Professor Gunther von Hagen is a German born Anatomist who has preserved human bodies through a process called 'plastination'. After preserving whole or partial bodies, he places them in poses and displays them as pieces of installation art. Although the people have willingly 'donated' their bodies to von Hagens for this process, is this a morally acceptable form of art?

For many centuries the Egyptians mummified their dead (by preserving the bodies through a process called embalming) leaving the heart in place to allow entry into the afterlife. In the future cryogenic freezing may be used in the future to preserve humans until medical advances can cure their illnesses. But in today's society, Professor Gunther von Hagens - a German anatomist - is using a process called 'plastination' to mummify people's bodies after death, not for religious or medical reasons, but as a form of art. Although this proves that he is a highly skilled anatomist and very good at preserving the dead, is he right to claim, that his 'profession is considered an art'?

'Plastination' is certainly a science. It is a process developed by von Hagen in the 1980's in which human corpses are preserved by replacing all the fluids of the body (i.e. fat and water) with synthetic materials. Depending on how the body is to be used, materials such as silicone rubber, epoxy resin or polyester render the bodies firm or flexible, transparent or opaque. Once preserved the bodies are highly durable, but still retain the natural surface structure and, according to von Hagens, they 'are in the identical condition they were in prior to preservation, all the way down to microscopic level...Thus, even microscopic examination can still be carried out.'

Von Hagens has displayed his plastinates in a manner in which all internal organs - nerves, blood vessels and bones - can be viewed by the public, thereby giving an insight into the human body. He has displayed a plastinate of a smoker's jet-black lung, which would demonstrate the dangers of smoking in a potentially much more impressive manner than a blackened lung of a smoker suspended in formaldehyde shown to a biology class. As 'microscopic examination can still be carried out' they could even be used by trainee physicians. In this sense the plastinates are being used as a form of recycling for educational purposes.

However, von Hagens purpose is more than medical and informative. He has arranged his plastinates into lifelike and often artistic poses earning himself the title of a modern day Frankenstein. Von Hagens refutes this, 'I show the beauty of the body. I break with the tradition of Frankenstein.'

Leonardo da Vinci and Andreas Vesal, the two outstanding anatomical artists of the Renaissance, used anatomical drawings to better understand the workings of the human body. Von Hagens is fascinated by their work, but wrote 'Neither illustrations nor models can convey the individual beauty of these structures to us, for the source of truth is in the originals' and so has taken their work a stage further. Salvador Dali's painting 'Burning Giraffe' portrays a woman standing on stilts with drawers in her legs and torso. Von Hagens has recreated Dali's nightmare in a grotesque manner as 'Drawer Man' using a stout male corpse. The recreation of Dali's work is exploiting the human body; it has resulted in something purely fictitious taken from Dali's dreams being made into something real. Although Dali's painting is disturbing there is something genuinely monstrous about von Hagens taking a real human body and creating a storage unit from it.

Von Hagens considers his displays to be a combination of art, science and education; however his activities have been compared to those in Nazi concentration camps during the Second World War, where people's teeth and hair were hoarded for money and even lampshades were made from skin. Churches and religious groups vehemently object to von Hagens, believing that his creations are against the laws of nature and that people should be respected in death as well as life. Much as they did for the millions who died in the concentration camps, churches have been holding services to pray for those people whose bodies have already been 'plastinated' and are in the exhibition. However this has not prevented two and a half million people in Japan, eight hundred thousand in Mannheim, five hundred and fifty thousand in Vienna and six hundred thousand in Switzerland coming to view the exhibit. In addition, over three thousand have signed up to be preserved by Dr von Hagens and his team in the future. Are the three thousand simply looking for a route to immortality, or do they consider themselves worthy of becoming a 'cultural or educational asset'? If their reasons were the latter, surely it would be better to donate their bodies to science after their deaths, saving lives rather than becoming museum pieces to simply sit and gather dust?

People who have seen the show have said that they were torn between being fascinated and incredibly frightened by what von Hagens had done. They say that if they hadn't known what they were about to see before they walked in, they would have just assumed they were extremely impressive anatomical models, and if we were all able to think of them as just that - models - we would also agree that they were fascinating. However, at the back of our minds we cannot escape from the fact that they were real people.

It is obvious that even if they disapprove, people are still fascinated enough to go and view von Hagens' show and the more people who seem interested in the subject, the more models von Hagens and his team will make. His adamant statements that he is trying to 'show the beauty of the body interior' are at odds with the idea of 'Drawer Man'. Drawer Man is not science. The body has been carved into the likeness of a chest, its drawers pulled out to reveal the internal organs. However this artful arrangement of the body has actually destroyed any potential scientific use. Indeed, von Hagens himself has admitted that he only decided to arrange his plastinates artistically when they were criticised for being too medical.

Von Hagens is pushing art to its extreme, to see how far he can go and how much attention he can gain before people attempt to stop him. The fact that plastinated people have given their prior consent does not absolve us of the right to disagree. Dr David Haran of Liverpool University has encountered 'poverty stricken people who sell their body parts' and is repulsed that 'here we are in Europe making a spectacle of what painful death leaves behind...just to titillate so called "art lovers".' In fact, going to see a plastinate man posed on horseback, holding his own brain and that of the horse in his hands, or a man carrying his own skin draped like a coat over his arm, is no different from going to see a travelling freak show in mid twentieth century America.

I believe that even artistic expression has its limits and that even though the models gave their consent, von Hagens has crossed the boundary of taste into exploitation and his true purpose is simply to shock.

Links

A BBC interview with Professor Gunther Von Hagens