 |
|
|
|
 |
|
|
 |
|
|
|||||||||||
|
Body Worlds, an exhibition coming to London this year, displays 25 human corpses and more than 200 body parts preserved in plastic and arranged in provocative poses. It is the work of a German artist-anatomist, Professor Gunther von Hagens. Von Hagens' project is shocking. He has been vilified by religious groups, and disowned by many within both the artistic and scientific communities. He has been called the 'Walt Disney of Death' (an epithet he embraces), and compared to Frankenstein. But von Hagens is certainly not the first artist to blur the boundary between anatomical study and art. The disciplines have been connected for centuries. Indeed, until the 17th century, the reasons for studying anatomy were largely religious, philosophical and artistic, rather than medical. • Early days of anatomy |
