I saw these naked bodies last week in the science museum. I’ve been trying to see this exhibition for a long time. Gunther von Hagens‘ lifetime work is awe inspiring to say the least.
It’s all about real human bodies preserved through Plastination. It takes more than 1500 hours of work to transform a corps into a plastinate – the near perfect representation of a once living human body. It’s interesting to see how each body has it own unique features, even on the inside.
We usually forget that beneath even the most beautiful bodys’ skin lies a skeleton, muscles, several feet of intestines and lots of other goodies!
This whole experience reminded me of a great rainy day last year when I visited the small Dupuytren museum in the school of medicine in Paris. Just look at the skull of this man hit by a rifle stick in 1807 – he died after two days.
And if you are (unlike me) into mythology, you may enjoy seeing a real Kyklōps (cyclops). After being exposed to all of the above, I listened today to my favorite podcast about the history of Brain.
I am not all flowers and poetry after all, am I?
To see more of the beautiful Joey House go to my post sex, sex, sex here.
added on September 15th 2009:
I have thousands of visitors to this post; can somebody please let me know, who/what is sending you here aside the hunt for beautiful naked bodies?
This is quite the bait and switch post. It really goes to show that beauty is in the eye of the beholder and that reality can be weirder than fiction.
Your post reminds of what Sadi said once:
Of the same body are human race,
In creation, of the same gem base,
If one member be ailed by the age,
Other members would be on the rage.
You, who not sorrow suffering others,
You should not be named human, brothers.
Poet: Sadi Interpretation: Mehrdad 3/31/2006
I would say that you just visited another planet, isn’t so?
I’ve been to the same exhibition here in Manchester. Awesome, isn’t it? I personally loved the exhibition, although I found it a bit freaky. It just reminded me how amazing my body and brain are! I’ve started loving my body and my abilities even more since! x
Je n’ai jamais aimé le travail de Gunther von Hagen qui n’est jamais qu’une illustration de la maxime chrétienne :”Tu es poussière et tu retourneras à la poussière” . C’est aussi un succédané de ces tableaux intitulés “vanités”…
And so what? Le fait de savoir qu’il y a des intestins et des muscles sous la peau d’une jolie femme ne l’empêche pas d’être jolie.
Quant aux foetus dans des bocaux, cela me rappelle la faculté de médecine, mais je n’aurais jamais pensé qu’il s’agissait d’art. Cette photo pourrait peut-être illustrer le livre de Sartre :”l’être et le néant”?
“When I was five years old I saw an insect that had been eaten by ants and of which nothing remained except the shell. Through the holes in its anatomy one could see the sky.
Every time I wish to attain purity I look at the sky through flesh.”
-Salvador Dalí
This is a subject matter close to my heart and past experiences. I taught human anatomy for several years at HMS and found myself, on many an occasion, standing in the gross anatomy lab with a human brain in my hands, bewildered by its beauty and magnificence. I looked at the cold, spongy mass and often wondered where the might had gone. Where did the memory of this person’s first kiss, first love, child, work, true friend, and favorite food lie? What made her smile, cringe, feel sad, or happy, and how did such feelings translate into the cold, pale, fully disassembled body that rested on the dissection table? What had happened to the smell of a rose a lover once gave her and if there was a magical way I could infuse electricity through these nerve endings would the experience of that rose rise anew like a phoenix? Where is this person who was once full of life? Is she still there, dormant like a shut down computer, and would she awaken anew if turned back on? Unfortunately, aside from being born, death is the one event we all experience – a grand equalizer. But it’s through studying death that we help the living. Whether it’s studying cell death within tissue cultures in a Petri dish in some basement laboratory or the reaction of those attending a wake in a tiny, white steepled funeral home, the experience of death is transforming to the observer and a source of trepidation and wonder.
Epicurus gave his best advice to friends regarding their anxieties over death. He said since all good and evil is a function of experience and sensation, and since death is a state devoid of any sensations, then it would be futile to that fear this void and such fear amounts to nothing more than an idle worry in anticipation.
So, although these naked bodies on display where once mobile and functioning their departure from this company along with the marvel of plastination has immortalized them in a unique way. Their everlasting poses will be a lesson to us all that the body is our shrine, a shrine we should not desecrate until the arrival of our time. And when that time comes, we too shall dispose of the sweet memories we harbor in our heads, be it a memory of a blog entry, a mother’s voice, a father’s approval, a child’s smile, or simply the drunken smell of a rose in the lover’s arms.
Well I searched Google Images for “human bodies” and one of the first two showed up and I looked at them and then decided to look at the page they were on. Thus is why I was a visitor to your page. 🙂 hope you have a good day
Thousands of people visit this page because of the work of gunther von hagens, I simply found this page by going to google images and typing gunther von hagens, as i am researching his work in college. When i clicked the naked bodies picture it brought me to this page 😀
so there is your answer. 😀
I’m going to the Human Worlds exhibition tomorrow for Science field trip so I googled “plastination”. I found this photo really beautiful, so I clicked here~ I’m really looking forward to it. 😀
Saw this with a friend in Brisbane, Australia and we were absolutely facinated. We hope it will come back again.
Hi,
I think a lot of people are typing in google search for ‘dupuytren’
A condition of the hand which causes forearm flexors to shorten and this could be why you are getting loads of hits..
Dino
Im preparing for my lecture in Humanities, part of which is the beauty of the human body and how it is preserved/captured in art.
I bumped into the site of the incorruptibles among the Catholic saints, and then into your site.
For many mortals who are not Catholics or incorruptibles, plastination is a way of showing honor and respect to the human body, God’s creation. Human thought get captured and preserved in books, but the human body? Plastination may be one answer.
Very interesting. Rich people and great people and popular people should consider plastination.
this is disgusting. you have no respect for
human beings. I hope that all the bodies were
dead before you started this process. the weirdest people would donate a loved one.