Tuu AxnroMY oF Bony WonLDS

Critical Essays on the Plastinated

Cadavers of Gunther von Hagens
Edited by
T. Christine Jespersen, Alicita Rodriguez and 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 the plastinated 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

@ 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. Medicineand art-Exhibitions. L Jespersen, T. Christine, 1964- II. Rodriguez, Alicita,7972- III. Starr, |oseph' 1969QM16.H34A53 2009
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2008041143

British Library cataloguing data are available 02009 T. Christine Jespersen, Alicita Rodriguez and |oseph Starr.

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No part of tltis book may be reproduced or transntitted in nny fornt or by any means, electrortic or ntechanical, includirtg photocopfirtg or r'ecording, or by any infortnatiott storage and retriel'al system, without permissiorr in writing fron the publisher.

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Emergent Bodies: Human, All Too Human, Posthuman

Ara Osterweil and David Baumflek
Between the mass public exhibition of dissected human cadavers in the traveling Body Worids show, and the celebrated, hyper-realistic figurative scuiptures by artist Ron Mueck, it is clear that contemporary "art" is charting nerv corporeal territory. Although some critics cite the distinction between science and art to distinguish the exhibition of plastinated corpses at scientific institutions from the exhibition of Mueck's sculptures at more traditional fine art venues, both genres can be described as corporeal spectacles of the highest order. And while these works undoubtedly diverge from each other, methodologically, artistically, and perhaps even ideologically, what distinguishes their shared territory from earlier corporeal traditions is ultimately what connects them in the collective unconscious. This essay aims to interrogate the ontology and the politics of these equivalently shocking corporeal spectacles to comprehend what is at stake in, and what is so disconcerting about, these perverse millennial representations of the alternately surreal and hyper-real cadaver. For despite the fact that only ore of these exhibitions utiiizes actual human cadavers, the uncanny appeal of both Body Worlds and contemporary body sculpture can be seen as analogous to the mix ofattraction and repulsion that one experiences at the sight ofthe dead. Unlike Body Art of the 1960s and '70s, which may be regarded as its logical forebearer, this contemporary body of corporeal work presents the human form from a radically depoliticized point of view. For in their quest to meticulously document the corporeal mechanics of either the real cadaver or the latex simulacra, both Body Worlds and contemporary hyper-real sculpture aspire to a supposedly universal condition of humanity. As the following essay argues, this artificial sense of universality is diametrically opposed to the idiosyncratic and highly individualized expressions of personal subjectivity that characterized the work ofBody Art pioneers.

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Being Human: Body

Art in the 1960s

In order to understand the important ontological differences between the Body worlds endeavor and contemporary hyper-realist scuipture, it is necessary to situate these current phenomenon in their appropriate art historicai traditions. In order tt-r do so, we shall sketch out two parallel but related tendencies, both of which were animated by an urgency to represent the human body in innovative and explicit ways. while western Art has always been invested in the representation of the human figure, Body Artists of the 1960s and '70s interrogated the traditional separation ofartist and art object. Rather than drawing, painting, or sculpting the 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 generation of artists for whom formalist criteria were considered insuffrcientlrpolitical, Body Artists recognized the body as a privileged site of porver thar could be transformed into a tool with which to challenge the dominant ideological 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 tntr real" in the postwar avant-garde was founded upon both the [,.riiiica. :ect,sity of real action and the philosophical rejection of rhe fiction oi cisrnrcdied 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,ierr as split between mind and body, Body Arr rvas profoundh' Conceprual. Although artists associated often-relied-upon sensational shock tactics in order to trouble the conventional relationship between artist and viewer, Bodv Art was' first and foremost, a practice of thinking with, through, and about the body as body. For Body Artists, embodiment was not something to be recognized 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 of subjectivitS gender, sexuality, race, and ethnicity on the corporeal apparatus. For many artists, the taboo act of asserting the body, in all of its messy, corporeal "effervescence," was a deliberate act of political resistance. During a time of intense political and social upheaval, their visceral assaults on themselves (and the viewer) served as bold reminders ofthe corporeal carnage that characterized political conflicts at home and abroad. In the tumultuous era of the '60s and'70s, the act ofdisplaying the abject, pained, suffering bodies by artists such as Ana Mendieta, Chris Burden, Yoko Ono, and paul McCarthywas a way of making visibie war's anonymous casualties- at home and abroad.

within this highly

charged historical context, rhe simple act of sitting upon

242

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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 confrontation that revealed the sadism of an audience willing to participate in the public violation 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 revealing their failure to intervene in the corporeal abuse of another human being. Far from being a senseless act of self-mutilation or a shameless spectacle designed to titillate audiences, Burden's performance was an intrepid attempt to forge an empathic relationship to pain between audience and performer, and, by implication, spectator and victim. As Burden asked curator Paul Schimmel, "How do you knowwhat it feels like to be shot if you don't get shot?"3 To cast oneself in the role of victim, as Ono, Burden, and other artists did, was to visibly and publicly identify oneself with the cast-out, violated, injured, dehumanized Other in the hope of enabling viewers to meaningfully consider the body in pain.

HumAn, All Too Human: The Act of Seeing with One'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 public spectacle of the dead or dissected body is a much more recent and rarified phenomenon.* Like the taboo against touching or coming into contact with the dead, the "artistic" use of actual human corpses had been unthinkable - until
recently. With the ever-shrinking distinction between public spectacle and private ritual, as well as the concurrent re-territorialization of the flesh by technology, this taboo seems to be rapidly approaching its expiration date. Artistic use of the wounded, dying, or deceased body has become more pervasive since the corporeal experiments of the 1960s. Within the increasingly

robust "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 masochistic 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 find the sadistic work of Briti sh enfant terribleDamien Hirst, whose scandalous display of dissected sheep seemed, for an ephemeral moment, the true emblem of our controversial age of cloning.
*As Rosenblum has pointed out, the use of real body parts in art was already evident in tlrc lryperrealist 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.

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For their own respective cultural moments, each of these artists thrust the pained, disfigured body to the limits of representation. Yet even as the taboos concerning treatment ofthe dead are constantly encroached upon, displaying an authentic human corpse remains particularly problematic. For obvious reasons, the public dissection of human cadavers broaches a host of moral, 1egal, and aesthetic issues that the dismemberment of farm animais can (though should not necessarily) evade. It thus comes as no surprise that the most thorough investigations of the dead body have until now occurred within the realms of cinema and photography. As founder of Cahiers du Cintrna Andrd Bazin has argued, it was the advent of these technologies of mechanical reproduction that liberated the plastic arts from their "mummy complex"-or the aesthetic burden of preserving or "embalming" man's bodily appearance in the face of inevitable death.a

A different impulse than embalming is at work in Stan Brakhage's 19il avant-garde documentary, The Act of Seeing with One's Own E1'es, in which the legendary experimental filmmaker documented the post-mortem dissection oi human beings in a Pittsburgh morgue. The clever title of Braklage's film, rthich references the etymological transcription of the meaning of the rvord "autopsv," suggests the profound psychological impetus that animates the ostensiblt scientific need to witness the internal secrets of the human bodv. Bv making the scientific examination of the corpse available to the lav audience, Brakhage's film lays bare the "personal necessity of coming into contact rvith the human corpse in order'to see for oneself'the reality ofthe flesh dissected": Trrentryears 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 more extreme than either of these projects is John Duncan's necrophilic "performance" piece Blind Date (1980), in which the artist recorded himself having sexual intercourse with a female corpse that he had purchased in Mexico. Follorving this experience of "indescribable intense self-disgust," Duncan returned to California to have a vasectomy in order to ensure that "the last potent seed t had was spent in a cadaver." After the operation, Duncan arranged a showing of Blind Date in order to explain to the public "what can happen to men that are trained to ignore their emotions."6 It is within this highly charged and potentially incendiary vein of "forensic" Body Art that we would like to situate Body Worlds. Like Body Art, Body Worlds insists upon using the real body, rather than a representation or simulacra, as its primary material. And like Body Art, Body Worlds is particularly interested in the extreme body- in this case, the dead, diseased, splendidly colored, stupendously posed, and possibly even necrophilic body. In various traveling shows, Body Worlds invites viewers to scrutinize the usually hidden organs of actual corpses, preserved and made visible through the techniques of plastination developed by German anatomist Gunter von

244

Stcrtou Ftvr: AEsrupttc

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in 1977 . Here, bodies are splayed open to reveal an intricate design of musculature and arterial passages normally hidden from view by the protective armature of the skin. In many of the exhibits, bodies are posed in a vigorous parody of animation. Smiling ecstatically, engaged in convoluted positions ofsport or play, these cadavers suggest that they are not only real human specimens, but, ironically, extraordinarily vital ones. Mocking the limits of living flesh, many of these human sculptures pose in genuinely outrageous fashion
Hagens

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 Middles Ages and the Renaissance, they more closely resemble the exploitative' sensational 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 unprecedented 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 "interior face" of the body] with models, for a model is nothing more than an interpretation. All modeis look alike and are, essentially, simplified versions of the real thing."8 According 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 of
real human bodies is indispensable. Though von Hagens insists upon the inimitable pedagogical value of using real bodies, one wonders whether the stated mission of creating a place of "enlightenment and contemplation" is best served

If having your body sliced like bologna and forceimpregnated with plastic is considered the "enlightened" treatment of a human being, then one might be tempted to inquire about what medieval options are
by von Hagens' methods.
available. As Brakhage, Serrano, and Duncan's work demonstrate, the need to "penetrate" deceased flesh often exceeds the purely scientific desire to study the body's functions and dysfunctions. Though Body Worlds makes its interest in scientific pedagogy explicit, one wonders whether the spectacle of the human cadaver can everbe detached from our inherent voyeurism, curiosity, and prurience. Why does Body Worlds strive so assiduously to disavow the potential of its 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 of filmmaking), Body Worlds insists upon two grand, but ultimately problematic,

Emergent

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"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 historicaily privileged realm of vision has proved to be fundainentally unreliable. Within the context of increased surveillance and ever-decreasing individuai privacy, Body Worlds seems a symptom of the simultaneous insatiability and insufficiency of vision rather than a resolution of it. Although Body Worlds emphasizes the didactic vai,ue of seeing the "truth' of the body's inner mechanics, its constant injunctions against touching the corpses suggests that seeing alone cannot satisfy the desires that Body Worlds incites. Like the long-standing 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 it possible that the necroscopic desires that Body Worlds authorizes belie intensely necrophilic 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 Body in Contemp orary Figurative Sculpture
In the previous section, we situated Body Worlds in the tradition of Body Art in order to understand its particular insistence upon using real rather than simulated bodies. We would now like to turn to the work of contemporary sculptor Ron Mueck (born 1958). By putting Mueck's work in dialogue with
Body Worlds, we shall elucidate the ways that these two contemporary phenomena distinctly fetishize bodies that exist on the border between the human and

the machine. The tradition of hyper-realism - of which Mueck is the latest and most exemplary incarnation - emerged in the early 1970s, on the heels of, and very much as a reaction against, the radical antics of 1960s Body Artists. Like Body Art, 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 vichis.fantastical biography. In a life delined by terri.fying escapes, perhaps tlrc ntost extrtordinary adventure followerl his bit'th itr 1945 in a remote sectiolt o.f Polond, tlwt pnrt of Gertnnny. As the Body Worlds 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 lrorse wagon." Wile no rnetrtion o.f tlte Holocaust is made, World War II is trcated as n kind of historicttl printil scene, seconded only by von Hagens' two-year irnprisorrntent in Enst Germnny dttring tlrc Cold War. A self-proclaimed victim of historical tnrntoil, political prejudice, misunderstandirry, and clrildhood infirmity, the ntythical origitrs of von Hagetts' assumed gertius are treoted as all importatlt part of the Body Worlds ofliciol sttga.

tin in

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However, rather than using the real, often de-sanitized body as subject, method, and political tool, sculptors such as Duane Hanson and John DeAndrea labored to create convincing, but ultimately depoliticized, human facsimiles. Rather than using the raw material of the flesh its fluids, its capacity for movement and sound, its ability to feel pleasure and pain as tools, hyperrealist sculptors looked towards technology to reproduce bodies that were conspicuously non*effervescent. Hyper-realistic sculptors, as they were designated in 1971, were not interested in displaying the abject or wounded body. In sharp contrast to Body Artists, hyper-realistic sculptors were resolutely not concerned with the body in 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 nudes which like the airbrushed figures in Playboy magazine- aspire to, and potentially surpass, the classical (and classically misogynist) ideals of beauty, youth, and fitness that had animated much of traditional sculpture. Unlike Ana Mendieta's bloody rape victim or Paul McCarthy's obscenely defiled body, de Andrea's nudes were young, attractive middle-class Americans captured in exquisite and un-ironic poses of self-satisfied narcissism. More ethnographically inclined is the work of Duane Hanson, whose "family album of America" presents an anthropological gallery of middle class types such as typical tourists, waitresses, policemen, and shoppers.lo Like Pop Art from which it emerged, hyper-realism was invested in the synthetic face of America, and fittinglypresented the human form as a commercial symbol of artificiality rather than an emotionally-charged, embodied subject. "More real than real Americans,"lr hyper-realistic sculptures were, paradoxically, not real at all. Devoid of emotional content, the seeming immediacy of hyper-realism was a trompe l'oeil, an illusory effect of technology and technique. Diametricaliy opposed to the Conceptually-oriented Body Art, which strove to eliminate the mediating structure of representation by presenting the body as itself, hyper-realism celebrated representation as pure representation, "with the necessary elimination of the subject."12 While several contemporary artists, such as Charles Ray, Judy Fox, Reuven Cohen, Tim Noble, and Sue Webster, work in the contemporary genre of hyperrealistic figure sculpture, we shall look primarily at the work of Ron Mueck. For as art historian Robert Rosenblum has noted, within the "vast population of body doubles" that characterizes the facsimile body trend in contemporary sculpture, Mueck has pushed "the goal of human cloning farther than any of his colleagues, right down to each eyelash and toenail."13 Indeed, as curator Susanna Greeves has acclaimed, "Mueck has created the most flawlessly hyperreal figures in art history, so effectively imitating nature that the categories of art, image and reality seem to be suspended."ra Indeed, since his debut in Sensation: Young British Artists from the Saatchi Collection, which opened at the Royal Academy of Arts in London in 1997, the

Emergent Bodies (Osterweil/Baumflek)

247

work of the Australian artist has astonished botl-r the public and the gatekeepers of the art world. Meticulously constructed from modern materials such as
silicone and fiberglass, Mueck's sculptures are technically indebted to his rvork as a special effects model maker in the television, fiim, and advertising industries. As Rosenblum has written, Mueck's contribution to Sensation "immediately established his singularity, not only in its fanatical insistence on the perfect replication of every hair, pore, wrinkle, or muscle that defines an individual face 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 miniature sculpture of the prone corpse of a nude, slightlyelderly man, rendered in painstaking detail. With a matter-of-fact pose to match its matter-of-fact title, Dead Dad depicts the most commonplace of all occurrences: the ordinary death of an aging man. As Rosenblum r'vrites, "after all, this physical reality of death, the detritus of life, could always be seen in countless numbers at hospital morgues or funeral parlors."16 Thus, what is extraordinary about the sculpture is then not 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-capture details of skin, hair, or nail-attempts to disguise itself as what philosopher Roland Barthes calls "punctum," or the capacity of a particular detail of an artwork to pop out and prick, bruise, or tttove the viewer with the recognition of the "wound" of the real.rT Is it genuinely the recognition of the real that is communicated through these ruptures of perception? Or is it the wizardry of special effects technology that masquerades as real pathos, as pulrctum? Though they may appear to blur the boundaries "between the natural and artificial" world, as Rosenblum claims,18 there is nothing "real" or remotely human about Mueck's figures. Why, then, are these synthetic replicas so much more emotionaliy compelling to viewers than their human counterparts in the Body \\iorlds show? Why do viervers seem 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 through and puncturing the "studium" with the sudden force of its emotional impact. Yet'as Mueck leaves no room for accident, his sculptures capture nothing spontaneously. Even with their surplus of anthropological data, Mueck's sculptures Iack the accidental, idiosyncratic revelation of real emotion. According to Barthes, the studium "is a contract arrived at between creators and consumers ... a kind of education ... which allows me to discover the Operator, to experience the intentions which establish and animate his practices."re Much of the seeming pathos in Mueck's sculptures is dependent upon

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distills trauma's vocabulary. While its qtrotidian presentation ol'an ordinary corpse allolvs the vierver to inspect tlre nude male body without the niceties of funereal arnngement' the scrrlpture gains surplus emotional value from the knowledge that it depicts Mueck's own father. courtesy and @ Anthony d'ollay Galler.y, London.

Figtrre 5: Approximately forty inches long, Iton NIueck's Deail Dnd (1996-1997) acutely

this contract between creator and consumer. Every detail bears the intentional mark of the technician whose painstaking process has created them. Like a true special effects operator, Mueck has endowed his work with what Barthes calls .futtctiotts: "to infonn, to represent, to surprise, to cause to signify, to provoke desire."r0 In a culture where images of the pained, traumatized body politic have been banished, Mueck's sculptures serve the perverse function of ailowing spectators to feel empathy for plastic replicants. tsy relating so emotionally to Mueck's organless, fleshless "bodies," we purchase the right nol to risk the emotional 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 positions of Mueck's figures that move viewers to a state of startled cognition, in rvhich the sensations of belief and disbelief coexist on a spectrum of emotion that includes empathy, intimidation, wonder, and delight. Indeed, many of Mueck'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 analyze three of Mueck's sculptures lvhose surplus of corporeal meaning has been scrupulously implanted by the artist in order to engage an int,estigative rather
Ihan emotive mode of address. when regarded together, these three sculptures

Eme rge

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Figure 6: Mueck's larger than life Pregnant Woman (2002) leaves the vierver longing see the corpulent Iittle fetus that undoubtedly resides inside her hugely distended stomach, Thus, the paradoxical fascination ofthe sculpture is contingent upon wl.rat presumably remains hidden rvithin the (plastic) body's interior cavities. Courtesy and O Anthony d'Offay Gallery, London.

for X-ray vision in order to

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

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(2001) insists that Fiorrre 7: Mueck's minuscule, state-of-the-art Mother and Child nervborn seenls rhe as insides, i'deed ha'e real human hands' Yet like Mueck's than rather womb Mothe''s ;; h.;"-;.;"tg"o di.".tlylroempty vessel; an is also Mother the classical Madonna lid;;;h;;;f"*nces, Mueck's secret behind her own the k'ows alone she that suggest her bewildere.t gur".""r.r.,.io

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belly' holding her arms woman,-with stocky proportions and a hugely sweliing expectant, undeniably the above l.rer head. Constructed entirely of fiterglass, stomach is on the fleshy-looking mother looks as if her immensely swollen a corpulent little be would verge of bursting open to cleliver what we imagine

PregnantWontanisalarger.than-lifeportraitofanexhausted.looking

offspring. to be a Although it was completed a year earlier, Motlrcr and Child seems and Madonna postscript ti pregna,t Woman.This minuscuie, state-of-the-art it makes Aias' Child depicts anlther exhaustecl mother' (Or is it the same one?
universal specno difference, since, like von t{agens, Mueck is concerned with presumimens, rather than particuiar inclividuals.) Here, Motl-rer is presented

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

Eme rge

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- 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 human characteristics, 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 to Mother, 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 ultirnately
terrified empty 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 hidden lr,ithin the (plastic ) bodv's interior cavities, Ilueck dares us to see through their meticuloush'detailed fiberglass "skin." Longing ior x-ra1' 1.l5ion - or, better vet, a scalpel -\re cra\-e to eramine tl.reir alternatell' jam-packed or justemptied 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 this emptiness, this deceptive artificiality. As rvith Dead Dnd, rvhose invisible cause of death must surelr- lie beneath his immaculate surface, the only way to penetrate 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, but requires another definition."rrYet, what Mueck's sculptures suggest is the parador oia seeminglv "humanist" art form that it is so thoroughly reliant upon technologl- that it implies, and perhaps even requires, the extinction of both traditional forms of iigurative representation and traditional forms of human
beings.

Nearlv all ol NIueck's admirers remark upon the ahnost tactile phenome-

non of discovering the work-a significant paradox when one considers that thet' are made of plastic. As Greeves exclaims, "ln the presence of a Mueck sculpture \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 proximity 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 not seem to help then-rselves from violating the s<lcially acceptable distance of art

252

Spctrox Frve : AaslHstrc eNo lxstnucl'rvE

BUT

Nor Monerrv

OFFENSIvE

viewing. In their insistence upon getting a closer look, viewers searched for telltaie clues that would convince them, finally, that these tremendous plasticine clones 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 to corroborate their eyes' impression of living warmth and softness" (italics ours).23 Again, the spectator's body must be disciplined to resist its almost involuntary 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 sculptures labor to persuade the viewer that they are made of flesh and blood. In spite of the prohibitions against tactility, Mueck's sculptures "ask" to be stroked; "fleshiness" is part of their studium. Not only can Mueck enable viewers to detect the subtlest 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, like ours, fully defined internal systems of muscles, veins, and bones."'n Often, it is 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 compelled to insist, like Rosenblum, that any doctor "could give an anatomy lesson after cutting them open."25 Of course, any doctor cotld not slice Mueck's bodies open and give an anatomy lesson since they are constructed of wire mesh, 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 other
people's pain.

as

Susan Sontag, Regarding the Paitr of Others

Unlike the Body Artists of the 1960s and '70s who used their own bodies material often endangering their own physical well-being in the processthe extensive team of scientists, medical doctors, designers, and technicians who are responsible for the manufacture of Body Worlds do not put their own bodies at risk. Rather than blurring the boundaries between subject and object as Body Artists did, here the traditional distinction between doctor and "patient," or in this case, medical specimen, is rigorously preserved.* "We are
Since votr H agens' tecluritltLe of plastination obviously requires the denh of tlrc specimetr, it rnay seem oJ other people's bodies in hk displays sirtce one catmot reasonably inngine 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)
r

ludicrous to critique the use

Emergent Bodies ( Osteru'eil/Baumfl ek)

253

doctors," the exhibit seems to whisper, attempting to disavolv any suspicion that the bodies on display might have arrived there by less than scrupulous
means. "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 identities 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 paying audience - is irretrievably, irrevocably Other. Considering typical Western attitudes toward death and the cadaver, the generally. unperturbed demeanor of Body Worlds audiences is perplexing. Tracing modern antipathy to the corpse back to primitive societies, in which corpses signified the threat ofcontagion and the essence ofviolence, Surrealist philosopher Georges Bataille rvrites, "In the presence of the corpse, horror is immediate and inevitable and practically impossible to resist."26 Likewise in Powers of Horror, contemporarv philosopher Julia Kristeva describes the corpse as the penultimate s1'mbol oiabiection. For Kristeva, the sight of this "most sickening 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 become
an object."r8

To our amazement, we detected no evidence of pathos, horror, disgust, or pin'in the facial expressions, body language, or overheard conversations at the Body Worids exhibit. Families gathered around the bodies and pointed, couples sniggered, children giggled. Flying in the face of the long-standing taboo in Western culture against looking at corpses, the mainstream popularitv of Body Worlds suggests that perhaps traditional Western attitudes towards death have changed drarnatically in the virtually post-human era in which we live. Unlike Shakespeare's Hamlet who contemplated Yorick's skull with a sudden arvareness of his own mortality vielvers who examine von Hagens'plastinated corpses celebrate the triumph of technology over the organic body. By making the autopsied, plastinated body available to the scientific and medical iay person, Body Worlds promises that each paying customer can approach and understand the mechanics of the formerly off-limits body with the expertise of a doctor. This discursive gesture rather misleadingly locates the spectator 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 Feldnnn Gallery 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 rvith r: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 treatment of human beings has plummeted. The corpses on display have been banisned - not onl,v from their home and nation - but, more importantly, fronl the 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 without

pitl bv par-ing customers. in his book Honto Sacer:

Sovereign Power and Bare Life, Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben describes the condition of the medieval bandit. Excommunicated from civilization, and ousted from the presumed sacredness of life, the bandit i,vas considered "aiready" dead; it was thus legally permissible for et1\'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 component to it. While these corpses have been stripped of their own rights to participate 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-individualization of the body, Body Worlds constructs the fiction of death without suffering. The illusion of lir.ing and dying painlessly-a hallmark of the opulent, leisure-obsessed society in which we live - is dependent upon the disappearance 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 capitalist 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 melancholia. 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 outcast 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 historic bandits and outlaws- I3ody Worlds has authorized both the disappearance of the 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 relationship
between Body Worlds and contemporarv hvper-realistic sculpture for our present 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 Mechanical Reproduction," Lotringer suggestively deciares, "Art is rvar b,v other means."tn By characterizing contemporary art - in its trajectorl- from surrealism to terrorism as a "victim" or "casualty of lvar," Lotringer and Virilio help us to understand the ways in which art of the twentieth and trventy-first centuries speak the trauma of the terrorized. In the same way that you can't divorce painterli'abstraction from its ontological roots in the disfiguration of the Second World \\rar, one cannot approach either tsody Worlds or contemporarv hyper-realism rvithout attempting to understand its larger significance for our cultural moment. What, in other words, is the relationship of both Bod.v \Vorlds and contemporary hyperrealist sculpture to our current political, cultural, and historical landscape? What types of trauma do these disfigured bodies speak? While both Mueck and von Hagens attempt to banish the experience of real 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 of contemporary art in general, and Body Worids in particular, is inextricable from the delining anxiety of our time: the very definition of what it means to
be 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 understood 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

has become a new

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

reality and the body a mere logo game," dead bodies "have taken over some of the attributes living bodies had to relinquish."3l The "posthumous performance" 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, both Body \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 postmodern ressucitation Isic], it was post-mortem before the fact...."3a Rosenblum writes that by depicting "momentous events in the stages of life, love, and death," Mueck allows us to recognize his sculptures as "members of our own world."3s What is so disconcerting about this claim in the contert 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 recognizable 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 inappropriate, 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 techniques of plastination in the realms of science and epistemology, suggesting of course that barbarism plays no role. While it would be comforting to think of science 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 contrary, 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 confronted 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 wonder, 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 artfully exposed and composed. Viewing the cadavers in Body Worlds is explicitly contingent on the suspension 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, but paid a rather extravagant price to witness. If we were to contemplate the prior existence of these carcasses as once-vital individuals- each with unique and irreplaceable 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 Grand Guignol in which nameless dead bodies have been eviscerated for our viewing
pleasure.

Body Worlds is an alarming milestone in the increasing de-personalization, de-humanization of the corporeal body. Unfortunately, so is the spectacular work of Ron Mueck.

I,{otes
1. Warr and Jones, The Artist's Body,
11. 122.

2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.

Miglietti, Extreme Bodies, 15. Burden, quoted in Warr and Jones,

Bazin, "The Ontology," 9. Ostcrweil, Fleslr Citterna,277 Duncan, quoted in Warr and Jones,

105.

Institute for Plastination, Gwtther von Hagens'. rbid. 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,
19. Barthes,28. 20. Ibid.

53.

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.

Bibliography
Agamben, Giorgio. Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life.Ttans. Daniel Heller-Roazen. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998. Barthes, Roland. camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography. Trans. Richard Howard. New York: Hill and Wang, 1981. Bataille, Georges. Erotisit: Death 6 Sensuality. Trans. Mary Dalwood. San Francisco: City Bazin, Lndr6. "The ontology of the Photographic Image." ln wat Is cinema?,volume ()ne, edited and translated by Hugh Grayor, 9-16. Berkeley: university of california Press,

Lights, 1986.

Benjamin, walter. "The work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction." Trans. Harry Zohn. ln llluminations, edited by Hannah Arendt, 217-51' New York: Schocken, 1968. Burden, Chris. "Just the Facts." Quoted in Warr and fones, 122.
Deleuze, Gilles, and Felix Guattari, Arrrl-O edipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Trans. Robert Hurley, Mark Seem, and Helen R. Lane. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,
1983.

t967.

Foster,Hal. TlrcRetunrof theReal:TheAvant-GardeattheEntlofCentury.Cambridge,MA:

The MIT Press, 1996. Greeves, Susanna, and Colin Wiggins. Ron Mueck Exhibition Catalogue for show at National Gallery Company, London. New Haven: Yale University Press' 2003'

Institute foi Plastination. "Prelude." Gunther von Hagens' Body Worlds: the Original Exhibition of Real Human Bodies. Heidelberg: 2006. http://www.bodyworlds.com./en/ prelude.html Kristeva, Julia. Powers of Horror: An Essay in Abjectiotr. Trans. Leon S. Roudiez. New York: Columbia University Press, 1982. Lotringer, Sylvbre, and Paul Yitilio. The Accident of Art. New York: Semiotext(e)' 2005. Migliet'ti, Frincesca Alfano. Extreme Bodies: The use and Abuse of the Body in Arr. Milan: Skira' osterweil, Ara. "Flesh cinema: The corporeal Avant-Garde, 1959-1979." PhD diss., university of California, Berkeley, 2005. Rosenbium, Robert. "Robert Rosenblum on body doubles." Art.Forum, Oct. 2004' _. "Ron Mueck's Bodies and Souls." Ron Mueck. Exhibition Catalogue. Fondation Cartier pour I'art contemporain. New York: Thames and Hudson, 2006' Sontig, Susan. Regarding the Pain of Others. New York: Picador, 2003. Warr,-Tracey, andAmelia Jones. The Artist's Body. London: Phaidon' 2000'
2003.