Flesh and Bone: A Visit to the BodyWorlds Exhibition
Tuesday, February 4th, 2003 07:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tamaranthYesterday evening ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ladymoonray and I went to the BodyWorlds exhibition on Brick Lane, which closes this weekend after a couple of extensions of its original stay. I've been in two minds about seeing this: I'm not exactly squeamish, but reminders of the awful fragility of the human body can lead to a surfeit of imagination. I saw the 'Spectacular Bodies' exhibition at the Hayward Gallery a couple of years ago (medical art - wax models of flayed corpses, and the like) and found myself pitying the uncaring dead.
So BodyWorlds - 'The Anatomical Exhibition of Real Human Bodies' - was a sort of experiment, a bit like picking a scab.
For the squeamish, this is definitely the best time to go - in the last week of the exhibition. It was crowded enough that there was little opportunity to linger over any particular exhibit, or to meditate solemnly on 'what a piece of work is a man', et cetera. (Actually, nearly all the whole-body exhibits were male: we concluded that the vast majority of people who donate their bodies to Professor Gunther von Hagen are men). And of course the reactions of other gallery-goers, while occasionally vacuous in the extreme, were almost worth the price of admission. One chap in front of me was keen to donate his body "but I want my name on the exhibit somewhere - what's the point if no one knows who you are?" Nearly all the spectators around the 'Reclining woman in eighth month of pregnancy' seemed to be relating the squashed organs and broadened pelvis to their own, or their friends', experiences.
There was remarkably little disgust or revulsion - or inappropriate humour, for that matter. It wasn't quiet, but it wasn't irreverent either.
The exhibition does aim to educate. Everything's clearly and unsensationally labelled. There are comparative displays: smokers' and non-smokers' lungs, brains of stroke victims, cirrhotic livers and hearts which have suffered cardiac arrest. Couldn't help wondering how my various internal organs compared with the ones on display.
Highlights:
- the embryos at various stages of development.
- the circulatory systems. They'd used a particularly scarlet dye to 'plastinate' (effectively, cast in plastic) the blood vessels, and they were truly lovely.
- the whole-body exhibits. They're posed in a variety of activities: the Basketball Player ('one of the most heavily muscled donors'), the Swimmer (a woman), the Fencer ... the Horse and Rider, which is monumental and spectacular. (There's a photograph of the team assembling it, too.) Each demonstrates a particular aspect of anatomy. And these are not the polished, darkened bones of the Natural History Museum: the skeletal displays show bones - the casts of bones - which are rough with flesh. With meat.
Recommended: open daily 9-9 until Sunday: Brick Lane. I don't know where it's going next.
ladymoonray and I went to the BodyWorlds exhibition on Brick Lane, which closes this weekend after a couple of extensions of its original stay. I've been in two minds about seeing this: I'm not exactly squeamish, but reminders of the awful fragility of the human body can lead to a surfeit of imagination. I saw the 'Spectacular Bodies' exhibition at the Hayward Gallery a couple of years ago (medical art - wax models of flayed corpses, and the like) and found myself pitying the uncaring dead. So BodyWorlds - 'The Anatomical Exhibition of Real Human Bodies' - was a sort of experiment, a bit like picking a scab.
For the squeamish, this is definitely the best time to go - in the last week of the exhibition. It was crowded enough that there was little opportunity to linger over any particular exhibit, or to meditate solemnly on 'what a piece of work is a man', et cetera. (Actually, nearly all the whole-body exhibits were male: we concluded that the vast majority of people who donate their bodies to Professor Gunther von Hagen are men). And of course the reactions of other gallery-goers, while occasionally vacuous in the extreme, were almost worth the price of admission. One chap in front of me was keen to donate his body "but I want my name on the exhibit somewhere - what's the point if no one knows who you are?" Nearly all the spectators around the 'Reclining woman in eighth month of pregnancy' seemed to be relating the squashed organs and broadened pelvis to their own, or their friends', experiences.
There was remarkably little disgust or revulsion - or inappropriate humour, for that matter. It wasn't quiet, but it wasn't irreverent either.
The exhibition does aim to educate. Everything's clearly and unsensationally labelled. There are comparative displays: smokers' and non-smokers' lungs, brains of stroke victims, cirrhotic livers and hearts which have suffered cardiac arrest. Couldn't help wondering how my various internal organs compared with the ones on display.
Highlights:
- the embryos at various stages of development.
- the circulatory systems. They'd used a particularly scarlet dye to 'plastinate' (effectively, cast in plastic) the blood vessels, and they were truly lovely.
- the whole-body exhibits. They're posed in a variety of activities: the Basketball Player ('one of the most heavily muscled donors'), the Swimmer (a woman), the Fencer ... the Horse and Rider, which is monumental and spectacular. (There's a photograph of the team assembling it, too.) Each demonstrates a particular aspect of anatomy. And these are not the polished, darkened bones of the Natural History Museum: the skeletal displays show bones - the casts of bones - which are rough with flesh. With meat.
Recommended: open daily 9-9 until Sunday: Brick Lane. I don't know where it's going next.
