Saturday I saw Gunther von Hagens’ Body Worlds exhibit at the California Science Center, but I sure didn’t see it coming. I remember a few years back hearing about its controversial stint in Germany. Several news outlets reported on its recent arrival here, but they flew under my radar. Maybe I should start reading the Sunday paper, huh?
The exhibit features real human corpses that have been dissected and preserved through plastination. Because the bodies are dynamically posed and creatively sculpted, the result is a fascinating hybrid of anatomical science and art. Instructive in the "this-is-your-lung-and-this-is-your-lung-on-cigarettes" kind of way. Yet provoking emotion and opinion and contemplation as art will do. To help along my meditation on what it means to be alive and to die, banners throughout the gallery proclaimed the ideas of illustrious philosophers.
It’s also an amusing social experiment. Put a diverse bunch of mortal humans in a room with wildly souped-up dead bodies stripped to various degrees of subcutaneous nudity, and see what happens! Watch their reactions and interactions. Eavesdrop on their nervous remarks when they’re confronted with such taboo flesh. Too much fun – I think I’ll have to go back for a second round.
I remember: a family densely weaved of nothing but glo-red veins; a man running, his muscles flapping madly in the wind; a soccer goalie catching the ball in one hand and all of his major internal organs in the other; the strong, thick uterine walls of the beautiful pregnant model; lots of male sex organs dangling below pelves, and the external female sex organs, detached, lying passively beneath a glass case. I remember the nerves were like twine, and peering through the void before the Achilles tendon gave me a bit of vertigo. I now visualize more clearly my own intestinal tract in continued efforts to digest food normally.
Thanks to Steve for making it happen with his simple request to visit the Science Center. I was happy to see the place busier than ever before, and with many renovations completed since I worked there a couple years ago.
Is this anything like discovering the meaning of the phrase, "get comfortable with your body,"?
They’re all just parts, man. We humans are drifting further and further away from being familiar with all our gory components. We try to avoid encountering them, cloaking them even in vocabulary as though they were too secret to bring out of the unknown. It doesn’t seem to be causing the world to behave any better to shield everyone from real carcasses and nudity. Look at all of these clothes we seem to deem necessary! To think, the world used to be one big nudist colony…ah, the good old days of being connected to the earth and creation! How many of us really feel the life’s blood pumping through our veins? Dare I say that I’m glad to have grown up in the countryside to see my fair share of gruesome roadkill ere I was much settled into these contemporary human ways of refusing to become acquainted with one’s cuts of meat ,either on the plate or in your own hide (could this explain why I went vegetarian before my teens were over? Yes, Mr. M., my mega-mayo blts are just a big lie!). Wish I could accompany you on your next exhibit visit to become reacquainted with my own guts. Meanwhile, perhaps I’ll borrow the library’s global dance history videos and rewatch some sacrificial goat and chicken dances. Every village kid can handle it, why can’t I?
Wow. While I have a solid belief that the body is merely a vehicle, I still can’t shake the guilty feelings of disrespect looking upon this art carnage. It makes me wonder where do you draw the line between mutilation and art? It is very fascinating, yet repulsive at the same time. Its like walking by a recent car wreck where you can’t help but to look even though you really have no desire to see blood and guts splattered all over the place. (ok, maybe some people DO have the desire for that sort of thing) I dunno, I’d have to investigate in person but on the surface it all seems so cold and dare I say dead. If I did see the exhibit, I think I’d want to keep some balance by visiting a very living and soul soothing oriental garden shortly afterward.
Now from a different perspective, I could envision this whole thing like a Gary Larson Far Side cartoon where a bunch of dinosaurs in spectacles and labcoats stood arguing in front of an obviously mis-contructed human skeleton. If it were animals making art out of humans, then I would whole heartedly applaud. We well deserve to be put on the other side of the glass.