Who was this artist? (waxed corpses?)

[Smith]

He de-skinned bodies and waxed the muscle tissue, ligaments, arteries and veins and then posed them.  I remember a rider on a horse as well.  Who was that guy?

[Iain]

Gunter von Hagen.

He 'plastinated' corpses, that is basically replaced all the tissue with plastic, apparently it even holds up to being analysed with an electron microscope.

I saw his exhibit when it came to London. It was very interesting from a scientific viewpoint, but also somewhat ghoulish in that anything like that attracts a certain amount of 'freakshow' status.

The horse and man thing was intended to demonstrate the vast size difference between a man and a horse, particularly how much more muscular a horse is, and yet the human brain is proportionately much larger.

Much controversy over the whole exhibit and a I believe it was eventually banned from Britain, although I think his public autopsies had a big effect on that. Earlier this year he did a late night series on channel 4 in which he dissected bodies (donated for that purpose) in front of a studio audience.

I found the specimens that had this substance injected into the blood vessels and then had all the flesh and bone rendered away to only leave a representation of the network of vessels the most interesting.

[K Frame]

Huge furor over this exhibit (or one much like it) brewing in Florida.

It's probably going to end up in a court battle.

[Standing Wolf]

If that's art, I'm Siamese twins.

[jefnvk]

What they do is replace all the water in the body with a plastic.

I could see it as a great help for those in the medical field, but just to do it for art is kind of appaling to me.

[Justin]

Link to his website

[Smith]

Thanks guys.  Standing Wolf, sorry your opinion doesn't match mine.

[brimic]

The exibit is coming to Chicago next week I think. I think its very intriguing art.

[Justin]

I doubt there would be nearly the controversy over it if it were wrapped in the trappings of science rather than art.

One way or t'other it's all marketing.  Regardless, I'd probably buy a ticket.

[cfabe]

Well when that was shown in cleveland, it was shown at the science museum, not the art museum. I went to the exhibit, it was very interesting, though slightly ghoulsih I will admit. The way the plastinates were presented did have an artistic element, so I could see it being displayed in an art museum as well. More suited for a science museum though, imo.

[Iain]

Part of the controversy was to do with what the donors knew about their 'fate' (or more accurately, the fate of a plastic replica of them) Some claimed that von Hagens cadavers had donated their bodies to 'medical science' and not for public display, he responded that they had signed up specifically for this display. Some of the bodies came from prisoners I believe.

I was very much alright with the whole exhibit, and got to see up close and clearly things that no diagram or picture can truly represent, such as the (lack) of musculature of an aged man, or the exact way that muscles lie in relation to each other. I was a little creeped out by the pregnant model however. Especially as it was right in the back room surrounded by several models of quite horrifically deformed stillbirths and foetuses.

von Hagen claims that he is bringing the human body out of the closeted medical world and putting that knowledge in front of the public. I think he views himself as being as important to general knowledge about the body as those who first defied the Catholic church to dissect the dead.