones, 122.

4. Bazin, "The Ontology," 9.5. Ostcrweil, Fleslr Citterna,2776. Duncan, quoted in Warr and Jones, 105.

7. Institute for Plastination, Gwtther von Hagens'.8. rbid.9. Ibid.

10. Miglietti, 213.1r. Ibid., 214.12. Ibid., 2rs.13. Rosenblum, "Ron Mueck's," 53,54.14. Greeves and Wiggins, "Ron Nlueck," 43.15. Rosenblum, 50.16. rbid.,46.17. Barthes, Camera Lucida: ReJlections on Photography,2T.18. Rosenblum, 53.19. Barthes,28.20. Ibid.21. Greeves and Wiggins,44.22. Ibid'43.23. lbid.,44.

258 SEcrtoN FIvE : AEsruEttc AhND INsrRUcrlvE BUT Nor MORALLY OErnNsIvE

24. Rosenblum, 54.25. Ibid.26. Bataille, Eroticism, 47.27. Kristeva, Powers of Horror,3.28. Lbid.,269.29. Lotringer and Virilio, The Accident of Art,17.30. Ibid., s1.

31. Ibid.32. rbid.33. rbid., s2.34. rbid,32-33.35. Rosenblum, 54.

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